The ethical night of libertinism: Beauvoir’s reading of Sade

Continental Philosophy Review - This paper examines Simone de Beauvoir’s reading of the eighteenth century writer and libertine Marquis de Sade, in her essay “Must we Burn Sade?”;...     

From Lhasa to Rome: Williams’s Unexpected Way

IntroductionPaul Williams is professor of Indian and Tibetan philosophy at the University of Bristol in England. He is the author of four earlier books on Buddhist thought and numerous scholarly papers. In The Unexpected Way (Edinburgh, T&T Clarke, 2002), his fifth book, Williams departs from the normal academic genre and writes a partly autobiographical, partly apologetic account of his conversion from Tibetan Buddhism to Roman Catholicism. The title anticipates the pretty standard response that traffic is typically in the opposite direction. The book is a mixture of philosophical discussion, personal musings, ‘analytical meditations’, and catechetical-style instruction that seeks to convince the reader that his choice was rational, warranted and personally enriching.     

From dialectic to organization: Bogdanov’s contribution to social theory

This paper situates Bogdanov in the context of social theory generally and socialist theory in particular. It outlines briefly the principal characteristics of his mature system, and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of his approach to the fundamental problems of social thought. The paper devotes particular attention to the problem of just how systems develop from less complex to more complex forms of organization, and evaluates Bogdanov’s solution to this problem against the background of populist, social democratic, and Leninist alternatives.     

Process as reality: Kierkegaard’s aesthetic approach to the ethical

This paper makes the point that Kierkegaard’s ideas concerning individuality cannot be understood clearly without placing them in the context of what I am calling ontological isolation. This means the radical deprivation by selfhood of every aspect of reality, to the point where not even the possibility or illusion of reality is available to the self. In this context the self is required to become itself, forming itself in and out of its own absolute nothingness, ontological destitution, or wrongness. With this form of isolation as our investigative key, we unlock what Kierkegaard means by his command to become a self, where becoming itself, in absence of prior possibility, constitutes the reality of self, and why Kierkegaard places crucial emphasis, contrary to the tradition, on the priority of negativity. By having the self originate itself in “absolute difficulty,” or that wherein the act itself, or pure doing without result, is primary, Kierkegaard now replaces metaphysics with ethics in order of priority, and places the self inseparably in a world that responds directly to that act. I show here a parallel between Kierkegaard’s approach to ethical action with that of artistic creation of a kind of world, the work of art. In doing so I reveal the inadequacy of interpretations that would impose traditional forms of isolation, social and cosmic, on Kierkegaard, as some of his critics do, or that would place Kierkegaard’s ethics within traditional developmental models, as many of his sympathizers do.     

Time’s entanglements: Beauvoir and Fanon on reductive temporalities

Continental Philosophy Review - Simone de Beauvoir and Frantz Fanon both argue that oppression fundamentally constrains the subject’s relationship to and embodied experience of time, yet...     

On universals: an extensionalist alternative to Quine’s resemblance theory

The notion of similarity plays a central role in Quine’s theory of Universals and it is with the help of this notion that Quine intends to define the concept of kind which also plays a central role in the theory. But as Quine has admitted, his attempts to define kinds in terms of similarities were unsuccessful and it is mainly because of this shortcoming that Quine’s theory has been ignored by several philosophers (see, e.g., Armstrong, D. M. (1978a). Nominalism and realism: Universals and Scientific realism (Vol. I). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). In the present paper, I propose an alternative framework that accounts for the phenomena that Quine intends to explain with his resemblance theory. The framework agrees with Quine’s austere ontology; in particular, it does not assume the existence of properties and of possible worlds. (I will mention below Quine’s reason for rejecting properties and possible worlds. For a theory of Universals that assumes possible worlds, see, e.g., Rodriguez-Pereyra, G. (2002). Resemblance nominalism: A solution to the problem of Universals. Oxford: Clarendon Press.) Moreover, the framework is extensionalist since the abstract entities it assumes are classes and these can be individuated extensionally, for classes are identical if their members are identical. Finally, I will refute some of the objections to Quine’s approach that have been raised by Armstrong and Oliver [(1996). The metaphysics of properties. Mind, 105, 1–80.] and I will argue that, contrary to what has been claimed by Oliver in a comment on Lewis [(1986). On the plurality of worlds. Oxford: Blackwell.], Quine is able to specify an important set of sparse properties. Editor’s Note: Nathan Stemmer died on 6 April 2007. Due to this, the proofreading was only done by the editors. All colleagues being acquainted with Nathan Stemmers work are deeply concerned about the loss.     

Introduction to John Wild’s “Marxist humanism and existential philosophy”

Continental Philosophy Review -     

The world’s continuance: divine conservation or existential inertia?

According to the Doctrine of Divine Conservation, the world could not endure through time were God not actively sustaining its existence. An alternative to the conservationist view is one according to which the existence of whatever is the fundamental material of our universe is characterized by inertia, so that its continuance stands in no need of active causal intervention by some other being. In this article I develop in some detail the Doctrine of Existential Inertia and reply to some of the objections brought against it by conservationists.     

From philosophy to criticism of myth: Cassirer’s concept of myth

This article discusses the question whether or not Cassirer’s philosophical critique of technological use of myth in The Myth of the State implies a revision of his earlier conception and theory of myth as provided by The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. In the first part, Cassirer’s early theory of myth is compared with other approaches of his time. It is claimed that Cassirer’s early approach to myth has to be understood in terms of a transcendental philosophical approach. In consequence, myth is conceived as a form of cultural consciousness which is constituted by specific symbolic processes. In the second part, the theoretical assumptions underlying Cassirer’s criticism of myth are discussed and compared with his earlier theory. It is argued that there is a strong conceptual and theoretical continuity between Cassirer’s early views on myth as a symbolic form and his later critique of technological use of myth.     

From Games to Truth Functions: A Generalization of Giles’s Game

Motivated by aspects of reasoning in theories of physics, Robin Giles defined a characterization of infinite valued ?ukasiewicz logic in terms of a game that combines Lorenzen-style dialogue rules for logical connectives with a scheme for betting on results of dispersive experiments for evaluating atomic propositions. We analyze this game and provide conditions on payoff functions that allow us to extract many-valued truth functions from dialogue rules of a quite general form. Besides finite and infinite valued ?ukasiewicz logics, also Meyer and Slaney’s Abelian logic and Cancellative Hoop Logic turn out to be characterizable in this manner.     

Children’s competitive behavior: A challenging alternative

The effect of challenge on the cooperative and competitive behavior of 120 urban American children was assessed using two experimental game apparatuses, one of which provided a challenging cooperative response. Significantly more cooperation was observed when the subjects were presented with a challenging cooperative response. In addition, a reliable age effect was found indicating that the older subject group (10–12 years old) was more cooperative than the younger two age groups (5–7 and 8–10 years old). Finally, a significant game condition x order interaction was discovered suggesting that under some conditions the order in which the games were played affected the degree of subject cooperation. Results are related to a theory of competence motivation. It is argued that cooperation among American children may be increased if the task involves the presence of challenge. A portion of this research was presented at the biennial meetings of the Society for Research in Child Development, Detroit, Michigan, 1983.     

The primacy question in Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology

This paper takes up the question as to what has primacy within Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology as a way to provide insight into the relation between empirical science and transcendental philosophy within his account of embodiment. Contending that this primacy necessarily pertains to methodology, I show how Kurt Goldstein’s conception of biology provided Merleau-Ponty with a scientific model for approaching human existence holistically in which primacy pertains to the transcendental practice of productive imagination that generates the eidetic organismic Gestalt in terms of which sense is made of empirical facts. Considering the analogous role played by imagination in Merleau-Ponty’s account of perceptual synthesis in the form of what he called projection, I argue that his account of embodiment is, parallel to Goldstein, grounded methodologically on the projection of an organismic Gestalt, and that as a form of operative-intentional praxis projection is the site of primacy in his phenomenology overall. In terms of the relation between natural science and transcendental philosophy in Merleau-Ponty’s account of embodiment, while the theoretical dimension of the latter—the eidetic apriority of the organismic Gestalt—is coupled dialectically with empirical facts on an epistemically coeval basis, these are jointly subordinated to the normative commitments implied by the imaginative projection of that Gestalt. The primacy of the latter is transcendental but in a distinctly practical sense, such that any substantive discrepancy between natural science and Merleau-Pontian phenomenology reflects metaphilosophical, not theoretical, disagreement.     

The growth hypothesis and self‐actualization: An existential alternative

Abstract

Examining the process of becoming from an existential perspective, we describe the existence of the self in non‐biological terms as a product of its own intentionality. In this context, there is no need to postulate a growth hypothesis in order to (1) to describe a person as a process of becoming, and (2) to explain self‐actualization. While the process of becoming is a static process, self‐actualization is a dynamic process. In the first case, the self deterministically and naively merely becomes. In the second, case, the process results from becoming the object of personal choices, whereby we become authentic. While the self is “a being in the process of mere becoming,” self‐actualization is “a being in the process of authentic becoming.” In this view, humanistic psychotherapy aims at making the self's mere becoming an authentic process. Existential crisis, in particular confrontation with death, is often the transformational medium.     

Heroism and history in Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology

Whereas Phenomenology of Perception concludes with a puzzling turn to “heroism,” this article examines the short essay “Man, the Hero” as a source of insight into Merleau-Ponty’s thought in the early postwar period. In this essay, Merleau-Ponty presented a conception of heroism through which he expressed the attitude toward post-Hegelian philosophy of history that underwrote his efforts to reform Marxism along existential lines. Analyzing this conception of heroism by unpacking the implicit contrasts with Kojève, Aron, Caillois, and Bataille, I show that its philosophical rationale was to supply experiential evidence attesting to the latent presence of human universality. It is a mythic device intended to animate the faith necessary for Marxist politics by showing that universal sociality is possible, and that the historically transformative praxis needed to realize it does not imply sacrifice. This sheds considerable light on Merleau-Ponty’s early postwar political thought. But inasmuch as the latter cannot be severed from his broader philosophical concerns, the prospect is raised that his entire phenomenological project in the early postwar period rested on a myth. Not necessarily a bad myth, but a myth nonetheless.     

The growth hypothesis and self‐actualization: An existential alternative

Abstract

Examining the process of becoming from an existential perspective, we describe the existence of the self in non‐biological terms as a product of its own intentionality. In this context, there is no need to postulate a growth hypothesis in order to (1) to describe a person as a process of becoming, and (2) to explain self‐actualization. While the process of becoming is a static process, self‐actualization is a dynamic process. In the first case, the self deterministically and naively merely becomes. In the second, case, the process results from becoming the object of personal choices, whereby we become authentic. While the self is “a being in the process of mere becoming,” self‐actualization is “a being in the process of authentic becoming.” In this view, humanistic psychotherapy aims at making the self's mere becoming an authentic process. Existential crisis, in particular confrontation with death, is often the transformational medium.     

Imagination in the Zhuangzi: the madman of Chu’s alternative to Confucian cultivation

This paper examines the role of the imagination in the Zhuangzi. There are many avenues through which the various types of imaginations in the Zhuangzi could be investigated, but this paper will concentrate on only one, namely the use of imagination to criticize Confucius’ way. Specifically, the Zhuangzi finds Confucius’ views on virtuosity, moral cultivation, and social roles to include exceedingly limited imagined restrictions. The Daoist classic thereby creates (in a somewhat paradoxical fashion) stories to inspire the imagination of its readers, with the goal of broadening the ways in which people understand morality, society, and themselves. Accordingly, the Zhuangzi suggests that people can ‘zigzag’ through life, temporarily taking on different perspectives or roles, without cultivating a corresponding sense of self. Imagination is key for promoting this type of existential mode of existence—what the Zhuangzi calls ‘genuine’ (zhen 真).     

Against Levinas’ messianic politics: a polemic

Blamelessly, most commentators attempt to deduce the political theory of Levinas from his interhuman philosophy. In contrast to the perceived state of ethical life in contemporary politics, the attractiveness of the asymmetric obligations owed by the ego to the Other make the deductive project seem urgent. But an inductive analysis of Levinas’ philosophy yields troubling prerequisites, including rigorous theocracy and a form of sociability in which no epistemological clarity is permitted that could determine in situ interpersonal duties. Such unfamiliar politics enable the celebrated ethical relation of self for the Other. Designed as a polemic with the presumption that politics not ethics is first philosophy, the insights of the inductive analysis of Levinas’ thought will come as no surprise to observers who worry that power and sovereignty cannot be summarily excluded from social or even ethical relations.