A darkly bright republic: Milton's poetic logic

My first section considers Walter J. Ong's influential analyses of the logical method of Peter Ramus, on whose system Milton based his Art of Logic. The upshot of Ong's work is that philosophical logic has become a kind monarch over all other discourses, the allegedly timeless and universal method of mapping and diagramming all concepts. To show how Milton nevertheless resists this tyrannical result in his non-Logic writings, my second section offers new readings of Milton's poems Il Penseroso and Sonnet 16: “On His Blindness”, along with his prose epilogue to his elegies (and thereby the entire collection entitled Poems). These readings attempt to show (1) the original admixing of philosophy and poetry (under the heading of “thoughtfulness”), (2) the shadow-hidden superiority of poetry in connection to the effeminising disability of blindness, and (3) the potential irony of an apology that arguably suggests poetry's superiority to philosophy. Finally, I rest my case for Milton's rebellion by offering an interpretation of Paradise Lost which affirms the character of Satan qua dark, queer, poetic figure of classical republicanism.     

Not just Free but Flesh: Simone de Beauvoir's Existentialist Approachto Sade's Life and Work

The decades immediately following the Second World War saw extensive interest in the literary novels of Sade. Compared with the Sade studies of Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Lacan, and Gilles Deleuze, Simone de Beauvoir offers a unique perspective in her essay Must We Burn De Sade?. Indeed, unlike her contemporaries, Beauvoir focuses not only on Sade's prose but also on Sade's life and the relationship between Sade's life and literature. The latter is interpreted in two different ways. Thus, Beauvoir uses at least three different perspectives to understand the Marquis de Sade. In our essay, each of these three approaches, not clearly distinguished by Beauvoir's interpreters, will be discussed separately. This discussion will be linked to the important point that Beauvoir mentions three different notions of sadistic enjoyment. It will be argued that the distinction between these different notions coincides with the distinction between the three perspectives Beauvoir uses in her reading of Sade. We will evaluate both how Beauvoir's study on Sade is related to her existentialist philosophy, and the relationship between Must We Burn De Sade? and the studies of Beauvoir's contemporaries, a relationship which is neglected by most scholars in continental philosophy.     

James Hillman: the unmaking of a psychologist Part one: his legacy

This two‐part essay offers a critical assessment of Hillman's archetypal psychology and enquires into its viability as a psychological model. The first part explores his legacy and reviews the metapsychological frame in which his work operates. It considers the relation between his thought and Jung's, and argues that Hillman's work is not so much post‐Jungian as pre‐Jungian. The second part is primarily intrapsychic; it explores Hillman's character, as discerned through his writings and interviews, and considers his work as an expression of the puer aeternus. It is argued that the puer prefers to live in an eternal dream‐state resistant to growing up: yet denial of the maturational impulse will only lead to it happening anyway but in a negative form. The paper considers how Hillman's model was ‘unmade’ by the missing developmental element of his thought. Development is an archetypal and bio‐psychological necessity, and if rejected it can ruin any system that refuses to take it seriously. In Hillman's case this manifested in the form of a repressed masculine shadow, destroying the credibility of his earlier work. The two‐part paper attempts to weave an objective appraisal with a running commentary based on the author's personal engagement with the man and his work.     

An English Source of German Romanticism: Herder's Cudworth Inspired Revision of Spinoza from ‘Plastik’ to ‘Kraft’

This examination considers the influence of the seventeenth century Cambridge Platonist Cudworth upon the thought of the late eighteenth century German thinker Herder. It focuses upon Herder's use of Cudworth's philosophy to create a revised version of Spinoza's metaphysics. Both Cudworth and Herder were concerned with the problem of determinism. Cudworth outlined a number of difficulties relating to this problem in the thought of Spinoza and proposed amendments, particularly the introduction of the middle principle of plastik, which would mediate between the Ideas of transcendent reason and mechanical materialism. We find these amendments to Spinoza's philosophy also employed in Herder's contribution to the Pantheism Controversy, in which he too offers a revised Spinozism and introduces his own middle principle of Kraft. This demonstrates an important but under‐explored English contribution to a key development in German intellectual history. The Pantheism Controversy was an epoch‐making event, helping to bring an end to the German Enlightenment and to inaugurate the Romantic movement. Herder's version of Spinoza's thought revived the philosopher's fortunes, and Herder's notion of Kraft became central to Romantic aesthetics. Finally, Herder's use of Cudworth demonstrates the important but overlooked source of Platonic realism in German Romantic thought.     

Spiritual exercises and poetry: Pierre Hadot and Du Fu

This paper discusses poetry as a site of what Pierre Hadot calls “spiritual exercises,” with particular reference to China's greatest poet, Du Fu (712–70 C.E.). While Hadot's work has bridged gaps between (i) philosophy and religion and (ii) theory and practice, this paper suggests that spiritual exercises can also blur the modern separation between form and content. It argues for the possibility of poetry as philosophy; that is, philosophy in a less-recognized form. If poetry can be spiritual exercise and if spiritual exercise with its goal of self-transformation is the core of philosophy, then we may be able to treat poetry as one form of philosophy. The paper also demonstrates the relevance of Hadot's work for ancient Chinese and comparative philosophy more broadly.     

Loss: the ultimate philosophical problem

This paper draws on Jan Zwicky’s claim in Lyric Philosophy that loss is the ultimate philosophical problem and Wittgenstein’s attitude to philosophy in his Culture and Value that: ‘philosophy ought really to be written only as a poetic composition’. This paper will enter the difficult territory of loss using poetry and reflections to engage loss as a spiritual challenge and perhaps one of the major forces shaping cultural ways. Death inescapably brings loss into life for those who remain after a death but loss has many other forms and is a persistent experience in living that touches every stage of the life journey. It is a philosophical problem rooted in common human experience from childhood on that has been addressed in a multitude of forms, conceptualizations, rituals, belief systems and religions. As a method, poetry is a way of inquiry that allows one to enter experience and meet the intensity of events, particularly loss. In her essay ‘Entering the Bird Cage: Poetry and Perceptibility’, Jane Hirschfield says that poetry allows us ‘to understand the world beyond the narrow self’ and to do so ‘it is necessary to be available to the unknown’ and loss moves experience into the unknown.     

WAYS OF DISCOURSE AND WAYS OF LIFE

In book X of the Republic, Plato famously reports “a quarrel between poetry and philosophy.” The present essay examines this quarrel in book X, along with other relevant parts of the Republic, by understanding “philosophy” and “poetry” as rival ways of life and rival ways of discourse. The essay first explains why, in Plato’s view, poetic discourse weakens one’s power to reason and is at odds with philosophic discourse. Then it shows how poetic discourse is bound up with a way of life that champions the value of freedom. Such a life forms a contrast with the philosophic life, which is marked more by stability and unity than by freedom. The quarrel, however, is not a simple antagonism. The essay hence concludes by discussing why, despite the opposition between the two, philosophy cannot do without poetry.     

“I WANTED ONE THING AND GOD WANTED ANOTHER . . . ”: The Dilemma of the Prophetic Example and the Qur'anic Injunction on Wife‐Beating

Chapter 4, verse 34 of the Qur'an permits husbands to physically discipline recalcitrant wives. Modern Muslims who find this husbandly privilege discomfiting often rely on Muhammad's prophetic practice to mitigate the meaning of this verse. In light of Muhammad's example of never hitting his own wives, as found in one prophetic report, they reinterpret the verse as restricting and/or voiding a husband's right to physically discipline his wife. This essay provides a critical and expository survey of prophetic reports related to the husbandly privilege to physically discipline wives. The essay argues that the modernists are correct in positing that Muhammad's prophetic practice was to morally censure husbands who hit their wives. However, taken as a whole, it is impossible to ignore that Muhammad's example also unilaterally upheld physical discipline as a husband's marital right.     

The Wonder and Spirit of Phenomenology and Theology: Rubenstein and Derrida on Heidegger's Formal Distinction of Philosophy from Theology

While Heidegger's earlier phenomenological writings inform much contemporary discourse in the continental philosophy of religion, his 1927 essay on ‘Phenomenology and Theology’ offers a largely uncontested distinction between philosophy and theology on the basis of their possibilities as sciences following ontological difference. This paper reconsiders Heidegger's distinction by invoking spirit and wonder, concepts Jacques Derrida and Mary‐Jane Rubenstein have more recently emphasized as central to thought that is open to that which ruptures metaphysical schemas. I contend Heidegger's use of ontological difference as a formal distinction between philosophy and theology distances us from the wonder, spirit, and truth (alētheia) that undoes the binaries behind which we take shelter. However, I temper this critique with the recognition that Heidegger, Derrida, and Rubenstein equally recognize an inescapable repetition of metaphysical thinking in the philosophy of religion.     

Can philosophy be an academic discipline?

Richard Rorty notoriously maintained that philosophy is not an academic discipline. He thought that the only viable candidate for philosophy to be an academic discipline—where philosophy consists in a collection of permanent, pure topics—depends on a Cartesian conceptual framework. Once we overcome this framework, he maintained, there will be nothing left to be the distinct subject matter of philosophy. This article argues that there is a conception of philosophy that can be an academic discipline, even if we take Rorty's challenge seriously. It remains even if we overcome the Cartesian conceptual framework. In the end the article goes beyond Rorty's challenge and considers two further criteria for philosophy to be an academic discipline: that it have a distinct method, and that it be able to be done for the public good. The article argues that philosophy can fulfill these two criteria, and therefore that it can be an academic discipline.     

Nietzsche,postmodernism and the phenomenon of Arvydas Šliogeris in contemporary Lithuanian philosophy

This article is based on the presupposition that postmodern philosophy has been largely influenced by Nietzsche’s writings. The author raises the question of how Nietzsche and postmodern philosophy are interpreted in the contemporary philosophical discourse in Lithuania. The conclusion drawn is that many philosophy critics in Lithuania are interested in Nietzsche’s philosophy (Mickevi?ius, Sodeika, ?erpytyt?, Sverdiolas, Baranova) and in the problems of postmodern philosophy (Ker?yt?, Rubavi?ius, ?ukauskait?, ?erpytyt?, Sverdiolas, Baranova, Norkus). The article also raises a second crucial question: beyond the critics, are there any truly authentic postmodern thinkers in Lithuania? This article’s main hypotheses is that Arvydas ?liogeris’ philosophy is the best and perhaps the only example of original Lithuanian postmodern thought; it is based on, and interconnected with, the deeply inherited roots of existential thought in Lithuanian philosophical culture. The arguments for these hypotheses are as follows: first, ?liogeris is the first philosopher in Lithuania who has tried to reason in an interdisciplinary manner, e.g. trying to overcome the modernistic distinction between philosophy and the arts (especially literature, poetry, and the visual arts); secondly, ?liogeris’s philosophizing is indispensable to his writings—his texts are examples of an experience of writing as thinking and thinking as writing; thirdly, following Deleuze’s presupposition that the philosopher is a creator, one can see this creative aspect in ?liogeris’s approach. His texts show how it is possible to synthesize insights from philosophy and poetry.     

Apophasis and the turn of philosophy to religion: From Neoplatonic negative theology to postmodern negation of theology

This essay represents part of an effort to rewrite the history metaphysics in terms of what philosophy never said, nor could say. It works from the Neoplatonic commentary tradition on Plato’s Parmenides as the matrix for a distinctively apophatic thinking that takes the truth of metaphysical doctrines as something other than anything that can be logically articulated. It focuses on Damascius in the 5–6th century AD as the culmination of this tradition in the ancient world and emphasizes that Neoplatonism represents the crisis of Greek metaphysics on account of the inability to give a rational account of foundations for knowing and of the ultimate principle of beings. Neoplatonism discovered how all such ultimate principles were necessarily beyond the reach of reason and speech. This apophatic insight is drawn out with the help of contemporary criticism of Neoplatonic philosophy, defining also some points of divergence. The essay then discusses the motives for thinking the unsayable in postmodern times on the basis of this parallel with Neoplatonic thought. Discourse’s becoming critical of itself to the point of self-subversion animates them both. However, the tendency in postmodern thought to totally reject theology, including negative theology, is a betrayal of its own deepest motivations. This tendency is debated through an examination of the thought of Jean-Luc Nancy. While any traditional discourse can be negated, the negating and self-negating capacity of discourse itself is infinite, and this is where a perennial negative theological philosophy of the unsayable is to be located. Language, eminently the language of philosophy, as infinitely open, points in a direction which becomes equally and ineluctably theological.     

Logic and Philosophy of Logic in Wittgenstein

This essay discusses Wittgenstein's conception of logic, early and late, and some of the types of logical system that he constructed. The essay shows that the common view according to which Wittgenstein had stopped engaging in logic as a philosophical discipline by the time of writing Philosophical Investigations is mistaken. It is argued that, on the contrary, logic continued to figure at the very heart of later Wittgenstein's philosophy; and that Wittgenstein's mature philosophy of logic contains many interesting thoughts that have gone widely unnoticed.     

KARL BARTH AND THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY

It is commonly held that Karl Barth emphatically rejected the usefulness of philosophy for theology. In this essay I explore the implications of Barth's theological epistemology for the relationship and proper boundaries between philosophy and theology, given its origin in Barth's theology of revelation. I seek to clarify Barth's position with respect to philosophy by distinguishing the contingency of its offence from any necessary incompatibility. Barth does not reject philosophy per se, but the way in which philosophy is typically conducted. This is made explicit through an analysis of Barth's censure of the uncritical acceptance in theology of modernist philosophical presuppositions. I nuance Barth's response to a collection of philosophical assumptions that are rarely distinguished in theological literature. Finally, I highlight a representative instance of Barth's reflections on philosophy in relationship to theology, to demonstrate that the criterion for evaluating the usefulness of philosophical assumptions and methods in the service of theology is the same criterion by which theology is itself evaluated.     

Fichte's Fictions Revisited

Fichte's most influential presentation of his Wissenschaftslehre, which coincides with his tenure at Jena, has, ironically, been subjected to incredulity, misunderstanding, and outright hostility. In a recent essay, noted scholar Daniel Breazeale has undertaken to challenge this history of neglect and misunderstanding by pointing to the significance of striking passages from Fichte's writings in which he asserts that his philosophical system is fictional. At the same time, Breazeale also notes some of the tensions between this fictionalist reading of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre and Fichte's equally forceful insistence on the reality of his system. In this essay, I argue that these two sides of Fichte's conception of his philosophy can, in fact, be reconciled by looking more carefully at distinctions that Fichte himself draws between realities, philosophical fictions, and mere fabrications. What results is a clearer picture of Fichte's conception of transcendental philosophy that builds upon Breazeale's valuable insights.     

Thick Ethical Concepts in the Philosophy and Literature of Iris Murdoch

Although thick ethical concepts have been neglected in Murdochian scholarship, this article argues that they were central to the thought of Iris Murdoch. In the first section, the article provides a sustained account of thick ethical concepts in Murdoch's philosophy, demonstrating how these concepts align with and illuminate familiar aspects of her philosophical essays. The first section also explores the ways in which Murdoch's alternative account of moral concepts was at the heart of her overall attack on the noncognitivism of her day. In the second section, the article provides a reading of The Black Prince and considers the ways that thick ethical concepts offer new insight into Murdoch's literary activity. It concludes by suggesting that studying Murdoch's philosophy and literature in light of thick ethical concepts reveals a deep unity between her two intellectual projects.     

WIEMAN'S MISUNDERSTANDING OF DEWEY: THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY DISCUSSION

Abstract. An important issue in the development of the American school of philosophy known as critical naturalism was whether the naturalistic vision implied a humanistic or a theistic interpretation of religion. Is the divine a creativity within nature but more than human effort, or is it the human vision of ideal possibilities and the effort to realize them? This issue is clarified through a study of the concept of the divine developed by the leading naturalist John Dewey in A Common Faith, the misunderstanding of this book by Henry Nelson Wieman, and the discussion of this misunderstanding in the pages of Christian Century. The essay concludes that Wieman's misunderstanding of Dewey is instructive in that it reveals unintended possibilities in Dewey's thought.     

MUSLIM IMAGINARIES AND IMAGINARY MUSLIMS: Placing Islam in Conversation with A Secular Age

This essay begins by exploring the extent to which the narrative of secularization presented in Charles Taylor's A Secular Age might be complicated or otherwise challenged by taking account of parallel processes within Islamic thought and practice. It then considers whether Taylor's argument might nevertheless be applicable to, or illuminative of, contemporary struggles with modernity in the Muslim world.     

The Promise of an Actualistic Pneumatology: Beginning with the Holy Spirit in African Pentecostalism and Karl Barth

Christians in the developing world are sending a clear message to all who will listen: more attention needs to be paid to the Holy Spirit than ever before in the history of Christian thought. This essay explores what African Pentecostalism could teach Karl Barth and in particular how the actualistic Christology that Barth is known for can be applied to concrete acts of the Holy Spirit. The essay employs James Buckley's distinction between what Barth says versus what Barth shows to demonstrate profound possibilities that exist within Barth's thought for beginning theological reflection from the concrete acts of the Spirit.