Readings In Philosophy Research Articles

Merleau-Ponty nos arquivos Husserl: uma entrevista com Emmanuel de Saint Aubert

Silvana de Souza Ramos and Iracy Ferreira dos Santos Junior’s interview with Emmanuel de Saint Aubert explores the history and role of the Husserl Archives (Paris) in fostering multidisciplinary research in phenomenology. Saint Aubert clarifies Merleau-Ponty’s engagement with Husserl’s manuscripts, describing the situated and complex reading he undertook not only of these manuscripts but also of Husserl’s work as a whole. This aspect is particularly significant for contemporary French philosophical studies, as Merleau-Ponty played a pivotal role in introducing Husserl’s ideas into French thought. This clarification allows us to show the originality of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, as it reveals that he was not merely an exegete of Husserl, but a restless and multifaceted thinker, deeply involved in the intellectual and political debates of his time. If he cannot be reduced to a mere reader of Husserl, neither can his later ontology be simply attributed to Heidegger’s influence. Once engaged in a meticulous study of the unfinished manuscripts that Merleau-Ponty left behind due to his premature death, which were drafts for a new book, Saint Aubert conducted a thorough investigation of Merleau-Ponty’s use of key terms in his ontology – chair, Leib, empiétement, chiasmi – showing that these terms do not literally translate or express concepts derived from Husserl or Heidegger. On the contrary, these terms acquire a multifaceted range of meanings in Merleau-Ponty’s writings, nourished by his philosophical readings and meditations, by his scientific and literary refinement, as well as his ethical and political concerns. Saint Aubert’s research, dedicated to the interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s so-called “unpublished” works, resulted in the publication of five books by Vrin, all guided by a transversal genetic reading of Merleau-Ponty’s work. Additionally, with the help of other researchers, Saint Aubert carefully edited and published several volumes of Merleau-Ponty’s manuscripts. This material, made available in an organized and contextualized manner, is of incomparable richness, allowing for a more precise understanding of Merleau-Ponty’s role in contemporary thought, while also illuminating the meaning of his ontological project.

Caveat Lector: From Wittgenstein to The Philosophy of Reading

Against the grain of Analytic philosophy’s general avoidance of the fact or phenomenon of reading, and starting out with Wittgenstein’s compact investigation into “the part the word [‘reading’] plays in our life, therewith the language-game in which we employ it”, in this essay I explore the nature of reading, and thereby initiate what is in effect a new philosophical sub-discipline: the philosophy of reading.

Mathematics and society reunited: The social aspects of Brouwer's intuitionism

Brouwer's philosophy of mathematics is usually regarded as an intra-subjective, even solipsistic approach, an approach that also underlies his mathematical intuitionism, as he strived to create a mathematics that develops out of something inner and a-linguistic. Thus, points of connection between Brouwer's mathematical views and his views about and the social world seem improbable and are rarely mentioned in the literature. The current paper aims to challenge and change that. The paper employs a socially oriented prism to examine Brouwer's views on the construction, use, and practice of mathematics. It focuses on Brouwer's views on language, his social interactions, and the importance of group context as they appear in the significs dialogues. It does so by exploring the establishment and dissolution of the significs movement, focusing on Gerrit Mannoury's influence and relationship with Brouwer and analyzing several fragments from the significs dialogues while emphasizing the role Brouwer ascribed to groups in forming and sharing new ideas. The paper concludes by raising two questions that challenge common historical and philosophical readings of intuitionism.

Igniting A Spark: Fostering Dialectical Thinking With Plato’s Meno

Abstract: In this article, I present a three-stage teaching strategy for orienting first-time readers of the Platonic dialogues using the Meno as a case study. The approach assists students lacking a philosophical background to advance from personal reflection to developing more advanced analytical and interpretive skills. The first stage of the method invites students to contemplate their life goals in preparation for a structured class debate between relativistic and absolutist notions of success. The second stage employs in-class philosophical reading groups, where students engage with small passages from the Meno to develop their analytical skills in a supportive learning environment. The final stage consists of a two-part writing assignment in which students produce a line-by-line philosophical analysis of their passage along with an essay reconciling the antithetical arguments presented in their selection. By employing this multifaceted approach, students cultivate critical, analytical, and dialectical thinking in order to navigate the complexities of Plato's enigmatic dialogues.

Black Folk, Then and Now and the Late Du Bois’ Marxist Dialectic

This paper seeks to examine Du Bois’ positive engagement with the Marxist dialectical categories that are the corner-stone of the politico-philosophical tradition, as in Berteli Oilman's Dance of The Dialectic and Fredrich Engels’ Anti-Duhring. Du Bois’ relationship to Marxism remains downplayed and understudied due to anti-communist historiography and postmodernist interpretations. W. E. B. Du Bois’ 1939 work Black Folk, Then and Now demonstrates the centrality of Marxist dialectics to his work, clarifying his philosophical and historiographical development after completing Black Reconstruction. This abstract and philosophical reading of Black Folk, Then and Now reveals not merely that the late Du Bois’ radicalism can be categorized as Marxian but also that his late works cannot be understood without an understanding of Marxist political economy and philosophy, revealing that Black Folk, Then and Now is a centerpiece of the scholar-activist's intellectual development.

Philosophical Interpretation of “God Is Dead”: Retreat, Disruption, and Judgment

Nietzsche’s declaration of “God is dead” signifies not only the collapse of classical metaphysical systems in philosophy but also shifts in the psychological structure of individuals and society after the secularization of Christianity. A philosophical reading is crucial to understanding its whole process and real-world ramifications. We first delineate the fundamental meanings and historical context of the term “God” or “Absolute” and expound upon the mechanisms of spiritual functioning under it, highlighting the significance of God, or the Absolute, as the highest object of spiritual operation. Next, we analyze the death of God, i.e., the retreat of the Absolute, in the realms of reason and faith, exploring its causes and repercussions, particularly the disruption of the operation of the spirit. Then, building upon this analysis, we conclude that the metaphysical life supported by Kant and Hegel faces failure in the present age, because the Absolute has ceased to be the foundation. The roots of spiritual operation are no longer secure; the return to the Absolute points to emptiness, and exit without return creates disruptive division between subject and substance, essence and phenomenon, reason and reality. Meanwhile, the departure of God and the development of capitalism are intertwined, calling for a resurgence in the form of secularization, heralding a renewed human judgment of God.

Beyond the Digital Public Sphere: Towards a Political Ontology of Algorithmic Technologies

The following paper offers a political and philosophical reading of ethically informed technological design practices to critically tackle the implicit regulative ideal in the design of social media as a means to digitally represent the liberal public sphere. The paper proposes that, when it comes to the case of social media platforms, understood along with the machine learning algorithms embedded in them as algorithmic technologies, ethically informed design has an implicit conception of democracy that parallels that of Jürgen Habermas’ procedural democracy (Habermas, J. (1994). THREE NORMATIVE MODELS OF DEMOCRACY. Jurgen Habermas, 1(1).). That is, that democratic practices are encodable as procedures that produce valid discussion forums. Opposed to this, this paper suggests a turn to philosopher Jacques Rancière’s conception of politics as a guiding attitude towards technological design. This is done by, on the one side, using Rancière’s notions of “disagreement” and “distribution of the sensible” as the political starting point for the practice of design of algorithmic technologies. And, on the other, inspired by Karen Barad’s theories on agential realism (Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(3), 801–831. https://doi.org/10.1086/345321), by putting forward a political ontology of algorithmic technologies that reconceptualizes them in terms of how they assemble open-ended practices between human bodies and technological devices.

Reymont’s Venus – Genesis, Contexts, an Attempt at Interpretation

The idea for Reymont’s Venus was most likely connected with his stay in Strzelce Małe near Przedbórz,where he spent his vacation in 1897, and the direct inspiration could have been the stormsthat hit the area. The writer had already planned a sketch devoted to Venus de Milo. Venus wasoriginally published by a Munich publishing house and has several later editions. It interpretationsrange from sociological to axiological. The article decsribes the circumstances of the creationof the work, introduces its context, and offers a philosophical reading.

A Philosophical Reading of Justice and Its Resistance to Social Change among the Igbo of Nigeria

Abstract This article explores justice among the Igbo of Nigeria through a philosophical lens. Its discussion focuses on how the Igbo idea of justice intermingles with the idea of akadiocha (clean hands), proverbs, names and equal treatment for all, including the ancestors. Personal interviews form the primary sources of data collection while library materials are the secondary sources. The economy of the Igbo people of Nigeria is dynamic and multifaceted, with traditions of commerce, agriculture, manufacturing, and diaspora contributions playing crucial roles in its development and growth. The Igbo concept of “offor” embodies enduring traditions, values, and social structures that resist rapid social change. Its symbolism and significance continue to shape various aspects of Igbo culture, reinforcing a sense of identity and continuity amidst evolving social, economic, and political dynamics. Western justice is a multifaceted philosophical idea that reflects a commitment to fairness, equality, and the rule of law within legal systems influenced by Western philosophical traditions. By examining these differences, we gain insight into the multifaceted understanding of justice within Igbo culture, which encompasses spiritual, ancestral, and communal dimensions beyond Western paradigms.

Post-Print

‘Post-Print’ is a practice-led research project that seeks to situate the emergence of the printmaking tradition (and the notion of the print as ‘reproduction’) as a pivotal event that once re-shaped a past era’s perception of reality, just as the ‘digital multiple’ template today has come to function as the de facto contemporary reproduction of ‘being’. For this paper, I will draw on Slavoj Žižek’s philosophical reading of the notion of ‘Event’ as a framework for my central thesis. I want to expand on how the moment of compression for a technology for looking (i.e., the introduction of the printing press and the digital device) may be considered a veritable Event. In the process, I will unsurprisingly rely on Walter Benjamin’s observations in his essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ to inspire my discussion of the print as reproduction and the image as Event. This progression of creative discourse—the transition from the ‘print’ to the ‘post’ as the means of infinite reproduction—is the central focus of my project, as this shift of mediums contextualises my own mediations of the avalanche of images that characterise the present Event. Rather than mere diversions, I consider historical thinking and anachronism to be the practical methodologies of my work. For me, these retroactive interventions are themselves closely informed by the philosophical strategies of fragmentation and reframing separately proposed by Benjamin and Žižek. Hence, I discuss how these philosophical ideas have shaped the critical processes and curatorial choices within my practice.

Fragile texts and machine readers: trans/in/dividual reading tactics in a complex technical milieu

This paper explores the following questions: What is reading all about, as our technical milieu becomes increasingly digital and our reading increasingly automated? What is entailed in closely reading a book, in studying and handling the book as an object? And what is the role of philosophy—and in reading philosophy—as we grapple with new technical modes of reading? Guided by philosopher Gilbert Simondon, this paper compares the language heuristics of large language models (LLM) with human reading practices, revealing parallel and diverging technical tactics, with the aim of increasing our understanding of how and why these algorithms are part of our technical reality. This comparison moves beyond concerns with automation and alienation, using Simondon’s notions of technicity and transindividuality to philosophically analyze the nature of collaborative reading in a distraction economy, and the extent to which transformer neural network models achieve an implicit embodied or grounded sense of language-use.

Reading for post qualitative inquiry

This paper advocates reading philosophy and using its concepts in educational and social science research. The lengthy engagement with the various concepts and conceptual orders of poststructuralism required for post qualitative inquiry exceeds the scope of reading required for a conventional literature review at the beginning of a typical empirical research project. Reading that spans many years of an academic career does not serve the epistemological project of stabilizing what is known through recognition, representation, and summary but attends to an ontological project of re-orienting thought through experimentation, invention, and creation to enable what does not yet exist but might.

Mediating the elemental: an immaterialist ethics for ecomaterialist media theory

ABSTRACT Up until the 19th century, the notion ‘medium’ described the natural elements – e.g. earth, water, fire, and air. John Durham Peters’ media philosophy (2015) demonstrates how contemporary technical media rely on this forgotten elemental dimension; as cultural techniques, media can reveal the elemental’s environmental sense. Against its broader philosophical background, I extend Peters’ account into a ‘trans-materialist’ film-philosophy: I claim that the notion of the elemental stands, and mediates, ‘between’ the materialist tradition – currently operative in ecomaterial media theory (e.g. Cubitt; Ivakhiv; Parikka; Parks; Starosielski; Vaughan) – as well as the ethico-existential, immaterial dimension that belongs to the elemental. Two philosophical readings support this mediating aspect of the trans-material philosophy: Levinas’ immaterialist ethics ([1961] 1969) and Bachelard’s ‘material imagination’. Levinas’ ethics underscore that existence is defined in relation to alterity; the enveloping elemental environment enables developing a relational sense of self. Additionally, Bachelard’s materialism invites us to reimagine our cosmic connection to the material world – and I argue it is the medium of film that expresses this potential most dynamically. As moving audiovisual image, cinema’s technical form fosters, for the immersed spectator, a renewed sense for our elemental environment.

Jürg Zünd : voir/faire voir l’espace

GoalsBy extending the analysis of a case identified by Ludwig Binswanger, the Jürg Zünd case, using a philosophical reading inspired by phenomenology, we strive to show that the patient – this is what gives meaning to his disorder – attempts to display the relevance (failure of reason) as well as the limits (reason remains operative) of a doctrine that was made familiar to him by his psychiatrist: existential analysis, notably its representation of space and language. This aims to illustrate the dangers posed by too insistent a dialogue between patient and caregiver when this patient is associated with diagnosis and therapy. Finally, it is a question of better marking the remaining gap between the practical field and the experiential field. The patient has renounced the rationality of her actions but continues to subscribe to that of her experience, the only means of “proof” remaining to her. MethodExtend the psychiatrist's analysis by establishing a correspondence between the symptoms of the illness and the validations/refutations of this same analysis. The main danger of the analysis carried out here is a hyper-rationalization of mental disorder, but if, in the mental disorder, no element of reason remains, no psychiatry can see the light of day either. It is, however, clear that the simple failure of reason cannot be enough to put the scientific exploitation of mental disorder into perspective. We can therefore only follow the author in his frequent references to the fundamental texts of phenomenology. We could say that our analysis is experimental in nature. ResultsAn in-depth analysis of the case shows that there is indeed a link between the patient's system of attitude and behavior and a desire to test the relevance of the phenomenological analysis applied by the caregiver to the patient. DiscussionIn the third Critique, known as the Faculty of Judgment, Kant strives to restore to a reason invalidated in its pure use a path, a field of sensitive expression that, spanning understanding and language, allows this reason to “say itself”, but this behavior is in turn struck by impotence, due to its antinomic structure. Only the body, left out of Kantian analysis, allows reason to find its balance because it is already in itself penetrated, corseted, steeped in reason, but also, by the same token, crushed by this reason, a reason which, by overwhelming the only means of expression that remains to it, overinvests this body and makes itself inaudible again. It will therefore be necessary to return the body to itself, free it from the influence of reason, reify it and, at the same time, allow to reappear what, perhaps, remains in the man of reason: madness, weak reason inhabiting a weakened body. To contradict reason is to speak it out loud, in the experience of its almost although never quite definitive loss, suspended as it is on its own memory. From being the object of clinical inquiry, madness thus becomes its criterion. It establishes its own regime of proof, proof, which, of course, cannot be administered by means of language that is now disqualified. ConclusionMadness has its say in the failure of reason, a failure already thwarted by the disabling examination to which it has been subjected by the Kantian-inspired critical doctrine, which strives to “reason” a reason that exceeds its rights.

Love, Jealousy, and the Fear of Ontological Dependence: A Philosophical Reading of Shakespeare's Othello

Love, Jealousy, and the Fear of Ontological Dependence: A Philosophical Reading of Shakespeare's Othello

Institution or Individuality? Some Reflections on the Lessons To Be Learned From Personal Accounts of Recovery From Schizophrenia

Abstract: In this paper, I argue for a social conception of subjectivity, via a philosophical reading of first-person accounts of recovery from schizophrenia, published in the Schizophrenia Bulletin . Following the hypothesis that these accounts exemplify a more general tension between, on the one hand, normative and social dimensions of the self, and on the other, experiential and psychological dimensions, the first section of the paper formulates the problem from a philosophical perspective inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein's grammatical approach. The second section explores and rejects different possible readings (sociologistic, phenomenological, or narrativist readings), as conceiving the subject in too passive a relationship with him or herself, and as leading to overly skeptical conclusions about the claims in the first-person accounts insisting on the notion of recovery as a restoration of a sense of self and as empowerment. The third section suggests that a more positive answer can be given via the idea of a certain grammar of recovery governing these narratives, and sketches out how this relates to the more general philosophical question on subjectivity.

Hegel's science of logic as a key to a philosophical reading of the history of philosophy

In the Science of Logic Hegel presents his speculative logic, the system of categories through which thought thinks itself. By developing the categories one from the other, thought moves immanently, without losing its unity. The justification of philosophy can only be reached within its own interior, and by reaching the Absolute Idea, the final category, with which thought truly expresses itself, it would reach the circularity capable of providing this self-justification. But such circularity does not seem to be enough to deal with the skepticism aroused by the perplexity faced with the diversity of philosophical systems. Hegel then proposed a philosophy of the history of philosophy according to which the truth reached by speculative logic would manifest itself in history, converting it into an argument in favor of, and not against, the truth of his philosophy.

Schulz– Writer as Philosopher

Bruno Schulz has been one of the most important Polish philosophers. It is not because one can find in his works many traces of reading philosophy or that they convey any specific philosophical ideas, but because the form of his world is one of the most interesting world forms found in Polish in the 20th century. What is the meaning of this form? Our life tends to assume fixed shapes whose durability denies it since there is a radical asymmetry between the matter of life and the forms it adopts. We need these forms to deny formless chaos but we should not accept them as ultimate. Our nature knows no peace but adopts many disguises and roles to find the best possible shelter, which never ends with success. Human life is permanently incomplete because it always shows us its “eternal otherness.” Never will we realize our potential in full, which does not mean that we should limit ourselves in advance. On the contrary – the more options we have, the better our life is. If reality is a sum of realized potentialities, the more of them become real, the more meaning reality will acquire. And the more meaning it has, the more effort must be put in its interpretation. Thus human existence can be defined as interpreting. Interpretation adds more possibilities to being since it is not a way of knowing the world, but that of being in it.

A Step Towards Absolute Versions of Metamathematical Results

There is a well-known gap between metamathematical theorems and their philosophical interpretations. Take Tarski’s Theorem. According to its prevalent interpretation, the collection of all arithmetical truths is not arithmetically definable. However, the underlying metamathematical theorem merely establishes the arithmetical undefinability of a set of specific Gödel codes of certain artefactual entities, such as infix strings, which are true in the standard model. That is, as opposed to its philosophical reading, the metamathematical theorem is formulated (and proved) relative to a specific choice of the Gödel numbering and the notation system. A similar observation applies to Gödel’s and Church’s theorems, which are commonly taken to impose severe limitations on what can be proved and computed using the resources of certain formalisms. The philosophical force of these limitative results heavily relies on the belief that these theorems do not depend on contingencies regarding the underlying formalisation choices. The main aim of this paper is to provide metamathematical facts which support this belief. While employing a fixed notation system, I showed in previous work (Review of Symbolic Logic, 2021, 14(1):51–84) how to abstract away from the choice of the Gödel numbering. In the present paper, I extend this work by establishing versions of Tarski’s, Gödel’s and Church’s theorems which are invariant regarding both the notation system and the numbering. This paper thus provides a further step towards absolute versions of metamathematical results which do not rely on contingent formalisation choices.

A Bibliophile in Shandong Province in the Republic of China Zhuang Enze and His Handwritten Copy of Shang Han Lun Xuan Zhu(Annotation of Treatise on Febrile Diseases)

Shang Han Lun Xuan Zhu(«»,Annotation of Treatise on Febrile Diseases) is a representative work of Zang Yingzhan, a famous physician in Zhucheng of Shandong who was as famous as Huang Yuanyu during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty.The book was not published, but has been preserved only in manuscripts, of which 5 copies are now preserved.By comparing the five manuscripts seen, it is found that the Zhuang Enze version is unique in the existing version of this book, exquisite and generous, beautifully copied, with important documentary value. Zhuang Enze adopts the theories of various schools, supplements prescriptions, analyze medical theory with his unique insights.The reason may be related to his family's practice of medicine for generations, its philosophy of loving reading, copying books, and collecting books, and also related to its protection of local and state documents and the dissemination of lost culture.