Philosophy Today Research Articles

Comments on Henry Somers-Hall, Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation

Henry Somers-Hall has written a book1 that is much needed, and in many ways. We need it, for one thing, to understand a striking feature of Deleuze's thought-striking at least to the novice reader (and I claim to be nothing more). While some of Deleuze's many insights are incredibly interesting and illuminating, some of them-including some of the deeper ones-betray a strange arbitrariness. Why empiricism, for example, and not idealism or realism? Why must inquiry explain how experiences are generated rather than conditioned? Wasn't the latter good enough for Kant? Why valorize difference above identity? Why does difference have to be affirmative, and what does that mean? Why calculus and not set theory (Badiou) or arithmetic and geometry (Kant) or modal logic (Kripke)? And so on. Somers-Hall's book operates on the level of such questions, and it is so clear and carefully argued that I learned an incredible amount from it.And not just about Deleuze, for this book's importance stretches across the philosophical spectrum-or would, if the different approaches that make up philosophy today were not in too much disarray to constitute a spectrum. It is not that philosophy fails to be a single unified discipline, with everyone working cooperatively in the same paradigm; worse than failure, that would be philosophy's death. It is, rather, that no one has any sense for what anyone else is doing. One index of this is the infamous analytic/continental split. After 60 years, philosophers still don't know what it is about.2 Another is the increasing fragmentation on both sides of the split. Analytical philosophy has divided by topic into so many subspecialties that each has room only for a few dozen people. Except for the work of race and gender theorists, much of the continental side has become a pantheon of incommensurable geniuses: Habermasians, Derrideans, Sartreans, Butlerians and so on follow their leaders without concern for anyone else's leaders.It will take great efforts to overcome this situation, and Somers-Hall shows why. Just to bring Hegel and Deleuze-only two of the many continental deities- into productive dialogue requires him to awaken, and then exorcise, a panoply of intimidating ghosts. The specters of Leibniz and Newton haunt Deleuze's and Hegel's views of the calculus respectively; Scholastic doctrines of analogy haunt Russell's theory of types; Plato's Third Man argument haunts Aristotle's ontology; Husserlian intentionality haunts Sartre and turns Merleau-Ponty to Klee and Cezanne; Cuvier's disputes with Geoffroy over teleology haunt the Hegel-Deleuze confrontation.On all this extraordinary variety of matters, and much more, Somers-Hall provides interesting and often novel insights, and by doing so shows that the various components of the philosophical panoply are far too deeply interconnected to be mutually indifferent and, so, however happily, incommensurate. While the book is dense (how could it not be?), it is always clear. The arguments are meticulously stated and, always, driven home. The diverse thinkers Somers-Hall discusses are not aufgehoben or verschmelzt into some single meta-paradigm, but are placed into fruitful dialogue-exactly what, to me, is missing in so much contemporary philosophy.Transcendentality and RepresentationSomers-Hall stages the Deleuze-Hegel confrontation in two rounds. The first concerns the fate of the realm at the hands of affirmative difference; the other, that of teleology at the hands of evolution. The book begins, however, with the problem of representation: what sort of isomorphism must hold between mind and reality if representations in the former are to give us knowledge of objects in the latter? Kant claims that this question can find its answer only on a transcendental level, one that first sets forth the kind of mind that is necessarily presupposed by knowledge and then shows that the conditions of our knowledge of objects are the conditions of the objects themselves (S-H 12). …

Ordinary Emergences in Democratic Theory

Apolitical scientist working at the intersection of political theory and the critical humanities, Bonnie Honig is Nancy Duke Lewis Professor of Modern Culture and Media, and Political Science, at Brown University. She was previously assistant and associate professor at the Department of Government, Harvard University, and Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor at Northwestern University. She is also Affiliate Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation. Professor Honig's work has been influential in the fields of democratic theory, legal studies, feminist theory, immigration studies, and literary and cultural theory, among others. She has published in prestigious journals across the social sciences and the humanities such as American Political Science Review, Political Theory, Arethusa, New Literary History, Social Text, and diacritics, among many others. An internationally renowned scholar, her work has been translated into Swedish, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Greek, Japanese, Korean and Rumanian.Trained at Concordia University (B.A.), in Montreal, The London School of Economics (M.Sc.), and The Johns Hopkins University (Ph.D.), where she worked under the supervision of Richard E. Flathman and William E. Connolly, Professor Honig is a leading proponent of agonistic democracy. Her first book Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics (Cornell, 1993) was awarded the Scripps Prize for best first book in political theory. In the book Honig discusses liberal, communitarian and republican attempts to insulate politics from conflict and uncertainty. Drawing on Nietzsche, Arendt, Machiavelli, and Derrida, among others, Honig explores an alternative approach in political theory that tracks the disruptive remainders of political closure or settlement and recasts them as potential sites of democratic freedom or engagement. Her second monograph, Democracy and the Foreigner (Princeton University Press, 2001), established her as an influential voice in the politics of immigration. Here Honig mobilizes readings of the Biblical book of Ruth as well as of popular movies such as The Wizard of Oz, Shane, and Strictly Ballroom to interrogate the myth of an immigrant America where the foreigner is often seen not just as a threat, but also as a supplement or source of renewal for democracies whose energies are depleted. Emergency Politics: Paradox, Law, Democracy (Princeton University Press 2009), her third monograph, was the co-winner of the David Easton Prize and discusses sites of potential democratic emergences in a time of sovereign exception and emergency politics. Her fourth monograph, Antigone Interrupted (Cambridge University Press, 2013), offers an original interpretation of Sophocles's Antigone that explores previously neglected resources for thinking agonistic sorority in the play. The book has already been the subject of critical exchanges with the author in journals such as Philosophy Today, International Journal of the Classical Tradition and PhiloSOPHIA. In a recent essay in boundary 2, called Three Models of Emergency Politics, Honig develops and extends her thoughts on emergency politics drawing on material from Emergency Politics and Antigone, Interrupted, to engage critically with Elaine Scarry's Thinking in an Emergency.Professor Honig has also been a prolific editor of influential academic volumes. She edited Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt (Penn State, 1995) and co-edited Skepticism, Individuality and Freedom: The Reluctant Liberalism of Richard Flathman (Minnesota, 2002) and the Oxford Handbook of Political Theory (Oxford, 2006). She is also co-editor of a symposium in the journal Theory & Event dedicated to the films of the Danish cinematographer Lars von Trier, scheduled to appear, in revised form, as a book with Oxford University Press . In 2013, Professor Honig delivered the Sydney Lectures as part of the Thinking Out Loud Series, and in 2014, she performed for the second time as a respondent to the Tanner Lectures, these delivered by Eric Santner at the University of California, Berkeley. …

Introduction to the Special Issue: The Emergency of Philosophy

Yet from where does of future of come? Must not itself-in act of beginning-first awaken this emergency? Such stands on this side of misery and grief, which always roam merely in some corner of established beings and of their truth.-M. Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (Of Event), 1936-1938In order to introduce this special issue of Philosophy Today I would like to start by pointing out how German terms Ausnahmezustand and Notlosigkeit have often, although not exclusively, been translated as or of emergency. While first term is central in Carl Schmitt's state of theory,1 second has acquired significant meaning in Martin Heidegger's later thought on of emergency.2 Ever since publication of Giorgio Agamben's State of Exception3 and Richard Polt's Emergency of Being, Ausnahmezustand and Notlosigkeit have become synonymous not only for several contemporary philosophers but also for political theorists and literary critics who have contributed to this volume. Their common translation is crux of this volume not because contributors engage Schmitt's and Heidegger's thought but because they disengage from it.As Tracy B. Strong explains in his brilliant foreword to English translation of Schmitt's Political Theology, a dictionary will tell you that Ausnahmezustand means state of but idea of a state of has of a legal connotation, and is more confined than an 'exception.' This is why the is part of 'order' even if that order is not precisely juridical.4 A similar argument can be made for Notlosigkeit. While a dictionary will tell us Notlosigkeit means of notion of distress has more of a psychological connotation and seems more confined than emergency.Schwab translated Soveran ist, wer uber den Ausnahmezustand entscheidet as Sovereign is he who decides on exceptional case.5 Harry Zohn, who undertook translation of Benjamin's Theses on Philosophy of History, rendered Die Tradition der Unterdruckten belehrt uns daruber, das der 'Ausnahmezustand,' in dem wir leben, die Regel ist as The tradition of oppressed teaches us that 'state of emergency' in which we live is not but rule.6 Agamben, who relies heavily on both Schmitt and Benjamin, has used equivalent in Italian of state of (stato di eccezione).7 Heidegger's Woher die Notlosigkeit als die hochste Not?8 has been translated as Whence Lack of Distress as Utmost Distress?9 or Whence lack of a sense of plight as greatest plight?10 and paraphrased as, How can of itself become an emergency?11As we can see, while translators of Schmitt, Benjamin, and Agamben used both state of and state of to translate Ausnahmezustand, Heidegger's translators opted for of of and absence of to translate Notlosigkeit. When a word is translated in various forms, it does not mean that one translator made a mistake but rather that they have all interpreted and understood differently. As Hans-Georg Gadamer used to say, We understand only when we understand differently, that is, through altering generally accepted meanings. This is why difference between exception and has a lot to do with particular use that Schmitt, Benjamin, and Agamben made of Ausnahmezustand in relation to problem of sovereignty. same occurs with Notlosigkeit. In order to choose among distress, plight, and emergency, one must interpret Heidegger's Notlosigkeit in terms of Being's abandonment.This brief discourse on translations of Ausnahmezustand and Notlosigkeit was not meant to dispute which one is closer to original meaning in German but rather to point out how emergency of philosophy that this volume refers to is a result of both. …

A Joyful Dialogue with Spinoza and Others: Le Dœuff, Deleuze and the Ethics

This essay argues for a Le Dœuffian dialogue with Spinoza's Ethics, intending the increase of affective knowledge and bodily power. This intention requires a striving to learn: first, what perhaps we do not already know; second, what our bodies can do; and third, to increase in joy. From this dialogue the reader can gain Spinozist knowledge of bodies, minds, affections, as well as gaining the power to affect and to be affected by other bodies. One of the features of this Le Dœuffian practice is a collective exploration of what makes dialogue productive and joyful, opening up new possibilities, especially for women in philosophy today.

Select Issues and Controversies in Contemporary African Philosophy

AbstractAfrican philosophy today is a complicated and dynamic discipline. This presentation will concentrate on two topics that are currently of special interest. One concerns the meaning of the term ‘communalism’ when it is used to express a defining characteristic of Africa's cultures. The other concerns the reactions on the part of African philosophers and scholars to the movement that has come to be known in Western academia and culture as ‘feminism’.

Sporting knowledge and the problem of knowing how

In the Concept of Mind from 1949 Gilbert Ryle (1949/1963) distinguished between knowing how and knowing that. What was Ryle’s basic idea and how is the discussion going on in philosophy today? How can sport philosophy use the idea of knowing how? My goal in this paper is first to bring Ryle and the post-Rylean discussion to light and then show how phenomenology can give some input to the discussion. The article focuses especially on the two main interpretations of knowing how, intellectualism and anti-intellectualism. In the second part of the article I discuss how views from phenomenology and philosophy of mind can enrich and widen our understanding of what knowing how means in relation to sport practices. It is argued that knowing how is not limited to athletic abilities but includes knowledge of how the environing world operates in relation to athletic action.

Kant's Elliptical Path, by KarlAmeriks. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012, xiv + 365 pp. ISBN 978‐0‐19‐969369‐6 pb $45

Reviews Kant’s Elliptical Path, by Karl Ameriks. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012, xiv + 365 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-969369-6 pb $45 Ameriks’ latest volume represents yet another major contribution to our understanding of Kant and his place within the history of philosophy. 1 Ostensibly, Kant’s Elliptical Path is a scholarly treatment of the development of Kant’s thought throughout his career. It assuredly is that, but it is also much more, since it plumbs the depths of Kant’s entire Critical project by revealing the crucial systematic roles of freedom, reason, and religion, and shows their relevance both for the course of post-Kantian German philosophy throughout the nineteenth century and for our philosophical interests and ambitions today. Along the way, we are treated to an unusually broad range of kinds of discussion: detailed interpretations of particular passages that can appear problematic or are often misunderstood, remarks about the linguistic nuances of German terms which can easily get lost in translation, helpful interpretive hypotheses regarding Kant’s views on crucial points, and, of course, broader considerations of Kant’s overall project and commitments. Ameriks’ book comprises an introduction and then fifteen substantive chapters, which are divided into three parts. The introduction offers an innovative narrative of Kant’s overall development that provides an indispensible context for each of the parts and chapters that follow. Its defining claim is that once Kant was ‘turned around’ by reading Rousseau in 1763–4, his basic views, e.g., about the primacy of practical reason and the importance of absolute (libertarian) freedom, morality, and certain religious beliefs (involving God and immortality), did not change fundamentally, even if later developments (such as Transcendental Idealism) proved to be ‘ideal means [. . .] to fill out a systematic defense that allows for a return to his deepest pre-systematic beliefs’ (p. 1). Crucial to Ameriks’ understanding of Kant’s development, however, is not only that Rousseau was important and that there is a basic continuity to some fundamental aspects of Kant’s thought, points on which many (if not all) scholars agree, but also that there is an elliptical movement to Kant’s career, with the ‘heavens above’ and the moral ‘law within’ serving as distinct foci, that precludes either a simple linear or purely circular movement, because of various (theoretical and practical) complications that take Kant further away from his starting point before he is able to return to it. Further, late in the book Ameriks uses the image of an elliptical path to put much of post-Kantian philosophy into context, including figures such as Reinhold, the German Idealists (Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel), the early German Romantics (Novalis, Holderlin, and Schlegel), Nietzsche, and various contempo- rary philosophers (such as MacIntyre, Cavell, Taylor, and Frank). Ameriks’ narrative is thus not restricted to Kant, but provides a useful perspective well beyond, one that he even takes to recommend a certain conception of hermeneutical philosophy today. The first part, on Kant’s pre-Critical period, has a first chapter, ‘Kant, Human Nature, and History after Rousseau,’ which describes various ways in which Rousseau influenced European Journal of Philosophy ••:•• ISSN 0966-8373 pp. ••–•• © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Do Not Block the Way of Inquiry

The first goal is to understand why Peirce describes his motto, “Do Not Block the Way of Inquiry,” as a corollary of the “first rule of reason,” why he believes it deserves to be inscribed on every wall of the city of philosophy, and what he has in mind when he characterizes the various barricades philosophers set up, the many obstacles they put in the path of inquiry. This soon leads us to important, substantive themes in Peirce’s meta-philosophical, cosmological, metaphysical, logical, and epistemological work (§1). However, it also leads us to what might seem to be a tension in his account of the motives for inquiry. So the second goal is to track the source of this apparent tension, and to show how Peirce resolved it (§2). But the ultimate goal is to explain why Peirce’s warning against blocking the way of inquiry is no less important, given the condition of philosophy today, than it was when he offered it more than a century ago—perhaps even more so (§3).

Demythologizing Christian Philosophy: An Outline

In this paper I investigate the tradition of “philosophy” and “philosopher” with respect to their importance in Christianity. I argue that the meaning of the traditional notion of philosophy as an abstract science has importantly changed. The reason for this is that the “cosmo-theological” character of traditional philosophy proved to be untenable. If this pattern is not valid in our days, then the question arises if the role of philosophy, as conceived during the Christian centuries, can be continued in and beyond our age. My answer has two aspects: on the one hand, the cosmo-theological character of philosophy needs to be explored or “demythologized;” on the other hand, Christian thought still has the potential to open itself to a future renewal. Thinking philosophically is a fundamental human feature, and I suggest that “trying to become wise,” the striving for the discovery and realization of the meaningfulness of reality is still the main concern of human beings reflecting on their historical existence today. In this sense, the encyclical letter of Fides et ratio by John Paul II offers guidance, inasmuch as its author calls for “courage” in thinking. Following this call, the present paper contends that the three mains tasks of a Christian philosophy today are as follows: 1. A sufficient understanding of the tradition determined by cosmo-theology; 2. A sufficient understanding of the importance of the trauma of totalitarianism of the twentieth century as the dividing line between tradition and contemporary reflections; and 3. A sufficient understanding of human beings striving to grasp the meaning of personhood in an open universe on the basis of the meaningfulness of reality.

No Religion without Idolatry: Mendelssohn’s Jewish Enlightenment by Gideon Freudenthal (review)

Reviewed by: No Religion without Idolatry: Mendelssohn’s Jewish Enlightenment by Gideon Freudenthal David Novak Gideon Freudenthal. No Religion without Idolatry: Mendelssohn’s Jewish Enlightenment. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012. Pp. xi + 332. Paper, $40.00. In his learned and insightful reading of the eighteenth-century German–Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, Gideon Freudenthal clearly wants to rescue him from total irrelevance. For Freudenthal claims that “Mendelssohn’s philosophy of Judaism—and of religion in general—can be defended and, in fact, still deserves contemporary interest” (12). But does Mendelssohn’s philosophy deserve the interest of philosophers who are interested in what is still significant in the present first for themselves and then for everybody else; or perhaps it deserves the interest only of historians of ideas who are interested only in what was significant in the past for those who lived then? (Let it be assumed that a philosopher speaks in the first person in the present tense, that is, “This is what I think is true; and why.”) So, does Freudenthal himself now agree with what Mendelsohn thought is true, or does he try to ascertain only what Mendelssohn truly meant back then? Freudenthal does a fine job in refuting the putdown of Mendelssohn as a second-rate metaphysician made by his contemporary, the Lithuanian–Jewish philosopher Salomon Maimon, which was picked up by most later scholars of Jewish philosophy. He does this by showing that Mendelssohn did not really intend to be a metaphysician, but that he employed metaphysics (mostly that of Christian Wolff) only to bolster his semiotics. Mendelssohn conducted his semiotics in his treatment of language in general and of the Hebrew Bible in particular (something neglected by most scholars, even by those who can read the original Hebrew text of Mendelssohn’s Bible commentary). Since Mendelssohn saw the primary intent of the Bible to be practical, he interpreted the ceremonies it prescribes to be a “language of action” (18). These performative acts are tangible expressions, mandated by revelation, of the truths of “natural religion” (17). Metaphysics can help a philosopher explicate the meaning of these symbolic actions, but metaphysics should not be taken to be the ground from which natural religion (the religion of “common sense”) is derived. For Freudenthal, Mendelssohn’s primary task was to interpret the biblical text (and subsequent sacred texts), selectively employing ideas of speculative metaphysics so as to enable the Bible to gain philosophical respectability. That is why his methodology, if not his actual ideas, can be of interest to hermeneutical philosophy today. Mendelssohn recognized that “permanent signs are conducive to idolatry” (9) (hence the title of Freudenthal’s book). He saw the temptation of idolatry for any religion of revelation, yet he argued for the superiority of Judaism over Christianity nonetheless (ignoring Islam, though). For the Christian doctrine of transubstantiation (in Catholic and Lutheran theologies of the Eucharist) seems to mean the act of divinizing physical objects by the theurgic speech-acts that so elevate them. But that is not the case with Jewish speech-acts [End Page 494] (i.e. mitsvot or “precepts”) because they are not hypostatized into physical objects. Nevertheless, Mendelssohn is quite aware of the fact that in the Jewish mystical tradition of kabbalah, theurgic speech-acts are much more than the expressions of subjective human approaches to the Divine; they have objective efficacy of cosmic proportions. Therefore, Mendelssohn considers kabbalistically founded Jewish practices to be superstition, which is incompatible with what he held to be essential, philosophically respectable Judaism. Finally, though, does Freudenthal make a convincing case for genuinely philosophical interest in the content of Mendelssohn’s thought? I think not. For he says that Mendelssohn’s approach to the Jewish tradition assumes it has normative dominance over most Jews. Hence a philosophy of Judaism like Mendelssohn’s need explicate only sacred texts, plus refute those who would deny the intellectual and moral authority of that tradition. But it does not have to argue for the validity of the tradition itself. Yet Freudenthal recognizes that the tradition no longer has that kind of authority for most Jews, because of the political dissolution of the pre-modern Jewish communities (of which...

Perceived Control in the Lives of Older Adults: The Influence of Langer and Rodin's Work on Gerontological Theory, Policy, and Practice

A key concept driving the field of both clinical and applied gerontology is that of personal control. Seminal work conducted in the late 1970s to early 1980s by Ellen Langer and Judith Rodin, who examined the effect of choice and enhanced responsibility on older adults, not only contributed to the discussion of the relevance of control in contemporary theories and practices of aging but also aided in the development of today's philosophy of how to serve and care for older adults in ways that are passionate, humanistic, and empowering. In their early research, residents at a nursing home were randomly assigned to 2 groups: 1 group was told they could arrange their furniture as they wanted, go where they wanted, spend time with whom they wanted, and so forth and were given a plant to care for; the other group was told that the staff was there to take care of and help them, including watering a plant given to each of them. During this study, and 18 months later, residents who were given control and personal responsibility had improved health; among those for whom control had not changed, a greater proportion had died. Since these original studies, research has continued to support the need for personal control as we age. This paper presents a brief overview of literature informed by Langer and Rodin's seminal findings, as well as the role of control to theory, policy, and practice.

The Literary Example in Moral Philosophy Today

The standard claim made for literary examples in moral philosophy is that they assist moral reasoning by offering appropriately complex descriptions of the conditions under which moral decisions are made or might plausibly be made. This essay offers a critical examination of that claim, exploring the attractions of literary exemplarity for moral philosophy of several kinds since the 1960s but also the constrained terms under which the invitation to deep reflectiveness is permitted to operate. The essay then considers why many recent moral philosophers (with the partial exception of Bernard Williams) have preferred quasi- or faux-literary examples, developing a kind of stripped-down or gestural literariness that offers the benefits of just enough, not too much, complexity.

The Bridge of Benevolence: Hutcheson and Mencius

The Scottish sentimentalist Francis Hutcheson and the Chinese Confucianist Mencius give benevolence (ren) a key place in their respective moral theories, as the first and foundational virtue. Leaving aside differences in style and method, my purpose in this essay is to underline this similarity by focusing on four common features: first, benevolence springs from compassion, an innate and universal feeling shared by all human beings; second, its objects are not only human beings but also animals; third, it is sensitive to proximity; and finally, it has to be constantly cultivated in order to become a character trait. I will conclude with some brief remarks as to how this understanding of benevolence as rooted in feeling rather than reason, and in personal rather than impersonal relationships, helps to illuminate part of the discussion in moral philosophy today.

On the Historiography of Philosophy

This issue of Philosophy Today presents of papers from the International Workshop on the Historiography of Philosophy: Representations and Cultural Constructions, held in September 2012 at the West University of Timic oara, Romania. This meeting was organized under the Romanian Funding Authority for the Higher Education and Scientific Research (UEFISCDU), Bucharest, and resulted in the papers published here. The organizing committee included Gyo rgy Gere by, Associate Professor at the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest; Claudiu Mesaroc, from the Department of Philosophy and Communication Studies, West University, Timijoara; Florin Lobonf, fellow at the Royal Holloway, London; Robert Lazu, researcher at New Europe College, Bucharest; and Teodora Artimon, Central European University, Budapest.The project began from the idea that an innovative exploration of recent calls for an updated public image of philosophy was necessary and of interest.1 We therefore aimed to investigate trends regarding possible reconfigurations in the methodology used in the History of Philosophy. Moreover, our main ambition was to investigate these trends in a comparative manner with respect to the history of ideas and images, within the framework of an interdisciplinary set of investigation methods.We granted that it is nowadays difficult to decide (or, it is a matter of taste) what the constitutive problems of philosophy are. On one hand, many hold that philosophical problems are no longer canonical but rather are reconstructed meanings and acts. On the other hand, philosophy has for a long time been practiced as Geistesgeschichte or as canon-formation meant to further the development of meaningful vocation. From this perspective, the external public of philosophy depended on accepting these canons as inescapable material to study and understand. But such debates on the identity and the legitimate object of philosophy will always depend on the so-called schools and, ultimately, on tastes and cultural context of the philosophers.Jorge E. Gracia, for example, responding to Richard Rorty's emphasis on the problem-solving mission of Philosophy, in an attempt to recover the gap between incompatibilists and continentalists, has said that solutions and arguments built by philosophers are not obtainable by any alternative means; therefore philosophy has its own scientific and cultural monopoly.2 But on the very same basis we can claim the right to interdisciplinarity for philosophy itself. Charles Taylor, too, has argued that philosophy must be understood as the reinterpretation or rewriting of its own fundamental texts, authors, concepts, and ideas.' Yet one may link this thesis to Gracia's further claim that the product of this re-phrasing is a part of the text itself*-therefore, the philosophical text (even the historical text) and philosophical practice are not separable. We do philosophy to the extent that we rephrase or rewrite; it is consequently not legitimate to think that once the meaning or context was lost, reading the text remains useless-to hold, for example, that since Kant or Aristotle do not solve contemporary problems, it is not worth reading them. In fact, the philosopher as the historical author, and the general or specialized public that interacts with the text and alters its form, are equally authors according to Gracia's ontology of text.5 The two categories are parts of the same ontological structure; therefore, the ontological question of a text's audience will include subjects like identity (types, composi- tion), function, necessity, character (subversive and repressive), and subjectivity. Gracia's model, in this sense, presents a position that endorses the authorship of interpretative communities of readers. But it is then questionable whether the so-called historical author is the only one responsible for the ideas signified by his/her text or whether this responsibility dissipates and becomes something like a shared vision between the historical author and the different types of public. …

Margolis on Realism and Idealism

Joseph Margolis has written on the problem of realism voluminously over several decades – in addition to the enormous number of other philosophical debates he has contributed to in original ways. His latest book, Pragmatism Ascendent, discusses a wide spectrum of philosophical issues, including the transformations of transcendental philosophy today in terms of (Hegelian) historicity and ‘flux,’ as well as the question of “what it is to be a human self” (Margolis 2012: x), but once again the r...

Is Thoreau More Cosmopolitan Than Dewey?

In 1921 John Dewey published an article on “mutual national understanding” based upon his real experience of encountering foreign cultures in Japan and China (“Creative Democracy” 228). The article echoes his democratic spirit of learning from difference beyond national and cultural boundaries. The vitality of his American philosophy and its potency in a global context are still evident today. Some of the recent research on Dewey is plain enough evidence of this (Hickman; Hansen). Neither fixed within national ground nor appealing to any universalist cause in the process of continuing growth, Dewey encourages us to become cosmopolitan, going beyond cultural differences and national boundaries. By inheriting what Dewey has left us, this paper critically re-examines the viability of Dewey’s philosophy today in the context of a debate on cosmopolitanism and global citizenship in American philosophy. It tests his claim that understanding different cultures should be a pre-condition for our becoming cosmopolitan. To take up this task, I want to confront Dewey with another voice of American philosophy—that of Henry David Thoreau as revived by Stanley Cavell. Thoreau tends to be absent both in Dewey’s writings themselves and in those of Deweyan scholars. What does this absence imply? What does the silenced voice of Thoreau suggest when one looks at Dewey’s line of argument regarding cosmopolitanism? In searching for answers to these questions, this paper explores what lies behind this absence. I shall re-read Thoreau’s Walden, via Cavell’s ordinary language philosophy, as offering an alternative mode of becoming cosmopolitan—beyond the dichotomous framework of cosmopolitanism in words and cosmopolitanism in action. It will show us how our endeavor to

Hybridity, Monstrosity and the Posthuman in Philosophy and Literature Today

Hybridity, Monstrosity and the Posthuman in Philosophy and Literature Today

JHP and History of Philosophy Today

JHP and History of Philosophy Today Tad M. Schmaltz (bio) As Part of the Celebration of the Fiftieth anniversary of the initial publication of the Journal of the History of Philosophy, I would like to reflect a bit on my experiences at JHP during my time as editor (2003–10), as well as to address some historiographical questions concerning the field of the history of philosophy, which it is the mission of JHP to serve. I will start by reporting that I was surprised when my colleague at Duke at the time, the late Ed Mahoney, indicated in 2002 that there was serious interest in my applying for an opening for the editorship of JHP. To that point, every JHP editor following Richard Popkin1 had been either a student or a colleague of Popkin’s. Though of course I knew of Popkin’s influential scholarship, I had been neither his student nor his colleague, and indeed had never met him. Moreover, I had no experience in editing a journal when I was invited to apply. It is clear that the Board was thinking “outside the box” in considering me for the editorship. Despite my lack of connection to the JHP “family” and my lack of experience in journal editorship, I decided to apply at least in part because I considered JHP to be the best journal devoted to the history of philosophy, and among the top philosophy journals generally. To be sure, it is clear from the record that the journal has had a history of considerable financial difficulties and serious personal squabbles.2 However, by the time I considered applying for the editorship, JHP was not only financially solvent but had also had steady leadership for some time. Such leadership allowed the journal to establish itself as a prime venue for scholarship in the history of philosophy. I believe that in ultimately offering me the editorship, the JHP Board in effect was making a transition to a more genuinely “post-Popkin” era than the one that [End Page 477] followed the official end of Popkin’s long term as editor in 1980.3 Though this transition has not been entirely smooth, it has been reinforced by subsequent additions to the Board of a broad range of scholars not previously associated with JHP. In accepting the Board’s offer, I was eager to facilitate this transition by instituting some changes that I thought would help to maintain the quality of the journal in new circumstances. One of my first initiatives was to establish the Current Scholarship series, devoted to critical reviews from senior scholars of the recent literature on various historical periods and topics. My hope was that such a series would prove to be a useful research tool for specialists and students alike. But I also saw the series as a way of involving senior scholars in the journal. As happens with many refereed journals, issues of JHP included mainly articles from junior scholars struggling to build a case for tenure. I think it is in fact important that JHP publish the best articles in the history of philosophy from junior scholars, and certainly I appreciated the opportunity to publish in the journal prior to receiving tenure. But it is also important that senior scholars have a presence in the journal, and I took the Current Scholarship series to be one way of providing for such a presence. The first essay in this series was published in July 2005, and six Current Scholarship essays appeared during my time as Editor. I am glad to say that two more essays have been published since then, and that there are at least four others in the works. May Current Scholarship continue to flourish! I also was sensitive to complaints in the “blogosphere” that journals were not reviewing submissions in a sufficiently timely manner. Indeed, one blogger has claimed that “many [philosophy] journals are run like soviet car factories,” taking a year or longer to come to a decision.4 Certainly I did not want JHP to be justly compared to a soviet car factory on my watch! But more fundamentally, I considered it immoral for journals to make junior scholars...

TO HAVE DONE (TRULY) WITH METAPHYSICS

abstractOne cannot consider the future of continental philosophy without accounting for its specific “hermeneutic situation.” It seems to us that the state of continental philosophy today returns us to metaphysics and to the possibility of truly having done with it. Continental philosophy, in reality, does not cease to live metaphysically, because by asserting the end of metaphysics, it still continues to think according to the topos of the here‐and‐now and the beyond: that which seeks the ruin of the heavens continues to obsess over the heavens; the cult of immanence can only understand itself in opposition to the other world, therefore in constant reference to it; insufficiently radical, the critique, in the words of Karl‐Otto Apel, is but an “inverted metaphysics.” Our inversions of the for and against (the sensible vs. the intelligible, the body vs. the soul, the empirical vs. the transcendental, and more recently, the multiple vs. the one) still belong to the landscape of metaphysics.How do we imagine what comes after metaphysics? Can philosophy think according to a topos other than the one of the world above and the world below? Can it respatialize itself in a new way? Put more precisely, can we accept what science tells us about the world and about humanity in any other way than as the deposing of the other world? Can science provide us with anything other than weapons against metaphysics; in other words, can science give us anything other than metaphysics? As a response to these questions, we imagine an alternative scenario tied to the (scientifically attested) fact of our animal origin. Our animal origin can be, for philosophy and more specifically for phenomenology, the chance for a new beginning. But it can do so only on the condition that it does not follow the current method of evolutionary psychology. If it is true that we can be metaphysicians while being reductionistic, because we thus preserve the “old schema,” then evolutionary psychology is today, in virtue of its very reductionism, one of the more metaphysical currents of thought. Conversely, if phenomenology decides to face the fact of evolution and to confront its estrangement, we think that it possesses all the resources to invent a new intellectual landscape.

In the Mood for Thought: Feeling and Thinking in Philosophy

For more than a decade, emotions have been a hot topic in philosophy as well as in most other areas of the humanities. While the emotional dimension of thinking, deliberation, and behavior is more closely examined than ever before, rarely is the emotional aspect of philosophy itself the topic of philosophical inquiry. This essay argues that there is much to be gained from an investigation of the emotional aspect of philosophical texts. Drawing on two major figures in history, Descartes and Kant, it examines some of the methodological obstacles to such an investigation in the comtemporary philosophy of emotions, proposing the concept of mood as a key a point of entry into the emotional texture of philosophical thinking. The essay concludes with the suggestion that an examination of the loss of ambivalence and the obdurate quest for answers that characterizes the mood of contemporary philosophy might help explain why the curiosity of so few people outside the narrow circle of professional philosophers is aroused by the discussions going on in academic philosophy today.