Barry Stocker
Teaching philosophy at Boğaziçi (Bosphorus) University since January 2023. Before that I was teaching Philosophy in the Department of Humanities and Social Science at Istanbul Technical University from 2006 to 2022, in the Department of philosophy at Yeditepe University in Istanbul (1997 to 2006) and in the Department of English Literature and Humanities at Eastern Mediterranean University, Famagusta (Northern Cyprus 1997). I have a BA in Philosophy from the University of Warwick (1987) and an MA in Philosophy and Literature from the same place (1989). I was have a D.Phil for thesis work in Philosophy and Literature from the University of Sussex (1997). Before relocating to Famagusta and then Istanbul to take up job offers I did tutorial work at a few universities in London and the southeast of England. My philosophical approach follows that of post-Kantian Continental philosophy and related philosophical texts from earlier periods, particularly Montaigne and Vico. My publications include the monographs *Derrida on Deconstruction* (Routledge 2006) and *Kierkegaard on Politics* (Palgrave Macmillan 2014). I edited *Post-Analytic Tractatus* (Ashgate 2004) and *Derrida: Basic Writings* (Routledge 2007). I co-edited *Nietzsche as Political Philosopher* (de Gruyter 2014). Major current projects under contract are writing the monograph *Philosophy of the Novel* and co*-editing a *Handbook in Philosophy and Literature* (both for Palgrave Macmillan). Further projects I'm developing include *Foucault on Liberty* (the most developed), pluralistic virtue ethics (second most developed), law and legislation, philosophy of war, idea of Europe, Montaigne, Vico. My teaching focuses on Introduction to Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Ethics, Philosophy and Literature, Aesthetics.
Address: Boğaziçi University
Department of Philosophy
Bebek
34342
Istanbul
Turkey
Address: Boğaziçi University
Department of Philosophy
Bebek
34342
Istanbul
Turkey
less
Related Authors
InterestsView All (35)
Uploads
Papers by Barry Stocker
These remarks towards the end of Birth of the Clinic make clear the centrality of tragedy in Foucault’s thought. The understanding of the tragic aspect of Foucault’s thought, has so far been very limited. It is, however, very significant in understanding Foucault as a thinker about liberty, as it is concerned with the relation of the individual to external forces, political and otherwise.
These remarks towards the end of Birth of the Clinic make clear the centrality of tragedy in Foucault’s thought. The understanding of the tragic aspect of Foucault’s thought, has so far been very limited. It is, however, very significant in understanding Foucault as a thinker about liberty, as it is concerned with the relation of the individual to external forces, political and otherwise.
signifiant degree shaped by a double process in the development of liberalism. First the emergence, dating back to the late nineteenth century of a kind of liberalism which departed from earlier forms of liberalism in giving a more active role to the state, and seeking some middle way between the limited government impulses of earlier liberalism and socialism of a state orientated kind. Second the emergence of movement to prolong and continue the earlier form of liberalism, in association with a rejection of socialism, certainly where that refers to state enforced laws and policies, and a critical attitude to the tendencies to compromise with socialism. This debate became associated with the distinction Isaiah Berlin made in the 1950s between positive and negative liberty in his essay ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, which itself built on late eighteenth and early to mid- nineteenth century discussions of the relation between the liberty of the ancients and the liberty of the moderns, a debate that also intertwined with debates about natural law and moral liberty. Other parts of this project locate Foucault’s thought, particularly in its historical aspects, within these discussions, so the paper will now move straight onto Foucault’s engagements with twentieth century liberalism, which will itself require some reference to his work on the liberalism of the Enlightenment.
Foucault’s account of neoliberalism has two parts, or two themes, the European and the US. The European aspect; focused on the University of Freiburg, is referred to as Ordoliberalism, while the American aspect, focused on the University of Chicago, is referred to as anarcholiberalism. The term Ordoliberalism is not Foucault’s invention, but a reference back to a term invented by Hero Moeller in 1950 to refer to ideas put put forward in the journal ORDO-Jahrbuch for die Ordnung von Wirthschaft und Gesellschaft (Yearbok of Economic and Business Order), so we could cal this Order Liberalism. We will maintain reference to Ordoliberalism which is quite widespread in English, though surely either Ordoliberalismus or Orderliberalism is more correct in not mixing English and German .
2 Foucault on Two Types of Liberalism
The term suggests that the question of the ordering of the economy or the order within
which the economy operated is central, and Foucault is picking up on this with regard to the elements of the order which owe something to conscious political will expressed through state laws and public policy.
1. Introduction. From Analysis to Form
This chapter investigates major aesthetic approaches to the philosophy of the novel and develops distinct approaches to be used in the book. The distinction between Analytic and Continental European philosophical approaches is established. The Analytic approach is largely explored with reference to Peter Lemarque. Its limitations are defined through a discussion of Lemarque’s approach to Roland Barthes as a literary critic. The nature of ethics and literature as an approach to the novel is identified and its limitations are discussed. Martha Nussbaum is selected as an example of ethical philosophical criticism at its best. Her approach and its limitations are discussed in relation to poetics, erotics and ethics, focusing on her reading of Jacques Derrida.
2. Epic in Aristotle and Vico
Epic is discussed as a forerunner to the novel. Aristotle’s comments on Homeric epic in the Poetics and Rhetoric are fully explored, to establish a view of what epic is and its relation to public forms of speech. Giambattista’s New Science is discussed with regard to its philosophy of history, its account of poetry and the central role it gives to Homeric philosophy. This is discussed as partly the product of a growing novelistic culture in Vico’s time and as applying to main aspects of the novel including its relation both to epic discourse and the more variable discourse of everyday life.
3. Idealism and Romanticism
The literary aesthetics of the eighteenth century is discussed with regard to the growth of the novel as a literary genre, noting it that is not incorporated much into aesthetics. It is in the late eighteenth century that Romantic philosophers such as Friedrich Schlegel begin to develop a philosophy of the novel based on its appeal to subjectivity and unstable perspectives, summed up in the term ‘irony’. Hegel’s reaction to Schlegel and less elevated role for the novel is explored along with related aspects of his literary aesthetics. This chapter then covers the role of nature, particularly as known to chemistry as a model for understanding and appreciating the novel, or at least setting up the possibility of doing so.
4. Kierkegaard, Irony and Subjectivity
Søren Kierkegaard is discussed as the first philosopher to develop an understanding of the novel at length. Four of his texts are considered: From the Papers of One Still Living, The Concept of Irony, Either/Or, A Literary Review. The first is considered for its account of Danish novels in a world of unpredictability and subjectivity. The second is considered for its view of Socratic irony and dialogue, Romantic irony and novels, along with Hegel’s criticisms. The third is considered for its accounts of tragedy and opera, as deeply connected with novelistic aesthetics, as well as the Romantic novelistic structure of Either/Or. The fourth is discussed for its view of the place of the novel in the political and social understanding of the time.
5. Lukács on Subjectivity and History (Introduced Through Nietzsche)
The chapter begins with what Nietzsche contributes to the philosophy of his novel through his remarks on Stendhal and Dostoevsky, along with his view of how the novel emerges from the death of tragedy in antiquity. These thoughts are considered as what opens the way for Lukács. Lukács is mostly considered for his Romantic work on the novel, though his Marxist phase is also considered. His view of the novel as a fall from epic unity between individual, and the world is emphasised along with other historical aspects.
6. Bakhtin, Ethics and Time
Bakhtin is discussed with regard to the antique and medieval precursors for the novel, pluralism of voices, carnival, temporal analysis and approach to Dostoevsky. François Rabelais is discussed as the source of the transformation of the carnivalesque into novel. The ethical and political aspects of Bakhtin’s commitment to plurality of voices and registers are considered. The relation of his literary analysis with his view of the distinction between Orthodox and Catholic churches is discussed, along with his Russian populist leanings
7. Mimesis, Humanism and Time
Erich Auerbach is considered as a theorist of mimesis and of the decline of Europe, influenced by Vico. His more humanist view is compared with the anti-humanism of Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno, to the extent that they see the current civilisation as doomed and lacking in ideals. This Marxist view is compared with more conservative and liberal views of the growth of state power. Adorno and Benjamin are compared as more nihilistic and more religious thinkers. Their views of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century novel are discussed.
8. Mimetic Limits. Desire, Death and the Sacred
This chapter looks at how French writers of the mid-twentieth century take mimesis away from the centre of the novel. Georges Bataille puts ‘evil’ at the centre, that is the breaking of social habits to reach some deep level of desire which is enacted rather than represented. Maurice Blanchot puts death and meaninglessness at the centre of the novel, which drifts towards and between moments of emptiness and extinction. René Girard has a more Christian Huımanist view of the dangers of mimetic desire and violence, which may be resolved by moments of transcendence. The more violent and apocalyptic aspects of his views are also explored. Finally, the chapter considers how French anti-mimeticism is taken up by Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida.
9. The Absolute Novel. Proust on Lost Time
Marcel Proust’s river novel, In Search of Lost Time, is considered as anovel of absolutes as advocated by the Romantics. The consideration of Proust both as a philosophically interested writer and as the object of an enormous amount of philosophical attention. How Proust’s transcendental aesthetic subjectivity connects with historical, national and European consciousness through memory. His place in the history of literature and how he writes as someone located in the history of literature always concerned with other kinds of history. The specific place of his writing in Third Republic France and the political interpretation of this include the movement from aristocratic to democratic worlds.
10. The Philosophical Novel
How the novel and philosophy may become the same and the limitations on such hopes. After a survey of examples, the chapter focuses on James Joyce’s relationship with Vico and Homer (continuing considerations in Chap. 2), Joyce’s relationship with Kierkegaard, Jane Austen’s relationship with ethics and Austen’s indirect relationship with Kierkegaard. The chapter considers both how the most obviously literary philosophical and philosophical literary works may be considered from a philosophical novel perspective, but also how a less obviously philosophical writer like Austen is full of philosophical insights. This continues considerations in the introduction on how ethics and the novel may be related.