19th and 20th Century Continental Philosophy

Michael Morris' Knowledge and Ideology is an original and valuable contribution to the philosophical debate concerning the meaning and validity of the concept of ideology critique. While the concept of ideology has occupied a pivotal role within the tradition of critical social theory, as Terry Eagleton had already pointed out in his 1994 study, the term nevertheless has "a whole range of useful meanings, not all of which are compatible with one another." Morris takes Eagleton's analysis as his point of departure, distinguishing between "epistemic" and "functional" varieties of ideology critique. Unlike Eagleton's earlier study, however, which focused on the historical development of these two dominant ways of conceiving ideology, Morris' work attempts to show how the cognitive and noncognitive dimensions of belief can be productively reconciled in a "Neo-Hegelian variation of epistemic ideology critique." Morris' work makes a compelling case that critical social theory can be sensitive to the social dimensions of belief without abandoning the legitimate goals of the traditional epistemological project. I have some questions, however, regarding how he proposes to reconcile these two competing visions of ideology critique.

This essay argues that the terminally ill patient may still experience healing at the end of life and in the face of inevitable death. I will argue that healing is something that we experience quite apart from what happens to our biological make-up. While healing is often correlated with a change in the state of our bodies, it need not be. The essay begins by defending a distinction between two pairs of related concepts, viz., between disease and illness and between cure and healing. With those distinctions in hand, I examine four aspects of the experience of illness. I then argue that these aspects of illness can be transformed in the life of the ill patient such that she can experience healing even if she cannot be cured.

This is a draft of an essay under consideration for inclusion in at least two different conferences this year.
This essay argues that the terminally ill patient may still experience healing at the end of life and in the face of inevitable death. I will argue that healing is something that we experience quite apart from what happens to our biological make-up. While healing is often correlated with a change in the state of our bodies, it need not be. The essay begins by defending a distinction between two pairs of related concepts, viz., between disease and illness and between cure and healing. With those distinctions in hand, I examine four aspects of the experience of illness. I then argue that these aspects of illness can be transformed in the life of the ill patient such that she can experience healing even if she cannot be cured.

Hegel repeatedly identifies rational self-consciousness as a real example of the concept, and its tripartite constituents: universality, particularity, and individuality. In what follows I will show that the concept as such, along with its tripartite constituents, are constitutive of rational self-consciousness. On the one hand, by showing how Hegel’s concept of the concept applies to rational self-consciousness, I aim to provide a concrete example of the concept of the concept in a real being whose being is not merely logical. On the other hand, I aim to show that Hegel’s application of the concept to rational self-consciousness is motivated by a problem within the philosophy of mind. For this reason, Hegel’s application of the concept of the concept to the mind is not arbitrary, but motivated by significant philosophical problems.

We have two ways of knowing. Our mind knows forms, things, both subtle and gross. Faces, hands, buildings, trees, math formulas, mind knows subject and the mind knows otherness. The mind knows dualities, the mind knows me and you, us and them, and this and that. Mind knows time, mind knows the past, the present and the sense of the future. The mind knows things and entities, the mind knows beings, infinite numbers of beings and things. The mind knows difference. The mind thinks conceptually, feels affectively, imagines through imagery, the mind has sense and the mind has memory. The mind knows dualistically.

Indagación sobre el alcance y sentido que cobra en Nietzsche la comprensión schopenhaueriana de la animalidad como "esencia" del hombre. La exposición sigue el hilo de la reflexión nietzscheana del fenómeno onírico, y culmina con el anàlisis del aforismo 119 de Aurora.

Un estudio histórico que sigue la reflexión de Nietzsche sobre el fenómeno del sueño a través de todas sus obras, mostrando las transformaciones generales de su pensamiento y, en especial, las inflexiones y cesuras que en tal desarrollo se hacen visibles de la mano del tratamiento del fenómeno onírico y demás procesos psicológicos.-

Para apresentar a leitura de Giuliano Campioni, destacam-se aqui dois aspectos centrais de seus trabalhos sobre Nietzsche: em primeiro lugar, a perspectiva de leitura filológica. Em segundo lugar, os resultados específicos alcançados por essa leitura de Nietzsche, resultados esses que contribuíram para o estabelecimento do perfil do Nietzsche histórico, colocando em crise aspectos-chave das imagens mais difundidas do filósofo.

The third chapter of Altared Ground: Levinas History, and Violence (Routledge, 1996), "HelioGround" focuses on Plato's "idea of the Good beyond being," which plays a pivotal role in determining Levinas’ understanding of the ethical transcendence of alterity. The radical exteriority of the Good and the One, vital for Levinas’ conception of the Infinite, is examined with an eye to  Gadamer’s interpretation of transcendence via the form of the beautiful. The tension between whether justice (Levinas) or beauty (Gadamer) as that which makes accessible the Good, underscores the movement of this chapter.

Reviewed by Brian Schroeder, Rochester Institute of Technology While the name and thought of Gianni Vattimo is familiar to European philosophers, theologians, cultural and political theorists, and even the general public (he regularly writes commentaries for La Stampa, a major Italian newspaper in Turin, and was a member of the European Parliament), in North America he is comparatively little known outside the domain of continental philosophy. Yet he is the author of some thirty-two books and coauthor of another five, of which fourteen have been translated and published in English, and is regarded by many as one of today's most original and influential thinkers (if not the most, as another leading Italian philosopher, Pier Aldo Rovatti, attests). Vattimo is recognized principally for his philosophical approach known as il pensiero debole, or "weak thought," which for him has a positive connotation in its realization and affirmation of the present condition of existence, characterized by the increasing erosion of the traditional metaphysical and rational foundations of modernism. While this is indeed an expression of nihilism, he argues throughout the corpus of his work that nihilism need not be construed solely or at least primarily as reactive and destructive. Vattimo announces rather an "optimistic" nihilistic phase of intellectual and cultural realization that will lead to an actual ethical social and political transformation. In the present postmodern scenario of rapidly changing values, belief systems, geopolitical boundaries and epistemological foundations, the project of one such as Gianni Vattimo is sorely needed. The publication of Weakening Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Gianni Vattimo is thus a cause for celebration. This collection of very fine essays not only further establishes Vattimo's rightful place in contemporary European philosophy, it also takes up his call to advance the crucial active and affirmative engagement with thinking and society. Edited by Santiago Zabala, a former student of Vattimo's and presently researcher in philosophy at the Pontifical Lateran University of Rome, Weakening Philosophy is comprised of twenty-three essays, including one by Vattimo, which, while referred to as a response in the editor's introduction, is actually an original essay both summarizing the trajectory of his thinking as a whole and addressing it in light of the philosophies of Theodor Adorno and Emmanuel Levinas. As the subtitle states, the book is basically a

Nietzsche's recognition of existence as an ever-shifting play of surface appearances presages his "revaluation of all values," his response to those who would stabilize becoming by metaphysically reifying it as being. Nietzsche arguably provides Levinas with his deepest ethical challenge. Consequently, Levinas himself undertakes a similar revaluation of the ground of traditional values and of the subject. Both put forth heterodox notions of subjectivity insofar as the subject is constituted by a radical exteriority that is paradoxically realized as such interiorly. However, Levinas repudiates the postmodern conception of the subject as an empty, fragmented phantasm (a position often attributed to Nietzsche), the hollow legacy of a now debunked and defunct modernist project, characterizing his ethical philosophy as a "defense of subjectivity." Nietzsche and Levinas simultaneously invert and intertwine the traditional hierarchical relation between seeing and hearing. In doing so, they reveal essential dimensions of the ethical relationship that would appear to be contradictory, self-negating, or at least incompatible. However, they also have their sights set on a similar site -that of the "eye that listens." This essay interrogates the role that the metaphor of the "listening eye" plays in determining their respective conceptions of subjectivity and ethics. Both employ this provocative and necessarily ambiguous metaphor to emphasize the radical role that teaching plays in their philosophies.

The philosophies of Deleuze, Guattari and Levinas are taken up in an effort to advance the ethical, political, and technological implications of how we interpret, inhabit, and territorialize the Earth. The difference between their views on the relation between immanence and transcendence and their respective analyses of the face and faciality are brought to bear in addressing the questions of ethics, politics, and values in relation to the constitution and liberation, or resingularization, of subjectivity. The contemporary world has produced to a historically unprecedented degree a tension between machinization and wildness-both of which are expressions of the inhuman. Somewhere in between this difference, transversing the borderlines between the human and inhuman, lies a possible way for rethinking the relation between subjectivity, identity, difference, and singularity.

In this essay, I argue that Søren Kierkegaard’s oeuvre can be seen as a theater of ideas. This argument is developed in three steps. First, I will briefly introduce a theoretical framework for addressing the theatrical dimension of Kierkegaard’s works. This framework is based on a distinction between“performative writing strategies” and “categories of performativity.” As a second step, I will focus on Repetition: A Venture in Experimenting Psychology, by Constantin Constantius, one of the best examples of Kierkegaard’s innovative way of doing philosophy. This strange and elusive book introduces the difficult and counter-intuitive notion of repetition. Repetition is a category of performativity that aims to activate the subjectivity of the reader. This performative effect is achieved by confronting the reader with an “unresolved”existential problem that is not yet drawn into clarity but is staged in all its confusions and contradictions. Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Constantius relies here on a performative writing strategy that is animated by a dialectic of advance and withdrawal. In the last and third step, I will analyze Constantius’s own reflection on the performative dimension of his text. Constantius has left several clues behind, each of which suggests that he deliberately developed a performative writing strategy.