Philosophy as Anti-Religion in the Work of Alain Badiou

The Heideggerian rupture in the history of philosophy in the name of a phenomenological and poetic ontology has provided an opening which many of the key figures in twentieth century continental thought have exploited. However, this opening was marked by Heidegger himself as an ambiguous one, insofar as metaphysics was perhaps integrally ‘onto-theology,’ that is, ultimately continuous with the world-historical capture of the thought of being. This piece argues that the philosophy of Alain Badiou, which departs from the recognition that Heidegger is the ‘last universally recognised philosopher’, provides the means for a radical reconsideration of the philosophy-theology relationship in its specifically Heideggerian form, involving as it does further questions of science and technology, the status of the poem, and the nature of ontological thought as such. We argue that, through the deployment of mathematics as ontology, the Gordian knot of onto-theology and its legion of consequences can be cut, and a new assemblage of many of the key Heideggerian motifs can be put into play: the poem, history, and philosophy itself.

The Student as a Physical Being

A pretty freshman, feeling “in a bind” because of academic demands, broke out with hives on her buttocks as she sat at her desk studying; a few days later she was hospitalized with mononucleosis. … Shortly before Christmas vacation a group of coeds noted that the occurrence of menstrual discomforts had suddenly increased in their living units. … A junior, who was experiencing difficulties with her roommate and also her fiancé, developed a constant craving for food and became anxious when her food binges started getting out of hand. …     

Using the Impact of Event Scale to Evaluate Psychological Response to Being a Phenylketonuria Gene Carrier

The birth of a child with phenylketonuria (PKU) is almost always a shock to the parents, who are faced with the realities of caring for a child with special needs and the need to cope with the realization that they are obligate carriers of the responsible gene. The Impact of Event Scale (IES) was used to assess the psychological impact of being a PKU gene carrier on 83 parents of children with PKU. IES scores decreased significantly from the time of initial diagnosis of PKU to the current time. The magnitude of the psychological impact did not correlate with the age of the parent, the number of years since the diagnosis of PKU, or the health or development of the child. As more tests become available for detecting the presence of disease-related genes, instruments such as the IES may prove useful in the evaluation of psychological responses to genetic information.     

Phantom of consistency: Alain Badiou and Kantian transcendental idealism

Immanuel Kant is one of Alain Badiou’s principle philosophical enemies. Kant’s critical philosophy is anathema to Badiou not only because of the latter’s openly aired hatred of the motif of finitude so omnipresent in post-Kantian European intellectual traditions—Badiou blames Kant for inventing this motif—but also because of its idealism. For Badiou-the-materialist, as for any serious philosophical materialist writing in Kant’s wake, transcendental idealism must be dismantled and overcome. In his most recent works (especially 2006’s Logiques des mondes), Badiou attempts to invent a non-Kantian notion of the transcendental, a notion compatible with the basic tenets of materialism. However, from 1988’s Being and Event up through the present, Badiou’s oeuvre contains indications that he hasn’t managed fully to purge the traces of Kantian transcendental idealism that arguably continue to haunt his system—with these traces clustering around a concept Badiou christens “counting-for-one” (compter-pour-un). The result is that, in the end, Kant’s shadow still falls over Badiouian philosophy—this is despite Badiou’s admirable, sophisticated, and instructive attempts to step out from under it—thus calling into question this philosophy’s self-proclaimed status as materialist through and through.

The Being, the Origin and the Becoming of Man: A Presentation of Philosophical Anthropogenealogy and Some Ensuing Methodological Considerations

In two of the most significant and influential contemporary exponents of German philosophical anthropology, anthropogenetic accounts play a large role. Hans Blumenberg and Peter Sloterdijk have presented their mode of philosophical anthropology as a philosophical anthropogenealogy. To this end both of them have ventured into an alliance with paleoanthropology, incidentally drawing on the same paleoanthropolgist, the forgotten pioneer of philosophical anthropology: Paul Alsberg. Taking this observation as its cue, the article addresses two questions. What are the motives for philosophical anthropology to turn into philosophical anthropogenealogy? What is the methodological status of anthropogenetic accounts in philosophical anthropology? By reflecting on these questions the article aspires to convey a synthesis of themes in contemporary German philosophical anthropology and introduce them especially to an English-speaking audience.     

体悟“无”与“有”

在道教义理中,"无"和"有"是一对非常重要的概念,它是道门先哲研究天地万物的起源、运化及归根的一对高层次概念,是认识事物发展变化的哲理工具,应用范围极广。对宏观可以无限大,对微观可以无限小,不论有间无间,以"无""有"论之,无不中的。不断加深对"无""有"内涵的学习和领悟,对生活与修道都有重要的指导意义。本文拟从以下三个方面来谈谈自己对"无"和"有"的体悟。