Pub Date : 2010-03-18DOI: 10.5840/JPHILNEPAL20105114
J. Williams
So each year you bring the object to C and you nail it to her door, at the beginning of winter, because she dreads the season where all things turn inwards. Each year you do the same. But it is never the same. Neither the season, nor the gift, nor the trees, nor the early winter wind turning from lowlands to hills, nor the wood cracking on the door, nor the newly polished handle, shining against the tarnish built up over time; an ever rougher grain under your hand, until now, as once again you fail to open the door, but this time because your damp hand slips; you still turn away and everything still passes. Will you open it before oblivion strikes one of you from the earth? In 1995, a few months before his death by suicide, in the final stages of a very long illness, Gilles Deleuze revisited his impressions, sources, ideas and new metaphysics for the problem of empirical oblivion. (1) The resulting essay "Immanence: a life..." draws upon many of his earlier books and traces new relations between their concepts. It is therefore a work of reminiscence and new beginnings. There is never one without the other for Deleuze. His argument is of rare philosophical courage, intensity, depth, gentleness and troubling difficulty. It is comparable to moments in Montaigne, Pascal, Hume and Barthes, where a philosopher condenses years of investigation and reflection into a very personal, yet universally resonant pattern of observations, deductions and problems. Montaigne prepares for Deleuze's fearless account, indeed shares its Stoic roots, where anguish and the consequent cruel baseness we humans draw from our terror of death are overcome not through certainty, either in annihilation or ethereal survival, but in the tempered tracing of a new line of thought on life and death, free of the commonplace disguised as knowledge and of the government of living and dead souls disguised as faith. (2) The essay is then a two-fold resistance to oblivion. It counters the process of effacement in death and disintegration, but it also strikes against evasive and illusory resolutions of natural loss and our anguish. What then is empirical oblivion? It one side only of a larger problem Deleuze reconstructed and shaped, by trying to create positive concepts adequate to its overcoming. A problem for Deleuze is never resolved. (3) Instead, it interacts with different times in different ways such that each must find the best way to balance its positive and negative effects by transforming it. (4) For example, the problem of how to raise a child is different depending on the cultures, epochs, families, clans, tribes, societies and places where it is considered. The right 'solution' at one time can well be a mistake earlier or later. This does not mean that each epoch has its own problem independent of all others; on the contrary, they are related and earlier solutions bequeath new components to later ones, while later ones can reveal the limits and errors of earlier ones. How cou
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Pub Date : 2010-03-18DOI: 10.5840/JPHILNEPAL20105117
Yubraj Aryal
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Pub Date : 2010-03-18DOI: 10.5840/JPHILNEPAL201051110
Sergey Toymentsev
Deleuze's Nietzsche and Philosophy may be considered as one of the earliest studies that presents Nietzsche as a philosopher rather than a poetic thinker by foregrounding the systematic element of his legacy. As a result, Deleuze's Nietzsche turns out to be impersonally objective and rigorously scientific/mathematical: his science is the concrete physics of forces that studies the formation of bodies as the effects of the dynamic relations of forces. As I'll attempt to show, it is Nietzsche's physics of forces that lays the foundation for the divergent yet complimentary methodologies of Deleuze and Foulcault. 1. Deleuze's Reading of Nietzsche's Theory of Active and Reactive Forces Active and reactive forces are the basic functions of Nietzsche's calculus where one force is necessarily viewed in relation to its opposite. According to Nietzsche's hierarchy of forces, active forces are those of domination and form-giving; while reactive ones are those of obedience and form-receiving. In reality, however, the interpretation of what kinds of forces are involved in the formation of the body is complicated by the fact that reactive forces prevail over active ones and thereby shape a reactive body. In history, the original hierarchy of forces is therefore inverted: reactive forces are dominant, while active ones are dominated. To illuminate the dynamic of force struggles, Deleuze-Nietzsche introduces the concept of the will to power, an inner motive force whose more primordial qualities of affirmation and negation determine the qualities of forces in a given relation. The affirming will to power expresses itself through active forces (by affirming itself); while the negating will to power, or the will to nothingness, through reactive forces (by negating the other). Furthermore, "affirmation and negation extend beyond action and reaction because they are the immediate qualities of becoming itself. Affirmation is ... the power of becoming active ... Negation is ... a becoming reactive." (1) Therefore, depending on what quality constitutes the nature of the will to power (which, in turn, determines the qualities of forces), the becoming of forces can be either reactive or active: through the will to nothingness, all forces become reactive; through the affirmative will to power, all forces become active. However, the becoming-reactive of all forces is, according to Deleuze-Nietzsche, the only becoming of forces we know; and it is this becoming that constitutes the essence of man and universal history. How do reactive forces triumph over active ones? As Deleuze emphasizes, reactive forces do not triumph by forming a superior force; they always remain inferior in quantity and reactive in quality. The root of their triumph lies in the inversion of the differential genetic element, from which both active and reactive forces emerge. The differential origin of forces is seen differently from both sides of active and reactive forces: for active forces, the differen
{"title":"Active/reactive Body in Deleuze and Foucault","authors":"Sergey Toymentsev","doi":"10.5840/JPHILNEPAL201051110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/JPHILNEPAL201051110","url":null,"abstract":"Deleuze's Nietzsche and Philosophy may be considered as one of the earliest studies that presents Nietzsche as a philosopher rather than a poetic thinker by foregrounding the systematic element of his legacy. As a result, Deleuze's Nietzsche turns out to be impersonally objective and rigorously scientific/mathematical: his science is the concrete physics of forces that studies the formation of bodies as the effects of the dynamic relations of forces. As I'll attempt to show, it is Nietzsche's physics of forces that lays the foundation for the divergent yet complimentary methodologies of Deleuze and Foulcault. 1. Deleuze's Reading of Nietzsche's Theory of Active and Reactive Forces Active and reactive forces are the basic functions of Nietzsche's calculus where one force is necessarily viewed in relation to its opposite. According to Nietzsche's hierarchy of forces, active forces are those of domination and form-giving; while reactive ones are those of obedience and form-receiving. In reality, however, the interpretation of what kinds of forces are involved in the formation of the body is complicated by the fact that reactive forces prevail over active ones and thereby shape a reactive body. In history, the original hierarchy of forces is therefore inverted: reactive forces are dominant, while active ones are dominated. To illuminate the dynamic of force struggles, Deleuze-Nietzsche introduces the concept of the will to power, an inner motive force whose more primordial qualities of affirmation and negation determine the qualities of forces in a given relation. The affirming will to power expresses itself through active forces (by affirming itself); while the negating will to power, or the will to nothingness, through reactive forces (by negating the other). Furthermore, \"affirmation and negation extend beyond action and reaction because they are the immediate qualities of becoming itself. Affirmation is ... the power of becoming active ... Negation is ... a becoming reactive.\" (1) Therefore, depending on what quality constitutes the nature of the will to power (which, in turn, determines the qualities of forces), the becoming of forces can be either reactive or active: through the will to nothingness, all forces become reactive; through the affirmative will to power, all forces become active. However, the becoming-reactive of all forces is, according to Deleuze-Nietzsche, the only becoming of forces we know; and it is this becoming that constitutes the essence of man and universal history. How do reactive forces triumph over active ones? As Deleuze emphasizes, reactive forces do not triumph by forming a superior force; they always remain inferior in quantity and reactive in quality. The root of their triumph lies in the inversion of the differential genetic element, from which both active and reactive forces emerge. The differential origin of forces is seen differently from both sides of active and reactive forces: for active forces, the differen","PeriodicalId":288505,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Philosophy: A Cross-Disciplinary Inquiry","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133068702","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2010-03-18DOI: 10.5840/JPHILNEPAL20105119
K. V. Dijk
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Pub Date : 2010-03-18DOI: 10.5840/JPHILNEPAL20105115
John Protevi
Truer words were never spoken than when Deleuze said of Difference and Repetition in his 1973 "Letter to a Harsh Critic," "it's still full of academic elements, it's heavy going." (1) I'll say! (Part of that academicism comes from Deleuze having submitted Difference and Repetition to his jury as the primary thesis for the doctorat d'Etat; the secondary thesis was the big Spinoza book). The context of these remarks is useful: Deleuze has just been noting that "the history of philosophy plays a patently repressive role in philosophy, it's philosophy's own version of the Oedipus complex." (2) Deleuze continues that he tried to subvert this repressive force by various means: (3) (1) by writing on authors such as Lucretius, Hume, Spinoza and Nietzsche who contested the rationalist tradition by the "critique of negativity, the cultivation of joy, the hatred of interiority, the externality of forces and relations, the denunciation of power [pouvoir]"; (2) by enculage / immaculate conception: making the author say something in their own words that would be monstrous. These are famous lines, and the last is certainly fun in an epater les bourgeois sort of way. But what is really important in my view comes next, when Deleuze explains what it means to finally write "in your own name," as he claims he first did in Difference and Repetition: Individuals find a real name for themselves ... only through the harshest exercises in depersonalization, by opening themselves up to the multiplicities everywhere w/in them, to the intensities running through them. [This is] a depersonalization through love rather than through subjection. (4) So that's our challenge in introducing Difference and Repetition: can we help our students avoid subjecting themselves to it as a monument in the history of philosophy, as is the case with an Oedipal relation to the history of philosophy in which you give yourself up to be a mere repetiteur: an old occupational title in the French academic system? Rather, can we help them turn their reading of it into a "harsh exercise in depersonalization," that is, an opening up of themselves to the multiplicities and intensities within them, indeed, within all of us, student and teacher alike? Can our encounter with it be a depersonalization through love? Can we learn from it, rather than gain knowledge from it? Luckily, Difference and Repetition contains a discussion of learning; it thematizes the challenge it poses to us. The discussion of learning occurs at a key point in Difference and Repetition, at the turning point of the book, the end of the middle chapter, "The Image of Thought." Let's look at the architecture of the book, which after the Preface, has a pleasing and significant asymmetry: Introduction: Repetition and Difference Chapter One: Difference in Itself Chapter Two: Repetition for Itself Chapter Three: The Image of Thought Chapter Four: Ideal Synthesis of Difference Chapter Five: Asymmetrical Synthesis of Sensibility Conclusion:
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Pub Date : 2009-12-15DOI: 10.5840/JPHILNEPAL2009484
A. Pokhrel
The recent Holocaust testimonies are often disruptive narration of personal histories. In the form of memory, these testimonies capture survivors' experience of the Nazi Holocaust. As the survivor recalls his or her past experience in the present, "'[c]otemporality' becomes the controlling principle of these testimonies, as witnesses struggle with the impossible task of making their recollections of the camp experience coalesce with the rest of their lives." (1) The sense of time is deeply embedded in the survivor's consciousness. Caught between the transitions of past and present, the survivor becomes traumatized by his or her own anguish and the anguish of others. Hence, in these testimonies, the psychological association of events becomes more important than the chronological order of events. Original in its narrative technique and use of memory and time, Charlotte Delbo's posthumous memoir La memoire et les jours (translated as Days and Memory, 1985), is a complex reflection of the atrocious past. Auschwitz is fresh in Delbo's memory, and its horrifying images permeate her being in the present. So the present moment is not a simple point, but it has a certain extension and inner structure of its own. German philosopher Martin Heidegger has said that the reality of time is constructed not as something which we encounter only when we attempt to reckon it but as something which becomes operational within human existence. Similarly, Ida Fink, in her short stories "A Scrap of Time," "A Second Scrap of Time," and "Traces" (published in her anthologies Traces and A Scrap of Time and Other Stories), excavates the "ruins of memory" that invoke the devastating experiences of the Nazi Holocaust, which cannot be "measured in months and years" but can only be measured psychologically. (2) Interestingly enough, both Delbo and Fink focus on the intricate relations of past and present. In this respect, the principal question pertaining to this study would be: How are memory and time used in Delbo's memoir and Fink's stories in representing the Holocaust? Although Delbo and Fink both make use of memory and time in narrating the inhuman conditions of ghettoization, deportation, forced labor, roundups, and mass execution, their ways of representation vary significantly. Memory and time are used in Delbo to show the timelessness in complex layers of memory and to recreate a reality through inventive narrative style while in Fink they are used to delineate the scraps of time in the ruins of memory and to create a tragic domestic reality through conventional narrativity. Charlotte Delbo and Ida Fink both write in the present looking back at the past moments. Delbo writes from the cafe in France after many years of camp life, whereas Fink writes from Israel after many years of ghetto life. Both find their present self inextricably linked to the past self. Despite their recognition of the importance of remembering, Delbo and Fink both encounter a problem in conveyin
最近的大屠杀证词往往是对个人历史的破坏性叙述。这些证词以记忆的形式记录了幸存者对纳粹大屠杀的经历。当幸存者回忆起他或她现在的过去经历时，“‘暂时性’成为这些证词的控制原则，因为证人努力完成不可能完成的任务，使他们对集中营经历的回忆与他们生活的其余部分结合起来。”时间观念深深植根于幸存者的意识中。在过去和现在的过渡之间，幸存者因自己和他人的痛苦而受到创伤。因此，在这些证词中，事件的心理联系变得比事件的时间顺序更重要。夏洛特·德尔博的遗作《La memoire et les jours》(翻译为《日子与记忆》，1985年)在叙事技巧和对记忆和时间的运用上具有独创性，是对残暴过去的复杂反映。奥斯维辛在德尔博的记忆中是鲜活的，它的恐怖形象渗透在她现在的生活中。所以当下时刻不是一个简单的点，而是有一定的外延和自身的内在结构。德国哲学家马丁·海德格尔曾说过，时间的实在性不是我们在试图计算它时才遇到的东西，而是在人类存在中成为可操作的东西。同样，艾达·芬克(Ida Fink)在她的短篇小说《一小段时间》(A fragment of Time)、《第二段时间》(A Second fragment of Time)和《痕迹》(Traces)(发表在她的选集《痕迹》、《一小段时间》和《其他故事》中)中，挖掘了“记忆的废墟”，唤起了纳粹大屠杀的毁灭性经历，这些经历不能“用月和年来衡量”，只能从心理上衡量。(2)有趣的是，Delbo和Fink都关注过去和现在的复杂关系。在这方面，与这项研究有关的主要问题是:德尔博的回忆录和芬克的故事如何利用记忆和时间来代表大屠杀?尽管德尔博和芬克都利用记忆和时间来叙述种族隔离、驱逐、强迫劳动、围捕和大规模处决等不人道的条件，但他们的表现方式却大相径庭。在Delbo中，记忆和时间被用来在复杂的记忆层中表现出永恒，并通过创造性的叙事风格重新创造现实，而在Fink中，它们被用来描绘记忆废墟中的时间碎片，并通过传统叙事创造出悲惨的国内现实。夏洛特·德尔博和艾达·芬克都写在现在，回顾过去的时刻。德尔博在法国的咖啡馆里写了多年的集中营生活，而芬克在以色列写了多年的贫民窟生活。他们都发现现在的自己与过去的自己有着千丝万缕的联系。尽管德尔博和芬克认识到记忆的重要性，但他们都遇到了一个问题，即如何将他们的经验和知识作为连贯的历史真相传达给他人。然而，最重要的是，德尔博在奥斯维辛集中营的短暂经历与芬克在犹太人区的经历有很大不同。奥斯威辛根本没有时钟。德尔博在集中营里经历的唯一时间就是人类的时间。不像德尔博，芬克在贫民区可能对时间有更好的感觉。暴行的性质和其他情况也可能有所不同。在这里，人们不禁会想，集中营和隔都的不同情况可能是他们对时间和记忆的感知也不同的主要原因之一。在研究德尔博的《日子与记忆》和芬克精选的故事之前，我将简要地研究记忆和时间的一些重要理论立场，特别是它们与大屠杀文学的关系。著名学者劳伦斯·兰格在他的《大屠杀证词:记忆的废墟》中强调了证词中记忆的重要性，他说:“证词是一种记忆的形式。…
{"title":"Representations of Time and Memory in Holocaust Literature: A Comparison of Charlotte Delbo’s Days and Memory and Ida Fink’s Selected Stories","authors":"A. Pokhrel","doi":"10.5840/JPHILNEPAL2009484","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/JPHILNEPAL2009484","url":null,"abstract":"The recent Holocaust testimonies are often disruptive narration of personal histories. In the form of memory, these testimonies capture survivors' experience of the Nazi Holocaust. As the survivor recalls his or her past experience in the present, \"'[c]otemporality' becomes the controlling principle of these testimonies, as witnesses struggle with the impossible task of making their recollections of the camp experience coalesce with the rest of their lives.\" (1) The sense of time is deeply embedded in the survivor's consciousness. Caught between the transitions of past and present, the survivor becomes traumatized by his or her own anguish and the anguish of others. Hence, in these testimonies, the psychological association of events becomes more important than the chronological order of events. Original in its narrative technique and use of memory and time, Charlotte Delbo's posthumous memoir La memoire et les jours (translated as Days and Memory, 1985), is a complex reflection of the atrocious past. Auschwitz is fresh in Delbo's memory, and its horrifying images permeate her being in the present. So the present moment is not a simple point, but it has a certain extension and inner structure of its own. German philosopher Martin Heidegger has said that the reality of time is constructed not as something which we encounter only when we attempt to reckon it but as something which becomes operational within human existence. Similarly, Ida Fink, in her short stories \"A Scrap of Time,\" \"A Second Scrap of Time,\" and \"Traces\" (published in her anthologies Traces and A Scrap of Time and Other Stories), excavates the \"ruins of memory\" that invoke the devastating experiences of the Nazi Holocaust, which cannot be \"measured in months and years\" but can only be measured psychologically. (2) Interestingly enough, both Delbo and Fink focus on the intricate relations of past and present. In this respect, the principal question pertaining to this study would be: How are memory and time used in Delbo's memoir and Fink's stories in representing the Holocaust? Although Delbo and Fink both make use of memory and time in narrating the inhuman conditions of ghettoization, deportation, forced labor, roundups, and mass execution, their ways of representation vary significantly. Memory and time are used in Delbo to show the timelessness in complex layers of memory and to recreate a reality through inventive narrative style while in Fink they are used to delineate the scraps of time in the ruins of memory and to create a tragic domestic reality through conventional narrativity. Charlotte Delbo and Ida Fink both write in the present looking back at the past moments. Delbo writes from the cafe in France after many years of camp life, whereas Fink writes from Israel after many years of ghetto life. Both find their present self inextricably linked to the past self. Despite their recognition of the importance of remembering, Delbo and Fink both encounter a problem in conveyin","PeriodicalId":288505,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Philosophy: A Cross-Disciplinary Inquiry","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115676207","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2009-12-15DOI: 10.5840/JPHILNEPAL20094913
Daniel W. Smith
In this paper, I would simply like to sketch out what I take to be the component elements of Deleuze's concept of the virtual. (1) My thesis is this: Deleuze's philosophy can accurately be described as a transcendental philosophy--a transcendental empiricism, as he himself puts it--although Deleuze defines the transcendental field in a completely different manner than does Kant, who invented the term. Kant's genius, according to Deleuze, was to have conceived of a purely immanent critique of reason, a critique that did not seek, within reason, "errors" produced by external causes, but rather "illusions" that arise internally and inevitably from within reason itself by the illegitimate (that is, transcendent) uses of the syntheses. (2) Insofar as Deleuze conceives of philosophy as the construction of a plane of immanence, he aligns himself squarely with Kant's critical philosophy. (3) But he also criticizes Kant for having failed to fulfill the immanent ambitions of his critique, for reasons that we shall see in a moment. The difference does not lie simply in the fact that Deleuze purges the transcendental of any reference to consciousness or to a transcendental subject. The more important difference lies precisely in the distinction he makes between the possible and the virtual. For Deleuze, the transcendental does not serve to define the "conditions of possible experience" for a subject; on the contrary, it is a virtual field that serves as the genetic or productive condition of real experience, and that exists prior to the constitution of the subject. In what follows, I would like to draw out this difference between the possible and the virtual (as two conceptions of the transcendental) from the point of view of the history of philosophy: first, by examining two figures who seem to have influenced Deleuze most in this regard--Henri Bergson and Salomon Maimon; second, by examining the reading of Kant that Deleuze provides in Difference and Repetition; and finally, by briefly examining, as examples, Deleuze's analysis of three virtual structures, namely those of language, society, and the body. 1. Bergson's Problematization of the Possible. I turn first to Bergson. Deleuze derives the concept of the virtual directly from Bergson, and in a number of early articles (1956) he argues that Bergson forged the concept of the virtual by problematizing the notion of the possible. More precisely, the virtual is by nature problematizing; it expresses a problematic. What does he mean by this? The activity of thought is frequently conceived of as the search for solutions to problems, a prejudice whose roots, Deleuze suggests, are both social and pedagogical. In the classroom, it is the school teacher who poses ready-made problems, the pupil's task being to discover the correct solution, and what the notions of "true" and "false" serve to qualify are precisely these responses or solutions. Yet everyone recognizes that problems are never given ready-made but mu
{"title":"Deleuze’s Concept of the Virtual and the Critique of the Possible","authors":"Daniel W. Smith","doi":"10.5840/JPHILNEPAL20094913","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/JPHILNEPAL20094913","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, I would simply like to sketch out what I take to be the component elements of Deleuze's concept of the virtual. (1) My thesis is this: Deleuze's philosophy can accurately be described as a transcendental philosophy--a transcendental empiricism, as he himself puts it--although Deleuze defines the transcendental field in a completely different manner than does Kant, who invented the term. Kant's genius, according to Deleuze, was to have conceived of a purely immanent critique of reason, a critique that did not seek, within reason, \"errors\" produced by external causes, but rather \"illusions\" that arise internally and inevitably from within reason itself by the illegitimate (that is, transcendent) uses of the syntheses. (2) Insofar as Deleuze conceives of philosophy as the construction of a plane of immanence, he aligns himself squarely with Kant's critical philosophy. (3) But he also criticizes Kant for having failed to fulfill the immanent ambitions of his critique, for reasons that we shall see in a moment. The difference does not lie simply in the fact that Deleuze purges the transcendental of any reference to consciousness or to a transcendental subject. The more important difference lies precisely in the distinction he makes between the possible and the virtual. For Deleuze, the transcendental does not serve to define the \"conditions of possible experience\" for a subject; on the contrary, it is a virtual field that serves as the genetic or productive condition of real experience, and that exists prior to the constitution of the subject. In what follows, I would like to draw out this difference between the possible and the virtual (as two conceptions of the transcendental) from the point of view of the history of philosophy: first, by examining two figures who seem to have influenced Deleuze most in this regard--Henri Bergson and Salomon Maimon; second, by examining the reading of Kant that Deleuze provides in Difference and Repetition; and finally, by briefly examining, as examples, Deleuze's analysis of three virtual structures, namely those of language, society, and the body. 1. Bergson's Problematization of the Possible. I turn first to Bergson. Deleuze derives the concept of the virtual directly from Bergson, and in a number of early articles (1956) he argues that Bergson forged the concept of the virtual by problematizing the notion of the possible. More precisely, the virtual is by nature problematizing; it expresses a problematic. What does he mean by this? The activity of thought is frequently conceived of as the search for solutions to problems, a prejudice whose roots, Deleuze suggests, are both social and pedagogical. In the classroom, it is the school teacher who poses ready-made problems, the pupil's task being to discover the correct solution, and what the notions of \"true\" and \"false\" serve to qualify are precisely these responses or solutions. Yet everyone recognizes that problems are never given ready-made but mu","PeriodicalId":288505,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Philosophy: A Cross-Disciplinary Inquiry","volume":"108 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121774845","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2009-12-15DOI: 10.5840/JPHILNEPAL20094914
T. Serequeberhan
In what follows I will present my views regarding the questions, and areas of concern, that are of fundamental importance to the contemporary discourse/practice of African philosophy. I will present a programmatic statement of what I take to be a form of resistance in the realm of theory. And so, in keeping with the above, I will explore and concretely engage three interconnected and nodal points: 1. the indigenous re-orientation of philosophic work 2. the critique of Eurocentrism 3. and the question of our "generic human identity" The concerns expressed in the above three points are, in my view, crucial issues that warrant on-going discussion and debate. In examining them my hope is to further develop their articulation in view of making their importance more palpable and pressing. (2) For, it is out of such efforts that we can better grasp, and possibly participate in changing, our dismal contemporary neo-colonial situation located in-between (3) our former status of colonial subjects and our present wretched condition of being dependent formerly colonized peoples. It is this dismal and barren in-between, which constitutes our lived present. Our postcolonial situation, to properly be such, has to put in question this colonial residue-the in-between-ness of our present. 1. We are today, at the end first decade of the 21st century, at a point in time when the concrete dominance of the universe of Euro-American singularity is being encompassed, or engulfed, by the multi-verse of our shared humanity. In this context, the central concern for the practice of philosophy focused on the formerly colonized world should be directed at helping to create a situation in which the enduring residue of the colonial past is systematically put in question. For, even if, at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, we are beyond the "Age of Europe" (4) yet, every aspect of our existence in the formerly colonized world is still-in essential and fundamental ways-determined and controlled by our former colonizers. I say this not in order to shift blame but to locate specifically the source of our present predicament, not only as regards our economic and political dependence on the West, but also as regards the basic dependent orientation of our theoretic efforts. Indeed, as Paulin J. Hountondji has correctly noted: "Historically, science and technology, in their present form on the African continent, can be traced back to the colonial period." (5) In today's Africa, the practice of science, technology, and theoretic work in general--as conducted in African universities and research centers, such as they are--continues, in the same vein, as during colonial times. How this practice might be changed, in view of present needs, is a question that is seldom, if ever, asked! As Hountondji points out, this deplorable situation is taken "for granted" (6) and as "normal" by those engaged in scientific work. Now, this "subjective" acceptance and internalization of coloni
在接下来的内容中，我将阐述我对当代非洲哲学话语/实践中具有根本重要性的问题和关注领域的看法。我将提出一个纲领性的陈述，我认为这是理论领域中的一种抵抗形式。因此，为了与上述观点保持一致，我将探讨并具体涉及三个相互关联的节点:哲学工作的本土再定位2。对欧洲中心主义的批判;在我看来，上述三点所表达的关切是值得持续讨论和辩论的关键问题。在研究它们时，我希望进一步发展它们的清晰度，使它们的重要性更加明显和紧迫。(2)因为，正是通过这样的努力，我们才能更好地把握，并有可能参与改变我们处于(3)我们以前作为殖民地臣民的地位和我们现在作为前殖民地人民的依附性的悲惨状况之间的凄惨的当代新殖民主义局面。正是这种凄凉而贫瘠的中间地带，构成了我们活生生的现在。我们的后殖民时期的情况，恰当地说，必须对殖民时期的残余——我们现在的中间状态——提出质疑。1. 今天，在21世纪第一个十年的末尾，我们正处在这样一个时间点上，欧美奇点宇宙的具体主导地位正在被我们共同的人类的多元宇宙所包围或吞没。在这方面，以前殖民地世界为中心的哲学实践的中心关注应该是帮助创造一种局面，在这种局面中，殖民地历史的持久残余受到系统的质疑。因为，即使在21世纪的第一个十年结束时，我们已经超越了“欧洲时代”，但我们在前殖民地世界生存的每一个方面——在本质上和根本上——仍然由我们的前殖民者决定和控制。我说这些不是为了推卸责任，而是为了明确地找到我们目前困境的根源，不仅是关于我们对西方的经济和政治依赖，而且还有关于我们理论努力的基本依赖取向。事实上，正如Paulin J. Hountondji正确地指出的那样:“从历史上看，科学和技术，在非洲大陆上的目前形式，可以追溯到殖民时期。”(5)在今天的非洲，科学、技术和理论工作的实践——就像在非洲大学和研究中心所进行的那样——以同样的方式继续着，就像在殖民时期一样。鉴于目前的需要，如何改变这种做法，是一个很少被问到的问题!正如Hountondji所指出的那样，这种令人遗憾的情况被从事科学工作的人视为“理所当然”和“正常”。现在，在“新”条件下，这种对殖民霸权的“主观”接受和内化——我们当前的新殖民主义的中间性——有其具体的“客观”关联(7):[T]历史整合和隶属于……(我们的知识体系)……对于知识和“技术诀窍”的世界体系来说，作为一个整体，同样不发达的结果，主要不是由于任何原始的落后，而是由于我们的自给经济融入了世界资本主义市场。(8)在主观方面，在能动性方面，这个等式——我们社会的具体的、物质的从属关系，它使我们成为“世界知识体系”的多余附属物——在未来被一种“意识形态……(9)它是西化非洲的主体性、有意识的自我意识(即思维)的活矩阵。正如伊曼纽尔·沃勒斯坦所指出的;普遍主义是一种信仰，也是一种认识论。…
{"title":"African Philosophy as the Practice of Resistance","authors":"T. Serequeberhan","doi":"10.5840/JPHILNEPAL20094914","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/JPHILNEPAL20094914","url":null,"abstract":"In what follows I will present my views regarding the questions, and areas of concern, that are of fundamental importance to the contemporary discourse/practice of African philosophy. I will present a programmatic statement of what I take to be a form of resistance in the realm of theory. And so, in keeping with the above, I will explore and concretely engage three interconnected and nodal points: 1. the indigenous re-orientation of philosophic work 2. the critique of Eurocentrism 3. and the question of our \"generic human identity\" The concerns expressed in the above three points are, in my view, crucial issues that warrant on-going discussion and debate. In examining them my hope is to further develop their articulation in view of making their importance more palpable and pressing. (2) For, it is out of such efforts that we can better grasp, and possibly participate in changing, our dismal contemporary neo-colonial situation located in-between (3) our former status of colonial subjects and our present wretched condition of being dependent formerly colonized peoples. It is this dismal and barren in-between, which constitutes our lived present. Our postcolonial situation, to properly be such, has to put in question this colonial residue-the in-between-ness of our present. 1. We are today, at the end first decade of the 21st century, at a point in time when the concrete dominance of the universe of Euro-American singularity is being encompassed, or engulfed, by the multi-verse of our shared humanity. In this context, the central concern for the practice of philosophy focused on the formerly colonized world should be directed at helping to create a situation in which the enduring residue of the colonial past is systematically put in question. For, even if, at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, we are beyond the \"Age of Europe\" (4) yet, every aspect of our existence in the formerly colonized world is still-in essential and fundamental ways-determined and controlled by our former colonizers. I say this not in order to shift blame but to locate specifically the source of our present predicament, not only as regards our economic and political dependence on the West, but also as regards the basic dependent orientation of our theoretic efforts. Indeed, as Paulin J. Hountondji has correctly noted: \"Historically, science and technology, in their present form on the African continent, can be traced back to the colonial period.\" (5) In today's Africa, the practice of science, technology, and theoretic work in general--as conducted in African universities and research centers, such as they are--continues, in the same vein, as during colonial times. How this practice might be changed, in view of present needs, is a question that is seldom, if ever, asked! As Hountondji points out, this deplorable situation is taken \"for granted\" (6) and as \"normal\" by those engaged in scientific work. Now, this \"subjective\" acceptance and internalization of coloni","PeriodicalId":288505,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Philosophy: A Cross-Disciplinary Inquiry","volume":"130 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131741723","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2009-12-15DOI: 10.5840/JPHILNEPAL2009481
Bed P. Paudyal
Theodor W. Adorno's reflections on literature and the arts are spread over several of his works, but his "systematic" and comprehensive theorization of art (including literature) was to wait until Aesthetic Theory, which Adorno did not live to complete. However, as the editors of the original German edition, Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedeman, quote Adorno (from a letter he wrote "several days before his death"), "the final version 'still needed a desperate effort' but ... 'basically it is now a matter of organization and hardly that of the substance of the book'"; (1) it is not inappropriate to rely on Aesthetic Theory as repository of Adorno's thought on the subject of art and literature. Supplementing its "reading" with relevant chapters from Adorno's other works -Dialectic of Enlightenment (which he coauthored with Max Horkheimer), Prisms, and Notes to Literature)-this essay concentrates on the concept of mimesis in Adorno's theory of arts and literature in order to examine the various meanings Adorno assigns to that concept as well as the "constellations" in which this concept articulates with other concepts. Since Adorno's aesthetic theory forms a coherent part of his overall philosophical enterprise, the strategy used here is to discuss briefly some key concepts constitutive of Adorno's critique of philosophy and of Capitalist society, and then zero in on the concept of mimesis. Adorno was a leading member of the Frankfurt School-an institute that championed "critical theory," which attempted to "grasp contemporary society and culture as a totality," espoused "unity of theory and praxis," and critiqued instrumental rationality. (2) Key to Adorno's thinking, as to the Frankfurt School's, were Marx's concept of commodity fetishism and Georg Lukacs's concept of reification. Commodity fetishism names the enigma in Capitalist society, where the value of the commodity as the product of social labor appears as the value of the commodity itself just as the relation between human beings essential to the production and exchange of commodities appears as the relation between commodities themselves. In other words, commodities become fetishes because they seem to acquire a life of their own. (3) Lukacs's theory of reification extends Marx's concept of commodity fetishism, via Max Weber's theory of rationalization, to argue that not only the economic sphere (in Marxist base-superstructure model, the socio-economic base comprising of the forces and relations of production) but "social institutions such as law, administration, and journalism" and "academic disciplines such as economics, jurisprudence, and philosophy" also become permeated by the commodity form or the logic of exchange. Indeed, according to Lukacs, commodity fetishism governs not only the objects in the world but equally the subjects, who are reduced to exchangeable commodities, "like mere things obeying the inexorable laws of the marketplace." (4) Adorno's favorite word for the total reific
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Pub Date : 2009-12-15DOI: 10.5840/JPHILNEPAL20094833
Yubraj Aryal
This year's XXII World Congress of Philosophy met on July 30-August 05 in Korea under the Congress's theme " Rethinking Philosophy Today." This is a congress which meets every five years. Last time it met in 2003 in Turkey and the next time will be in Greece, the homeland of philosophy indeed, in 2013. Philosophers and philosophy teachers from more than eighty-two countries participated in this quintessential philosophy congress. Most of them including myself presented papers at a series of different sessions. Almost all of the rest of the countries except my own country had more than one delegate. I was the single delegate from Nepal. This speaks much about ourselves besides the fact of our economic hardship, because participation from 'poor' countries like Ethiopia, Sudan, and Nigeria included more than a single delegate. Despite some bitter feelings about our backwardness, I represented my country with a high feeling. The XXII Congress was important for us Asians, because it is the first ever of these congresses to have met on Asian soil in the long history of its one hundred and eight years. It was an opportunity to display the beauty and strength of our philosophical systems and traditions to the global communities. The heavy presence of philosophers from China, India, Japan and Korea definitively asserted what was Asian in the congress. Nepali representation at such a historic congress was very crucial for the promotion of the Nepali image in the global intellectual community, and I was very conscious of this fact. Who we are matters in how far we engage in dialogue with the global community. Our long isolationism can no longer help us to define who we are. For the first time in the history of the Nepali philosophical tradition, I stood high in front of a colorful gathering of very distinguished philosophers and spoke in a Nepali voice about our interest in the establishment of a cooperative society for philosophy and humanistic studies in South Asia. I was quite aware that we alone could do nothing unless intellectual colleagues of our neighboring countries extended their helping hands. But I was proud when Professor Bhuvan Chandel, current Secretary of the Centre for Studies in Civilizations in New Delhi, embraced me saying "Nepal is our identity!" after the gathering. At least we could make our presence and influences known and felt to our own Indian counterparts. Finally, I realized that the global community (although we can question the validity of such a community) is welcoming us to come up with our own voice. They are sympathetic to listening to our voice. How much we want to come out of our 'exotic' hibernation depends on us. Whether we want to maintain same past isolationism in a kind of illusory prelapsarian bliss, or whether we want to come up to the global front is up to us. Keeping the local sovereignty intact and letting it interact with the global is a need of every society today. To initiate a dialogue with the global does
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