Review of OXANA TIMOFEEVA. (2013). History of Animals: An Essay on Negativity, Immanence and Freedom
Review of: OXANA TIMOFEEVA. (2013). History of Animals: An Essay on Negativity, Immanence and Freedom. Jan van Eyck Acamedie. 167 pp.
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Review of: OXANA TIMOFEEVA. (2013). History of Animals: An Essay on Negativity, Immanence and Freedom. Jan van Eyck Acamedie. 167 pp.
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W artykule rekonstruuję stanowisko Witkacego wobec nieskończoności aktualnej. Jego poglądy sytuuję na tle tradycji badawczych starożytności, średniowiecza i nowożytności. Konfrontuję jego interpretację z interpretacją filozoficznych formalistów i intuicjonistów.
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The language used by Heidegger awakens almost the same emotions as his thought. According to many, it is full of negligible neologisms, grammatical and syntactic traps that “work well” with the content. This is a negative assessment. For the Heidegger’s followers, his language demonstrates revolutionary properties, because it comes to its own limits, it removes the historical semantic falsehood, distancing it from that what really “is – exists”. In the article, I would like to guide the reader through the discovery of such a language. To do so, I will rely on a book titled “Contributions to Philosophy. (From the Enowing)” – a unique text in Heigegger’s works. Heidegger comes to the source of language, so he looks for what is at the base and focuses on the fundamental “is”. Man is a being who is conscious not only of who he is, but of man in particular, who has conscious that he is. The question of “being” constructs the whole essence-nature of man. This expresses the linguistic term Dasein, in which prefix Da means “here, now”, that is, in some “specificity” at some point in time and place, while Sein means being. So man becomes “being here” that is, he is aware that he is and exists in a concrete way in time and space in the world. The language allows him to identify with Sein and follow what is hidden. Language is not artificial in any way, it is not a product or a construct. It is the most natural source, the sounding language, but also the sounding to the end, until the very silence.
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The article aims to present some diverse concepts of metaphorization of colloquial language and scientific discourse. The starting point of scientific discourse is colloquial thinking – it uses logical argumentation, but also rhetorical figures, typical of everyday reasoning, such as metaphors. The point of reference is the Aristotelian definition of metaphor, which was contemporarily reinterpreted by 1) linguists (among others, Émile Benveniste and cognitive linguists) – the metaphorical sources of notions, the metaphor considered as the starting point of conceptualisation, 2) literary and cultural studies – the application of metaphor in the various cultural messages linked to the mythical thinking and the reasoning and argumentation by analogy – among others, Claude Lévi-Strauss and Edmund Leach, and in particular by 3) philosophers who characterised a metaphorization process as a specific kind of thinking, which conditions the regularity and systematicity of reasoning and imagining (Hans Blumenberg, Paul Ricoeur, Jacques Derrida). The article presents and compares the aforementioned statements, marking the distinctness between metaphor and metonymy, showing the necessity for this distinction in the research concerning: the role of metaphor in colloquial and scientific discourse, the relations between sense and metaphor, the connexions between truth, notion and metaphor. Additionally, I analyse the case of the metaphor of horizon, which is typical of the contemporary phenomenological and hermeneutical discourse.
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The article describes key topics of discourse between a philosopher and an atheist Jean-François Revel and his son, Matthieu Ricard, a biologist and a Buddhist monk. It concerns similarities and differences between empirical science, philosophy and religion, mostly Tibetan Buddhism. They discussed status of consciousness and possibility of rebirth (reincarnation). The result of it was that both Revel and Ricard kept their positions. Ricard could not persuade Revel to his arguments, which his father regarded as propositions of faith.
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The archetype of Shapeshifter is expressed by variability and readiness to change, instability and fluidity, permanent transformation and self-improvement (of body and of nature, of mind and of spiritual realm). For this reason, it is worthwhile to look at the Shapeshifter as the patron of postmodernity. The article looks at postmodern culture through the prism of views of James Hillman and the school of archetypal psychology.
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African literature embodies a profound ethnographic or ethno-philosophical diverse conceptions and analysis of history and existence of man. Although it has in no little way, been considered synonymously with the teleological movement of time hence the questions ‘From where is man?’ ‘what is life?’ ‘why death?’ and ‘to where does man go’ are underlying imperatives of human existence and this to a large extent, constitutes eschatology. But what is eschatology and to what extent does it envelope a broad understanding of human existence? How much does this structures human attitude to life itself? Does this qualify for a people’s philosophy? In this study we shall examine human existence in Esan eschatology especially as it constitute a broad ideological frame work to an understanding to fundamental issues that constitute being and beings and as a peoples philosophy to certain global demands. The researcher adopts a critical, hermeneutic and phenomenological method in crystallizing the wealth or quintessence and relevance of the Esan eschatological analysis of human existence in African literature and philosophy and concludes with the affirmation that African ethnography and philosophy affirms that human existence cuts across three transcendental stages in a teleological movement through fundamental or existential realities which brings his will, choice and responsibility to play.
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This article analyses the theme of map and territory in Catherine Malabou’s philosophy and in contemporary poetry. Calling into question the traditional understanding of the tension between map and territory, Malabou emphasizes that no map can entirely distance itself from territory, as in the case of the brain’s development in contact with the environment. Malabou employs cartographic ideas to clarify her own concepts of “plasticity” and “brain-world cartographies” that account for how the environment shapes us, at the same time indicating how we may partake in this process. Viewing selected works by Elizabeth Bishop and Nigel Forde in this perspective, which is demonstrated to dovetail with ecopoetics, this article explores how poetry can offer tools necessary for developing better ecologies of the mind. This is particularly urgent given the ongoing ecological crises as well as ethical challenges entailed by the advent of the Anthropocene and the scaling up of global capitalism.
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The article is an interpretation of the concept of the end of religion in Hegel’s philosophy, based on the analysis of three issues:1. The relationship between religious imagination and speculative philosophy – i.e. the idea of the sublation of religion into philosophy. 2. The Hegelian understanding of Christianity (presented in Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences and Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion) focused on the idea of incarnation as kenosis, which is interpreted by Catherine Malabou’s theory. 3. The idea of the death of Christ as the death of God himself that constitutes the authentic core of Christianity – as Slavoj Žižek has claimed. This interpretation leads to the conclusion: the outcome of this death is God qua Holy Spirit, whose historical embodiment is “objective spirit” – revolutionary community of the acts of love.
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The dialectical concept of revolution emphasizes its dual character. Both in the conservative (de Tocqueville) and socialist (Lukács) versions, the revolution is a testimony to historical continuity and at the same time its violent rupture. The purpose of this essay is to capture this ambiguous phenomenon using Catharine Malabou’s concept of plasticity. Plasticity, as a contemporary, post-deconstructive formula of the Hegelian Aufhebung, is passive/active formation, destruction of form and its preservation at the same time. Its essence is the same as the essence of revolution, both in the writings of de Tocqueville and Lukács. However, such ambiguity of the revolution can be interpreted as an expression of its defeat. Its entanglement in the past condemns it to unproductive opportunism, its connection with the future - to empty messianism, and the search for mediation between these extremes seems to be endless. And if postmodernity is troubled by this fiasco, then at least one aspect of the idea of revolution triumphs - a certain way of thinking about it, speculation or dialectics as such.
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Many recent philosophical discussions have been marked by the rather stunning re-launching of the question of realism, triggered by Quentin Meillassoux’s book After finitude (Après la finitude, 2006), and followed by a wider, albeit less homogeneous, movement named ‘speculative realism’. This paper raises the question of whether the conceptual field of Lacanian psychoanalysis is concerned with this debate, and if so how. The central argument scrutinizes the status of the ‘real’ in science, and its implications for psychoanalysis in view of the Lacanian identification of the subject of the unconscious with the subject of (Galilean) science. Taking seriously Lacan’s claim that ‘If I am anything, it is clear that I’m not a nominalist’, the present paper aims at sketching out a psychoanalytic version of realism.
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In spite of popular interpretation of Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy as a kind of postmodernism, poststructuralism or Nietzscheanism, this paper reveals its deep rooting in the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant. According to the main thesis, it was Kant who delivered the primary source of philosophical schemes that inspired both the early (expressed mainly in Difference and Repetition, 1986), and late period of Deleuze’s work, starting with the first volume of Capitalism and Schizophrenia called Anti-Oedipus, written in collaboration with Félix Guattari (1972). The main part of the essay contains contextual analysis of the latter. In Anti-Oedipus Deleuze and Guattari propose the concept of desire (unconscious) as a power capable of constituting nomadic subjectivity, characterized by the openness to difference, creativity, and drawing strength from social diversity. However, they note that a desire is characterized by a tendency to undergo internal illusions and, as a result, to block its own revolutionary and creative possibilities. That is why, say Deleuze and Guattari, it is necessary to carry on the critique of pure unconsciousness, whose aim is to reveal these illusions and perhaps to free us from them.
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The study analyses poetological components and their function in relation to the thematically ideological basis of the Apotheosis of Groundlessness (1905) by Russian existentialist philosopher Lev Shestov. Firstly, the link between the importance of literary tradition, literary experience and Shestov’s philosophy is explained. Secondly, the usage of rhetorical questions is analysed in relation to the philosophy of scepticism. Thirdly, the fragmentary form of the text is studied in relation to the absence of unity. Then, the role of plots is analysed as a final component which gives the text its artistic nature.
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The modern liberalism is a political thought movement which develops by the enlightenment of western. Firstly, it used by Adam Smith as a notion. Liberalism comes into prominence with dignity and supporting the true things as freedom of religion and conscience, the leadership of mind, determinate countries, private ownership etc. Sophism was born in V. century. Protagoras is the first agent of sophism. Sophism is a philosophical quadrat that which one criticizes aristocratic and entrenched thoughts, takes people in to the centre and the top of life by idea of metron antropos panton (human is measure of everything), based on humanity while legislation and implement. Sophists suppose the successful person as happy person, gives a pragmatically meaning to life. Generally, the sophists have a democratic approach. This study handles sophism as a messenger of modern liberalism and the agent in Ancient Greece with “against the aristocratic constitution, criticize sing entrenched thoughts, takes humanity to the centre of everything and with pragmatic nascency. The aim of this work is explaining how similar are sophism and modern liberalism and why the sophism is a messenger of the liberalism even there is a huge time interval between this two movements.
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The present paper tackles one of the most significant expressions of the old conflict between science and religion, highlighted by the investigation at the crossroads of psychology, religion and spirituality, and neuroscience. Neurotheology is the study of correlations of neural phenomena with subjective experiences of spirituality and hypotheses to explain these phenomena. Partisans of this field claim that there is a neurological and evolutionary basis for subjective experiences traditionally categorized as spiritual or religious. However, writers committed to a materialist ontology and a reductive approach to the mind are arguing not only for neural correlates to spiritual experience but are intending to eliminate spirituality entirely by arguing that these experiences are caused by the brain in some manner. Underlining the “neuroscience of enlightenment”, the author analyzes aspects such as: the brain and enlightenment, prayer on the brain, neuroscience and religious experience, brain functions and theological topics. On functional MRI scans, people who meditate regularly are shown to have developed brains that are wired differently than the brains of people who don’t meditate. They are better able to remain calm and stress-free, live in peace, and practice compassion. What the researchers found is that the subjects who suffered of Alzheimer and Parkinson’s frontal lobes, parietal lobes, and limbic systems all showed similar heightened activity. Though the data has been interpreted by different people in different ways, what is clear is that prayer and meditation seem to have a unique biochemical effect on the brain. Neurotheology seeks to facilitate a dialogue between religion and science with the eventual goal of helping to integrate these perspectives around the nexus of neuropsychology.
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The article discusses the transformations of the idea of park in modernity. In the Age of Enlightenment Europe replaced the white of medieval cathedrals with the green of parks. A man, like Candide from Voltaire’s satire, started to “cultivate his garden,” changing private parks in public spaces. As a consequence of that process the idea of park as a place where you could experience beauty and pleasure completely “vanished”. Urban green spaces started to be determined by an efficacy parameter – which can be witnessed in Le Corbusier’s or Ebenezer Howard’s projects – thus opening the way for transforming former landscape parks into modern places of consumption: commercial parks and amusement parks.
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Review of: Jindřich Zelený: Dialektická ontologie, Nakladatelství Kant, Praha 2002, 135 s.
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The history of the concept of creativity contains a certain semanticdualism, depending on which aspect of creativity the criterion is beingapplied to.Either the criterion of creativity is seen in subjective experience, thecreator’s state of consciousness as expressed in introspection, or it is a socialassessment – a value bestowed on the results of creative activity by others.These two types of criteria have accompanied reflections on creativityfrom Plato to contemporary philosophy of postmodernism, and carry withthem a whole host of consequences.One of them is the question of whether creative activity can be rationalisedsufficiently for it to be taught. What criterion of creativity wouldsuch a view have to assume?
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In the text, I analyze audiophiles’ posts from Internet forums using four different theoretical traditions: Peter Berger’s and Thomas Luckmann’s sociology of knowledge, Slavoj Žižek’s theory of ideology, Social Construction of Technology approach – SCOT (Trevor J. Pinch and Wiebe Bijker) and Actor-Network Theory – ANT (Bruno Latour and John Law). I argue to view audiophile Internet forums as dynamic symbolic universes, borrowing the term from Berger and Luckmann. Although they are self-described as spaces for information exchange, in fact they are key forces in fabrication of audiophile fantasies centered around extraordinary esthetic experiences. In the article, I analyze examples of constructing of the desire and of the fantasies. Following Žižek, I claim that the function of the fantasy is the ordering of the social worlds. I read this literally, not as a epistemological sorting things out according to certain categories, but I view fantasy as a blueprint for heterogenic engineering (in ANT’s sense) done by an audiophile in his or her (these are usually males) direct material environment. The observations are grouped according to three analytical steps offered by the SCOT approach – interpretive flexibility, closure and stabilization and connection to wider context. However, while SCOT was concentrated on single technological artifacts, I suggest to focus on heterogenic assemblage operated by an audiophile. In the end it is argued that such a mechanism of permanent and endlessly renewing fabricating of audiophile fantasies directly contributes to the circulation of consumerist capitalism.
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In my paper I try to trace and understand the reasons for the birth of the 24/7 world as it is described by Johnatan Crary in his book '24/7 Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep.' He proposes a grim vision of late capitalism in which sleep deprivation and the disintegration of public and private spaces will become a market necessity. My attempt to understand is supported on two other authors. First, Hannah Arendt provided me with an analysis of origins, transformations and somewhat present version of the relation of private and public spheres. Second, Fredrich Schiller delivered an interesting theory on the aesthetic ideal, art, beauty and human experience of beauty. These three analyzes stand as basis for my attempt to present a proposal to overcome the crisis described by Crary and the answer is related to the issue of aesthetic experience of street art in urban space.
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