Marx and God with anarchism: on Walter Benjamin’s concepts of history and violence

The article analyses relationships between profane and religious illumination, materialism and theology, politics and religion, Marxism and Messianism. For Walter Benjamin, every second is “the small gateway in time through which the Messiah might enter”. This is the starting point in the reading of Benjamin’s works, where we confront various liaisons and couplings of radical politics and messianic events. Through the reading of Benjamin and through the analysis of his conceptions of history and time, the article addresses the question what is possible in the world.     

Critique of metaphysics, capital logic and totality, and social critique theory: the three critical dimensions of Marx’s philosophy

Karl Marx’s philosophy includes three dimensions of critique. The first is the critique of metaphysics, which is also the major premise on the basis of which Marx turns his philosophical viewpoint to the analysis of social life and its cultural logic. The second is the capital logic and totality, the core of Marx’s philosophy, according to which Marx exposes the totality and contradictions inherent in the capital logic. The third is the theory of social critique that is the realistic end of his philosophy. __________ Translated from Xueshu Yanjiu 学术研究 (Academic Studies), 2005 (5) by Yang Haifeng & Xing Lijun     

Adorno’s View of Life

The aim of this article is to reflect on the dialectic of the individual’s life and death in terms of Adorno’s moral philosophy, specifically through a thorough reading of his Negative Dialectics and other key works on the subject. I hold that there are two aspects of the dialectic of life within the context of Adorno’s “nonidentity”: one involves exploring the false identification, due to the reification of modern society, of the individual’s life experience with her or his death experience, while the other involves preserving the dialectical and irreducible tension between the theoretical contemplation of life and of historical conditions, as well as specific social systems. Heidegger’s ontological philosophy concerning Dasein and Kant’s categorical imperative will also be discussed in order to fully understand Adorno’s moral philosophy and his idea of nonidentity. From my point of view, Adorno’s moral philosophy is the prime motivator of his unique concept of nonidentity, and has influenced contemporary political philosophical concepts such as biopolitics (cf. G. Agamben).     

Adorno’s Negative Dialectic: Theme,Point, and Methodological Status

Abstract

This paper provides a criticial interpretation of the theme, point, and methodological status of Adorno’s so‐called negative dialectic. The theme at issue, ‘non‐identity’, comes in several varieties; and the point of Adorno’s dialectic, namely reconciliation, is multifaceted. Exploration of those topics shows that negative dialectic seques into substantive doctrines, including a version of transcendentalism and a claim about deformation. The peculiar methodological status of negative dialectic explains that adumbration. In the appraisive register, my principal contentions include these: Adorno’s transcendentalism makes some sense of the aforementioned deformation claim; and negative dialectic qua method avoids mystery and metaphysical excess.     

Theory and the Object: Making Sense of Adorno’s Concept of Mediation

Abstract

This article examines Adorno’s use of the notion of mediation, which at first glance appears to be problematic and aporetic. While the emergence of such a concept marks Adorno’s renewed interest in Hegelian philosophy, and a distancing from Walter Benjamin’s thought, the understanding of mediation should not be reduced to the Hegelian model. This article will argue that Adorno introduces such a concept to explain theory’s necessity and verifiability, as well as the experience of the object. Only by taking these two issues (the mediation between concepts and between subject and object) in their interconnection is it possible to explain the role of mediation in Adorno. I will argue that the idea of ‘constellations’ put forward in the Dialectics furnishes us with a model of mediation that goes beyond its original Hegelian formulation.     

Spinoza’s Announcement of Psychological Practice

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - Following Freud’s admission of his own ‘dependence on Spinoza’s doctrine’, the present paper extends psychoanalytic discernment of a...     

Spinoza’s error: Memory for truth and falsity

Two theoretical frameworks have been proposed to account for the representation of truth and falsity in human memory: the Cartesian model and the Spinozan model. Both models presume that during information processing a mental representation of the information is stored along with a tag indicating its truth value. However, the two models disagree on the nature of these tags. According to the Cartesian model, true information receives a “true” tag and false information receives a “false” tag. In contrast, the Spinozan model claims that only false information receives a “false” tag, whereas untagged information is automatically accepted as true. To test the Cartesian and Spinozan models, we conducted two source memory experiments in which participants studied true and false trivia statements from three different sources differing in credibility (i.e., presenting 100% true, 50% true and 50% false, or 100% false statements). In Experiment 1, half of the participants were informed about the source credibility prior to the study phase. As compared to a control group, this precue group showed improved source memory for both true and false statements, but not for statements with an uncertain validity status. Moreover, memory did not differ for truth and falsity in the precue group. As Experiment 2 revealed, this finding is replicated even when using a 1-week rather than a 20-min retention interval between study and test phases. The results of both experiments clearly contradict the Spinozan model but can be explained in terms of the Cartesian model.     

Intersections of spirituality,religion and gender in children’s literature

This paper explores the intersections of spirituality, religion and gender in contemporary children’s books published in the United States. Background for the discussion includes a history of religion in children’s literature and the history of women’s roles in the Christian tradition. Representative works of realistic fiction – historical and contemporary – and one work of science fiction are discussed.     

Benjamin’s Children’s Theater and the Problem of Pure Means

Studies in Philosophy and Education -     

Cassirer’s critique of culture

My purpose in this paper is to look at Cassirer’s relation to critical philosophy from a new perspective. Most discussions concerning Cassirer’s Kantianism have so far centered on his relation to neo-Kantianism and the Marburg school. My focus will not be on neo-Kantianism but on Cassirer’s notion of a “critique of culture.” In an often cited paragraph from the introduction to The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Cassirer says that his aim is to broaden Kant’s critical approach to all various forms of culture, to language as well as myth and art, and thus to transform the “critique of reason” into the “critique of culture.” I will explore Cassirer’s concept of the “critique of culture” and suggest that it can best be understood by placing it in the context of early twentieth century German philosophy. More precisely, I will aim to show that Cassirer’s critique can be seen as an effort to find a middle path between Lebensphilosophie and the positivism of the Vienna Circle.     

The limits of definition: Gadamer’s critique of Aristotle’s ethics

ABSTRACT

There is a recent scholarly trend drawing similarities between Aristotle’s conceptions of ethics and demonstrative science. One such similarity has become widely and rightly recognized: for Aristotle both ethics and demonstrative science seek essential definitions of phenomena. The task of the paper is to show that German philosopher and classicist Hans-Georg Gadamer not only prefigured this interpretative trend, he also identified a problematic feature of Aristotle’s method so construed. The problematic feature is semantic. For Aristotle essential definitions must consist of univocal terms, but such univocity cannot be maintained if the definienda and definientes are concepts to be usefully employed in everyday ethical judgements. Gadamer therefore points out a problematic tension in Aristotle’s ethics. On the one hand, ethical inquiry should have practical application, but, on the other hand, the semantic assumptions underlying inquiry imply that it cannot.     

The essence, characteristics and limitation of post-colonialism: from Karl Marx’s point of view

Following postmodernism, post-colonialism reflects modernity from a new perspective—the cultural perspective. Post-colonialism interprets colonialism contained in modernity, deconstructs orientalism and cultural hegemonism, and turns western reflection of modernity into an inquiry about the global relationship between the East and the West. Post-colonialism brings forward a new theoretical domain, that is, the colonizational relationship between the East and the West in the process of modernization. This interpretation expresses a strong tendency of anti-western centrality and shares some ideas with marxism. This article discusses the essence, characteristics, and limitation of post-colonialism from the viewpoint of Marxism, expecting to further the study of post-colonialism and its relationship with Marxism. __________ Translated from Shehui Kexue Zhanxian 社会科学战线 (Front of Social Sciences), 2005 (2) by Wang Qi     

Sharvy’s Lucy and Benjamin Puzzle

Sharvy’s puzzle concerns a situation in which common knowledge of two parties is obtained by repeated observation each of the other, no fixed point being reached in finite time. Can a fixed point be reached?     

The global community, religion, and education: the modernity of Dewey’s social philosophy

As a starting point this paper takes Dewey’s nowadays often stressed modernity and examines his social philosophy against the background of the current debates on republicanism and communitarianism. Particularly, the anaysis of Dewey’sThe Public and its Problem (1927) concludes that the attention being paid to Dewey is problematic as specific religious assumptions — explicitly developed inA Common Faith (1934) -lie in the background of his social philosophy, and are hardly being recognized. However, as it shall be shown, without considering the religious basis, neither Dewey’s social philosophy nor his educational theory can be properly understood.     

Education, Schooling, Derrida’s Marx and Democracy: Some Fundamental Questions

Beginning with a reconsideration of what the school is and has been, this paper explores the idea of the school to come. Emphasizing the governmental role of education in modernity, I offer a line of thinking that calls into question the assumption of both the school and education as possible conduits for either democracy or social justice. Drawing on Derrida’s spectral ontology I argue that any automatic correlation of education with democracy is misguided: especially within redemptive discourses that seek to liberate education from its present enclosure. This rereading of the field of education in the light of an account of the fundamental ontology of its key institution problematizes all rhetorics of education as social salvation. Education, it proposes, cannot be conceived as the ideal soul of a corrupted or as yet defective body, the school. Education—having taken on the character of an ontotheological principle—has become a governmental instrument as much as its specific institutions. This ontological condition can be understood within various accounts of the nature of contemporaneity. This paper considers the monstrous proposal that education be abandoned as the grounds for social, ethical and cultural redemption. The good news is that this abandonment opens the possibility for thinking beyond education, a beyond that is also beyond the strictures of instrumental rationality.     

Husserl’s transcendental philosophy and the critique of naturalism

Throughout his career, Husserl identifies naturalism as the greatest threat to both the sciences and philosophy. In this paper, I explicate Husserl’s overall diagnosis and critique of naturalism and then examine the specific transcendental aspect of his critique. Husserl agreed with the Neo-Kantians in rejecting naturalism. He has three major critiques of naturalism: First, it (like psychologism and for the same reasons) is ‘countersensical’ in that it denies the very ideal laws that it needs for its own justification. Second, naturalism essentially misconstrues consciousness by treating it as a part of the world. Third, naturalism is the inevitable consequence of a certain rigidification of the ‘natural attitude’ into what Husserl calls the ‘naturalistic attitude’. This naturalistic attitude ‘reifies’ and it ‘absolutizes’ the world such that it is treated as taken-for-granted and ‘obvious’. Husserl’s transcendental phenomenological analysis, however, discloses that the natural attitude is, despite its omnipresence in everyday life, not primary, but in fact is relative to the ‘absolute’ transcendental attitude. The mature Husserl’s critique of naturalism is therefore based on his acceptance of the absolute priority of the transcendental attitude. The paradox remains that we must start from and, in a sense, return to the natural attitude, while, at the same time, restricting this attitude through the on-going transcendental vigilance of the universal epoché.

Dialectics of Individual Life and Moral Law: On Adorno’s Non-Identical Moral Philosophy

The article aims to discuss the theme of Adorno’s non-identical moral philosophy, particularly the primacy of individual life over moral laws, as based mainly on his key works like Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, On Subject and Object, Problems of Moral Philosophy, and Negative Dialectics. The claim here is that the primacy of individual life is made through negative dialectics (“non-idealist dialectics”) dealing with the antithesis between object and subject, particular and universal, individual and society under the theoretical horizon of non-identical philosophy. Meanwhile, as a private ethics, this non-identical moral philosophy based on individual life stands as a kind of negativism, which is focused on negative guidance towards the possibility of right life.