Memories,or attempts to dream undreamt traumas? Souvenirs dormants (Sleeping memories) by Patrick Modiano,under the gaze of Thomas Ogden

Abstract

In “Sleeping memories”(2017), French writer Patrick Modiano confronts the past and his memories in a different way compared with his previous novels, as he keeps trying to revisit and reprocess them. In this book he adds a new method, the dreaming revision of memories, especially traumatic ones, turning to the work of Marquis d’Hervey de Saint-Denys, “Les rêves et les moyens de les diriger: Observations pratiques.” I would suggest that in this way he dreams undreamt traumas, thereby transforming them. In doing so, Modiano meets Thomas Ogden’s art of psychoanalysis.     

Elaboration and intuitions of disagreement

Mark Richard argues for truth-relativism about claims made using gradable adjectives. He argues that truth-relativism is the best explanation of two kinds of linguistic data, which I call: true cross-contextual reports and infelicitous denials of conflict. Richard claims that such data are generated by an example that he discusses at length. However, the consensus is that these linguistic data are illusory because they vanish when elaborations are added to examples of the same kind as Richard’s original. In this paper I defend the reality of Richard’s data. I show that, in trying to make their point, Richard’s critics have focused upon examples that are similar in some respects to Richard’s original but which lack a crucial feature of that original. When we ensure that this feature is in place, elaborations which make the data vanish are not possible. Richard’s critics therefore fail to show that the data generated by Richard’s original example are illusory.     

Shaftesbury on Liberty and Self-Mastery

ABSTRACT

The aim of this paper is to show that Shaftesbury’s thinking about liberty is best understood in terms of self-mastery. To examine his understanding of liberty, I turn to a painting that he commissioned on the ancient theme of the choice of Hercules and the notes that he prepared for the artist. Questions of human choice are also present in the so-called story of an amour, which addresses the difficulties of controlling human passions. Jaffro distinguishes three notions of self-control that are present in the story of an amour. Although I agree with many aspects of Jaffro’s interpretation, I question his conclusion that self-control in the Stoic sense is best reserved for ‘moral heroes.’ I propose an alternative developmental interpretation, according to which all human beings are on an intellectual journey aimed at personal and moral improvement. My interpretation takes seriously that for Shaftesbury philosophy is meant to be practical and help improve our lives. I end by arguing that rather than trying to situate Shaftesbury’s concept of liberty within debates among compatibilists and incompatibilists it is more promising to understand it in terms of self-mastery and thus regard it as a version of positive liberty.     

On Failing to be Cartesian: Reconsidering the ‘Impurity’ of Descartes’s Meditation

Abstract

This paper begins from the observation that in the Meditations, Descartes never achieves the ‘pure’, thoroughly decontextualized kind of thinking he famously promoted. Some commentators have used this observation to promote pure inquiry more diligently and to criticize Descartes for failing to achieve it. Other commentators have simply called for greater historical fairness and urged that we renew our efforts to understand how Descartes’s inquiry actually does operate. This paper, although sympathetic with this second group of commentators, argues that in revisiting the tensions between what Descartes actually accomplished and what he said he was trying to accomplish, we should see a contemporary lesson, not just better historical understanding. It is argued that in spite of the strong presence in his writings of the imagery of the ‘Cartesian’ ideal of a perfectly presuppositionless philosophical standpoint, not only does Descartes himself never become a Cartesian, but his own practice provides perhaps the best evidence against the very possibility of the Cartesian ‘project of pure inquiry’ to which he aspired.     

Enactive subjectivity as flesh

Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of embodiment has been widely adopted by enactivists seeking to provide an account of cognition that is both embodied and embedded. Yet very little attention has been paid to Merleau-Ponty’s later works. This is troubling given that in The Visible and the Invisible Merleau-Ponty revises his conception of embodied subjectivity because he came to the realization that understanding consciousness through the concepts of subject and object imposed a dualistic framework that he was trying to escape. To overcome this dichotomy Merleau-Ponty more fully develops the radically embodied ontology implicit in his earlier work by introducing the concept of flesh. I argue that the enactive account of subjectivity would be improved by “giving flesh” to the enactive subject, given that the enactive account of subjectivity as grounded in pre-reflective bodily self-consciousness is ultimately rooted in accounts of which the later Merleau-Ponty is critical. Incorporating flesh resolves the underlying problems with the enactive account of subjectivity and makes the account more consistent with the ontological commitments to embodiment and embeddedness.     

Commitment,Cold War,and the battles of the self: Thomas Schelling on behavior control

Economist Nobelist Thomas C. Schelling (1921–2016) is known for his contribution to the analysis of international conflict and many see him as the Cold Warrior par excellence. At a time of great uncertainties and dangers, Schelling combined a deep understanding of strategic analysis, a detailed knowledge of US commitments around the world and an inimitable talent for dissecting everyday behavior, which made him a think tank all on his own. When he turned to the analysis of bargaining in the mid-1950s, one question dominated policy discussions: “How to demonstrate the US commitment to the ‘free world’”? Schelling answered unequivocally: By restricting one's choices so as to shift others' expectations and thereby influence their behavior in the desired direction. By the mid-1970s, after he had broken with the US administration and joined the Committee on Substance Abuse and Habitual Behavior, Schelling transposed the tactics deployed in international conflict to the analysis of individuals trying to achieve self-control. In the process, he reproduced the logic of military conflict at the level of the self. The view of a conflicted self itself comprised of two selves made restricted choice the daily routine of individuals who wish to avoid the negative consequences of their present behavior in the future while it promised those who enjoy unbounded freedom of choice an unsettling future.     

A conditional theory of trying

What I shall do in this paper is to propose an analysis of ‘Agent P tries to A’ in terms of a subjunctive conditional, that avoids some of the problems that beset most alternative accounts of trying, which I call ‘referential views’. They are so-named because on these alternative accounts, ‘P tries to A’ entails that there is a trying to A by P, and therefore the expression ‘P’s trying to A’ can occur in the subject of a sentence and be used to refer to a particular, namely an act or event of trying. A conditional account such as mine avoids having to answer questions about those alleged particulars, for example their location and their causal relation to physical actions, or alternatively their identity to physical actions. In brief, the analysis I propose eschews any need to quantify over any sort of trying particulars. I both clarify the proposal and deal with five possible objections to it: (1) metaphysically impossible actions: (2) cases of finking and reverse-cycle finking; (3) the empirical emptiness of preventers and blockers; (4) proximate intentions and trying; and (5) alleged explanatory loss.     

Trying in some way

Most discussions about trying assume that the expression ‘person P's trying to ?’ refers to a particular of some sort. These discussions then differ amongst themselves about to which metaphysical type these particulars belong: mental particulars, brain states, or physical actions are three of the most obvious candidates. This paper examines that assumption and in particular considers an argument of Davidsonian inspiration that might be used in its favour, which is based on the fact that the verb ‘try’ appears to take adverbial modification. Reasons are offered for rejecting this Davidsonian line of argument. A further argument for rejecting the assumption that ‘P's trying to ?’ is a genuinely referring expression is modelled on Jonathan Bennett's discussion of event names.     

Conscious inhibitions: Freud,anti-Semitism,and Hobbesian imagination

This work aims to portray the effects of Freud’s anxiety about anti-Semitic violence on his political theory and metapsychology. Taking as its entry point Freud’s reorientation of anti-Semitism as aggressive action, I argue that Freud’s fear of the violent mob can be located in three interconnected dimensions of his work, all deeply informed by Hobbesian imagination. First, Freud accepted a Hobbesian vision of social antagonism into his political theory; second, he formulated a deeper, more efficient defence mechanism against mob violence with his notion of psychical guilt; third, Freud’s fears penetrated his metapsychology. Suffering from anti-Semitism, Freud was not only quick to accept a Hobbesian perspective – he also reconstructed it to a degree that radically changed its meaning. Freud’s third and most pervasive manoeuvre destabilized one of Hobbes’s fundamental theoretical tenets by suggesting that the Hobbesian State of Nature is inherently a non-human reality.     

Il’enkov’s Hegel

This paper examines Hegel’s place in the philosophy of Eval’d Il’enkov (1924–1979). Hegel’s ideas had a huge impact on Il’enkov’s conception of the nature of philosophy and of the philosopher’s mission, and they formed the core of his distinctive account of thought and its place in nature. At the same time, Il’enkov was victimized for his “Hegelianism” throughout his career, from the time he was sacked from Moscow State University in 1955 to the ideological criticisms that preceded his death in 1979. After considering Hegel’s influence on the history of Russian thought, the paper focuses on Hegelian themes in Il’enkov’s 1974 book, Dialekti?eskaja logika and evaluates their philosophical significance. Finally, parallels are explored between Il’enkov’s situation at the end of his life and the plight of Nikolaj Bukharin, incarcerated in the Lubjanka prison in 1936 and at work on Philosophical arabesques. Both thinkers confronted the contradiction between their confidence in the rationality of history and the tragic absurdity of Soviet reality, and both responded by affirming their fidelity to Lenin and his vision of Marxism. In this way, they sought to make sense of their respective situations in the face of extreme adversity. That they so much as thought it worth trying owed much to Hegel’s influence.     

The ad hominem argument of Berkeley’s Analyst

This paper responds to two issues in interpreting George Berkeley’s Analyst. First, it explains why the text contains no discussion of religious mysteries or points of faith, despite the claims of the text's subtitle; I argue that the subtitle must be understood, and its success assessed, in conjunction with material external to the text. Second, it’s unclear how naturally the arguments of the Analyst sit with Berkeley’s broader views. He criticizes the methodology of calculus and conceptually problematic entities, and the extent to which they require one to bend the rules of classical mathematics. Yet, elsewhere, Berkeley’s opinion of classical mathematics and its intelligibility is low, and he defends a pragmatic approach to word meaning that should not find fault with so functionally successful a theory. The ad hominem intention of the text makes it difficult to discern to what extent Berkeley is committed to the sincerity of these criticisms. This component of the text is rarely discussed, but I argue that when trying to decide what Berkeley’s true position is in the Analyst, we should treat its ad hominem component as its primary intention.     

Subjectivity,Reflection and Freedom in Later Foucault

Abstract

This paper proposes a new reading of the interaction between subjectivity, reflection and freedom within Foucault’s later work. I begin by introducing three approaches to subjectivity, locating these in relation both to Foucault’s texts and to the recent literature. I suggest that Foucault himself operates within what I call the ‘entanglement approach’, and, as such, he faces a potentially serious challenge, a challenge forcefully articulated by Han. Using Kant’s treatment of reflection as a point of comparison, I argue that Foucault possesses the resources to meet this challenge. The key, I contend, is to distinguish two related theses about reflection and freedom: Foucault’s position is distinctive precisely because he accepts one of these theses whilst rejecting the other. I conclude by indicating how this reading might connect to the longstanding question of Foucault’s own right to appeal to normative standards.     

Abortion,Property, and Liberty

In “Abortion and Ownership” John Martin Fischer argues that in Judith Jarvis Thomson’s violinist case you have a moral obligation not to unplug yourself from the violinist. Fischer comes to this conclusion by comparing the case with Joel Feinberg’s cabin case, in which he contends a stranger is justified in using your cabin to stay alive. I argue that the relevant difference between these cases is that while the stranger’s right to life trumps your right to property in the cabin case, the violinist’s right to life does not trump your right to liberty in the violinist case.     

Badiou,Priest, and the Hegelian Infinite

Abstract

Hegel’s distinction between the bad and true infinites has provoked contrasting reactions in the works of Alain Badiou and Graham Priest. Badiou claims that Hegel illegitimately attempts to impose a distinction that is only relevant to the qualitative realm onto the quantitative realm. He suggests that Cantor’s mathematical account of infinite multiplicities that are determinate and actual remains an endlessly proliferating bad infinite when placed within Hegel’s faulty schema. In contrast, Priest affirms the Hegelian true infinite, claiming that Cantor’s formal mechanisms of boundary transcendence, such as ‘diagonalization’, are implicit in Hegel’s dialectic. While arguing that a clear dividing line can be drawn here between these two interpretations of the relationship between Hegel and Cantor, this paper also mounts a defence of the Hegelian true infinite by developing Priest’s suggestion that Cantorian diagonalizing functions are prefigured by Hegel’s dialectical overcoming of limits.     

Intuitionistic Games: Determinacy,Completeness, and Normalization

We investigate a simple game paradigm for intuitionistic logic, inspired by Wajsberg’s implicit inhabitation algorithm and Beth tableaux. The principal idea is that one player,  ?ros, is trying to construct a proof in normal form (positions in the game represent his progress in proof construction) while his opponent, ?phrodite,  attempts to build a counter-model (positions or plays can be seen as states in a Kripke model). The determinacy of the game (a proof-construction and a model-construction game in one) implies therefore both completeness and semantic cut-elimination.     

Contingency,Historicity, and Integrity

The author of this paper contends that Kathleen Wallace’s model of the self is a highly original contribution to contemporary thought. He, however, highlights important respects in which Wallace is adumbrating themes highlighted by Justus Buchler’s scattered insights into human selfhood. In addition, the author identifies two possible lines of inquiry rooted in Wallace’s project calling for further pursuit. Questions regarding self-division, ones importantly bearing upon the topic of autonomy, and also questions regarding the somatic mechanisms, processes, and practices by which embodied selves maintain themselves as cumulative networks are ones that, above all else, he tries to throw into sharp relief through the defining features of Wallace’s network model and to underscore the inherent power of Wallace’s nuanced approach to a highly contested and intricately complex topic.     

Search,rest, and grace in Pascal

For Pascal, how are human beings related, or how do they relate themselves, to the summum bonum in this life? In what sense do they share in it, and how do they come to share in it? These are questions that emerge in many ways in Pascal’s writing, significantly in his concept of repos. To answer these questions, especially by elucidating what repos is for human beings in this life, I would like to begin with Graeme Hunter’s “Motion and Rest in the Pensées”. Hunter’s account of Pascal is important because his purpose is to specifically address how certain aspects of modernity affect how Pascal understood repos. Hunter is certainly correct when he argues that for Pascal, repos is an orderly, directed seeking of truth—what Hunter designates as “search.” However, Hunter’s account of Pascal’s repos falls short of completion, because he neglects a crucial part of Pascal’s articulation of repos: his emphasis on the role of God’s grace in searching. By neglecting Pascal’s emphasis on grace, Hunter inadvertently depicts Pascal as reducing repos to motion, rather than envisioning them together in dialectical unity. I argue that for Pascal, it is correct to say that someone who is anxiously searching has indeed “already found,” but this cannot be solely due to human efforts: rather, it because the whole enterprise is entirely infused by grace.     

Pragmatic,Existentialist and Phenomenological Interpretations of Marxism

In his book, Hermeneutics and Reflection (2013), Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann outlines what he sees as the fundamental differences between Edmund Husserl’s “theoretical” phenomenology and Martin Heidegger’s “a-theoretical” phenomenology, which he frames in terms of the distinction between “reflective observation” and “hermeneutic understanding”. In this paper, I will clarify the sense of these terms in order to elucidate some of the crucial similarities and differences between Husserl and Heidegger. Against von Herrmann’s characterization of the Husserlian project, I argue that we should not consider these differences in terms of “reflection”, since this runs the risk of misconstruing Husserlian phenomenology with the philosophical tradition he was striving against. Taken together, by way of a close reading of von Herrmann, the following discussion will serve as a brief sketch of the early Heidegger’s turn away from Husserlian phenomenology and toward his own hermeneutic phenomenology.     

Wittgenstein,Quasi-fideism,and Scepticism

In the discussion of certainties, or ‘hinges’, in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty some of the examples that Wittgenstein uses are religious ones. He remarks on how a child might be raised so that they ‘swallow down’ belief in God (§107) and in discussing the role of persuasion in disagreements he asks us to think of the case of missionaries converting natives (§612). In the past decade Duncan Pritchard has made a case for an account of the rationality of religious belief inspired by On Certainty which he calls ‘quasi-fideism’. Pritchard argues that religious beliefs are just like ordinary non-religious beliefs in presupposing fundamental arational commitments. However, Modesto Gómez-Alonso has recently argued that there are significant differences between the kinds of ‘hinges’ discussed in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty and religious beliefs such that we should expect an account of rationality in religion to be quite different to the account of rational practices and their foundations that we find in Wittgenstein’s work. Fundamental religious commitments are, as Wittgenstein said, in the foreground of the religious believer’s life whereas hinge commitments are said to be in the background. People are passionately committed to their religious beliefs but it is not at all clear that people are passionately committed to hinges such as that ‘I have two hands’. I argue here that although there are differences between religious beliefs and many of the hinge-commitments discussed in On Certainty religious beliefs are nonetheless hinge-like. Gómez-Alonso’s criticisms of Pritchard mischaracterise his views and something like Pritchard’s quasi-fideism is the correct account of the rationality of religious belief.