Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2022-0263
Simon Weir
Abstract The domestic spaces of the built environment are traditionally associated with residential architecture. But the domestic spaces can also extend out, metaphorically, into familiar public spaces in which one may feel at home, and also extend inwards into self-perception, insofar as you may say that you dwell within yourself. This article begins by recalling Vitruvius’ fundamental notion of architectural utilitas concerns accommodating not a building’s owners but foreigners and strange outsiders. Vitruvius’ view on utility heavily favoured architecture’s socio-political function, and the guests he believed that architecture ought to accommodate were not merely a home’s owners or their visiting friends, but those people who are more distant from a home’s owners: those who are stranger and less well understood, known as xenos and who ought to be respected under the Ancient Greek religious and ethical principle of xenia. It is on these grounds that Vitruvius makes an ethical critique of residential architecture in favour of the virtue of public architecture. Next the reach of xenia is proposed to extend towards those who are different not merely because of ethnic differences but cognitive and sensory differences. Such accommodations are today accounted for as part of accessibility design and salutogenic design. Similar conceptions are noted in Nietzsche’s notion of an “architecture for the perceptive” and the surrealist’s interpretation of the minotaur as a hybrid not only of animal and human but a hybrid of civilised citizen and barbarian outsider. Together these sketch out an expanded sense of the domestic that includes public spaces designed to accommodate strange outsiders and the hybrid forms used to signify them.
{"title":"Domestic Hybrids: Vitruvius’ Xenia, the Surrealist’s <i>Minotaure,</i> and Shrigley’s Octopus","authors":"Simon Weir","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2022-0263","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2022-0263","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The domestic spaces of the built environment are traditionally associated with residential architecture. But the domestic spaces can also extend out, metaphorically, into familiar public spaces in which one may feel at home, and also extend inwards into self-perception, insofar as you may say that you dwell within yourself. This article begins by recalling Vitruvius’ fundamental notion of architectural utilitas concerns accommodating not a building’s owners but foreigners and strange outsiders. Vitruvius’ view on utility heavily favoured architecture’s socio-political function, and the guests he believed that architecture ought to accommodate were not merely a home’s owners or their visiting friends, but those people who are more distant from a home’s owners: those who are stranger and less well understood, known as xenos and who ought to be respected under the Ancient Greek religious and ethical principle of xenia. It is on these grounds that Vitruvius makes an ethical critique of residential architecture in favour of the virtue of public architecture. Next the reach of xenia is proposed to extend towards those who are different not merely because of ethnic differences but cognitive and sensory differences. Such accommodations are today accounted for as part of accessibility design and salutogenic design. Similar conceptions are noted in Nietzsche’s notion of an “architecture for the perceptive” and the surrealist’s interpretation of the minotaur as a hybrid not only of animal and human but a hybrid of civilised citizen and barbarian outsider. Together these sketch out an expanded sense of the domestic that includes public spaces designed to accommodate strange outsiders and the hybrid forms used to signify them.","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":"115 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135839665","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 : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2022-0268
Julián García-Labrador, Stéphane Vinolo
Abstract One of the effects of the so-called ontological turn has been to take the other so seriously that radical difference has been conceptualized ontologically. This stance has given rise, in some authors, as Descola, to a typological classification. However, we would suggest the possibility of a non-onto-typological anthropology based on Marion’s phenomenology of givenness. With the phenomenology of givenness, from which phenomena are given to a gifted – and therefore secondary – subject, this new understanding of subject allows us to think of phenomena as significations much more than as representations and to replace the discontinuity of ontological categories with the continuity of hermeneutics.
{"title":"Disassembling Descola: Phenomenological Intersections in Onto-Typological Anthropology","authors":"Julián García-Labrador, Stéphane Vinolo","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2022-0268","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2022-0268","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract One of the effects of the so-called ontological turn has been to take the other so seriously that radical difference has been conceptualized ontologically. This stance has given rise, in some authors, as Descola, to a typological classification. However, we would suggest the possibility of a non-onto-typological anthropology based on Marion’s phenomenology of givenness. With the phenomenology of givenness, from which phenomena are given to a gifted – and therefore secondary – subject, this new understanding of subject allows us to think of phenomena as significations much more than as representations and to replace the discontinuity of ontological categories with the continuity of hermeneutics.","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135954553","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 : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2022-0248
Mohammed Tayssir Safi
Abstract In this article, I argue that the nature of testimony necessitates that we distinguish between testimonies that are based on the informant's sense perception, inference, or on a longer testimonial chain. I further argue that this distinction has epistemic significance, in that it helps us better understand how reliable certain classes of testimonies are and how reliable certain individuals are, based upon the epistemic source that their testimony is ultimately grounded in. I begin the article, in Section 1, by drawing attention to the existence of several different terms for testimony found within the Islamic philosophical tradition. In Section 2, I argue that the essential difference between these terms has to do with the epistemic source that grounds the speaker’s testimony. In Section 3, I move on to explicate how this distinction helps us better understand the reliability of testimony and how it impacts our evaluation of the reliability of different speakers in different contexts. In Section 4, I use this distinction to challenge the necessary condition of speaker competency. Finally, in Section 5, I use the distinction to undermine the belief-transmission view in the epistemology of testimony.
{"title":"Testimonial Kinds: The Source Factor","authors":"Mohammed Tayssir Safi","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2022-0248","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2022-0248","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this article, I argue that the nature of testimony necessitates that we distinguish between testimonies that are based on the informant's sense perception, inference, or on a longer testimonial chain. I further argue that this distinction has epistemic significance, in that it helps us better understand how reliable certain classes of testimonies are and how reliable certain individuals are, based upon the epistemic source that their testimony is ultimately grounded in. I begin the article, in Section 1, by drawing attention to the existence of several different terms for testimony found within the Islamic philosophical tradition. In Section 2, I argue that the essential difference between these terms has to do with the epistemic source that grounds the speaker’s testimony. In Section 3, I move on to explicate how this distinction helps us better understand the reliability of testimony and how it impacts our evaluation of the reliability of different speakers in different contexts. In Section 4, I use this distinction to challenge the necessary condition of speaker competency. Finally, in Section 5, I use the distinction to undermine the belief-transmission view in the epistemology of testimony.","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43743098","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 : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2022-0245
John Ó Maoilearca
Abstract This essay connects the mystical concept of “supernothing” with Bergson’s notion of the image of nothingness as a movement in the making. I do this also with respect to the film The Empty Man (David Prior, 2020) – which explicitly cites Gorgias’s four-part embargo on nothing (it exists, it cannot be known, communicated, or understood): nothingness is re-rendered as movement, in particular, the transmission and reception of images in the brain. Indeed, this is precisely Bergson’s theory of the brain too – as the receiver and transmitter of images, a communication of movements. This “nihilistic” approach to the brain (it does not store images, it has no positive content) is not a valorisation of the ego as void à la Metzinger, but the real, processual rethinking of what nothingness and nihilism might mean – with a full, moving “supernothing” at its heart. Though there is a mystical and a film-philosophical account referenced in this renewal of nothingness, it will not lead to any exotic or hyperbolic excess (the brain as supernatural agent), but rather a very “ordinary” account that we will describe in terms of “supernormalisation”: an “unlearning” or mundanising of the supernatural: an extraction of the supernatural by natural means.
{"title":"Supernormalising Nothing from the Hyperbolic Nihil to the Ordinary Supernothing","authors":"John Ó Maoilearca","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2022-0245","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2022-0245","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This essay connects the mystical concept of “supernothing” with Bergson’s notion of the image of nothingness as a movement in the making. I do this also with respect to the film The Empty Man (David Prior, 2020) – which explicitly cites Gorgias’s four-part embargo on nothing (it exists, it cannot be known, communicated, or understood): nothingness is re-rendered as movement, in particular, the transmission and reception of images in the brain. Indeed, this is precisely Bergson’s theory of the brain too – as the receiver and transmitter of images, a communication of movements. This “nihilistic” approach to the brain (it does not store images, it has no positive content) is not a valorisation of the ego as void à la Metzinger, but the real, processual rethinking of what nothingness and nihilism might mean – with a full, moving “supernothing” at its heart. Though there is a mystical and a film-philosophical account referenced in this renewal of nothingness, it will not lead to any exotic or hyperbolic excess (the brain as supernatural agent), but rather a very “ordinary” account that we will describe in terms of “supernormalisation”: an “unlearning” or mundanising of the supernatural: an extraction of the supernatural by natural means.","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46948469","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 : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2022-0240
Raine Ruoppa
Abstract In philosophical discourse, vagueness is commonly regarded as an undesirable and problematic aspect of human experience. Such standpoints are not unfounded. However, in this article, I argue that vagueness may in certain instances also possess an instrumental role that supports specific modes of human aspiration, including the artistic and the mathematical. In particular, I investigate the ways in which vagueness not only hinders but also fosters the emergence of an aesthetic quality of experience during the imaginative endeavours of fine art and mathematics. The manner in which the benefit from felt vagueness ties into the formation of artistic and mathematical scenarios helps to illuminate deep and often unnoticed relations between these two domains of human ingenuity. In this article, the overall concept of experience and the particular features of human experience, such as the aesthetic and the vague, are examined in the context of John Dewey’s philosophical pragmatism. In Dewey’s philosophical framework, the human mind and culture are understood as natural phenomena. As such, the Deweyan approach fits the paradigm of a twenty-first century scientific understanding of the inherent ontological unity of all modes of human existence and activity.
{"title":"Managing the Vague: John Dewey’s Aesthetics and the Relation of Fine Art and Mathematics","authors":"Raine Ruoppa","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2022-0240","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2022-0240","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In philosophical discourse, vagueness is commonly regarded as an undesirable and problematic aspect of human experience. Such standpoints are not unfounded. However, in this article, I argue that vagueness may in certain instances also possess an instrumental role that supports specific modes of human aspiration, including the artistic and the mathematical. In particular, I investigate the ways in which vagueness not only hinders but also fosters the emergence of an aesthetic quality of experience during the imaginative endeavours of fine art and mathematics. The manner in which the benefit from felt vagueness ties into the formation of artistic and mathematical scenarios helps to illuminate deep and often unnoticed relations between these two domains of human ingenuity. In this article, the overall concept of experience and the particular features of human experience, such as the aesthetic and the vague, are examined in the context of John Dewey’s philosophical pragmatism. In Dewey’s philosophical framework, the human mind and culture are understood as natural phenomena. As such, the Deweyan approach fits the paradigm of a twenty-first century scientific understanding of the inherent ontological unity of all modes of human existence and activity.","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46972422","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 : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2022-0230
Feyzullah Yılmaz
Abstract While the problem of nihilism is derived from a particular historical and intellectual context in Western philosophy, i.e., the pantheism controversy in modern German philosophy and the ideas of Nietzsche, non-Western thinkers also engaged with it and developed responses to it. In this article, I am interested in analyzing Muhammad Iqbal’s (1877–1938), a leading Muslim thinker (a Sufi) from India, engagement with the problem of nihilism and his response to it from a Sufi perspective. Arguing that the existing literature on Iqbal fails to understand the deeper impact of Nietzsche’s ideas on Iqbal’s philosophy and the dramatic role “the problem of nihilism” played in causing changes in Iqbal’s philosophy, or on Iqbal’s intellectual development, in this article, I analyze how Iqbal’s encounter with the ideas of Nietzsche during his study period in Europe between 1905 and 1908 has introduced him to the problem of nihilism in its Nietzschean form, how this led Iqbal to a nihilistic mood/crisis from 1909 to 1913, and then how he later developed a response to nihilism by reconstructing the Sufi cosmology and by revaluating the Sufi values of the pantheistic/Persian type of Sufism – the outcome of which is found in his philosophical poem Asrar-i-Khudî (1915).
{"title":"Iqbal, Nietzsche, and Nihilism: Reconstruction of Sufi Cosmology and Revaluation of Sufi Values in Asrar-i-Khudî","authors":"Feyzullah Yılmaz","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2022-0230","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2022-0230","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract While the problem of nihilism is derived from a particular historical and intellectual context in Western philosophy, i.e., the pantheism controversy in modern German philosophy and the ideas of Nietzsche, non-Western thinkers also engaged with it and developed responses to it. In this article, I am interested in analyzing Muhammad Iqbal’s (1877–1938), a leading Muslim thinker (a Sufi) from India, engagement with the problem of nihilism and his response to it from a Sufi perspective. Arguing that the existing literature on Iqbal fails to understand the deeper impact of Nietzsche’s ideas on Iqbal’s philosophy and the dramatic role “the problem of nihilism” played in causing changes in Iqbal’s philosophy, or on Iqbal’s intellectual development, in this article, I analyze how Iqbal’s encounter with the ideas of Nietzsche during his study period in Europe between 1905 and 1908 has introduced him to the problem of nihilism in its Nietzschean form, how this led Iqbal to a nihilistic mood/crisis from 1909 to 1913, and then how he later developed a response to nihilism by reconstructing the Sufi cosmology and by revaluating the Sufi values of the pantheistic/Persian type of Sufism – the outcome of which is found in his philosophical poem Asrar-i-Khudî (1915).","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44902851","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 : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2022-0251
Marthe Statius
Abstract This article seeks to explore the early stages of American film theory, where cinephilia became a site of aesthetic interest and criticism thanks to the theorization of cinema as a conversational medium. Following Stanley Cavell’s analysis of a distinct form of moviegoing in America, based on the casual conversation about movies, I argue that a reinterpretation of Emerson’s ordinary aesthetics has been at the core of early film theory, especially in Vachel Lindsay’s writings. In order to illustrate the relation between the defence of a new medium and the attempt to define a quintessentially American art form, this article focuses on the concept of “conversation” that Lindsay uses to describe film spectatorship and to provide a new critical apparatus to grasp the specificity of film aesthetics.
{"title":"“The Hum of the Conversing Audience”: Ordinary Criticism and Film Culture in American Early Film Theory","authors":"Marthe Statius","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2022-0251","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2022-0251","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article seeks to explore the early stages of American film theory, where cinephilia became a site of aesthetic interest and criticism thanks to the theorization of cinema as a conversational medium. Following Stanley Cavell’s analysis of a distinct form of moviegoing in America, based on the casual conversation about movies, I argue that a reinterpretation of Emerson’s ordinary aesthetics has been at the core of early film theory, especially in Vachel Lindsay’s writings. In order to illustrate the relation between the defence of a new medium and the attempt to define a quintessentially American art form, this article focuses on the concept of “conversation” that Lindsay uses to describe film spectatorship and to provide a new critical apparatus to grasp the specificity of film aesthetics.","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44914757","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 : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2022-0249
L. Monteiro
Abstract This article’s assumption is that ordinary aesthetics does not necessarily imply a distancing from art and artists; rather, it can benefit from the input of creators when they use everyday scenes or objects as their theme. This approach focuses on the practice of twentieth-century Italian painter Giorgio Morandi, who depicted compositions of common objects such as bottles, jars, and vases. Through Morandi’s meditative and artistic search, these objects are given value and aesthetic elevation in his paintings. Thomas Leddy’s aesthetics of everyday life will also be called upon in my analysis, insofar as the author recognizes a continuity between the ordinary and the extraordinary, through auratic experiences. If Morandi discovers the extraordinary in the trivial, this is achieved through a gradual process of selection regarding the objects he favoured, which allows for the interaction of various levels of aesthetic intensity. Morandi’s objects and models and their preparation suggest a circulation between aesthetic degrees that, in turn, suggests a timeless “language of things” fixed through the discourse of the paintings. Along these lines, it will be necessary to address the enchantment related to common things, a mesmerizing presence of which we became more aware through Morandi compositions.
{"title":"What’s in a Bottle? Morandi’s Art and Ordinary Aesthetics","authors":"L. Monteiro","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2022-0249","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2022-0249","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article’s assumption is that ordinary aesthetics does not necessarily imply a distancing from art and artists; rather, it can benefit from the input of creators when they use everyday scenes or objects as their theme. This approach focuses on the practice of twentieth-century Italian painter Giorgio Morandi, who depicted compositions of common objects such as bottles, jars, and vases. Through Morandi’s meditative and artistic search, these objects are given value and aesthetic elevation in his paintings. Thomas Leddy’s aesthetics of everyday life will also be called upon in my analysis, insofar as the author recognizes a continuity between the ordinary and the extraordinary, through auratic experiences. If Morandi discovers the extraordinary in the trivial, this is achieved through a gradual process of selection regarding the objects he favoured, which allows for the interaction of various levels of aesthetic intensity. Morandi’s objects and models and their preparation suggest a circulation between aesthetic degrees that, in turn, suggests a timeless “language of things” fixed through the discourse of the paintings. Along these lines, it will be necessary to address the enchantment related to common things, a mesmerizing presence of which we became more aware through Morandi compositions.","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42719258","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 : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2022-0241
Andrea Lehner, Felipe Cuervo Restrepo
Abstract This essay confronts Ray Brassier’s vindication of nihilism with other two important but frequently underexamined philosophical attempts to overcome nihilism: Hans Jonas’ and Keiji Nishitani’s. By putting these different takes on nihilism into dialogue, it explores some blind spots in Brassier’s position, as well as some of the practical consequences, for our current planetary situation, of undertaking a radical divorce between the normative and the natural that results from his radical nihilism. The article opts for a more moderate acceptance and eventual self-overcoming of nihilism, according to which, even if natural entities are indifferent to human reasons and meanings, this does not entail that nature is bereft of a human-independent normative dimension. In other words, the essay argues that care must be taken not to confuse criticisms of an anthropocentric conception of reasons and meanings with the belief that meaning is completely absent from the natural world. Thus, the central contention of the article is that, given our current climate and ecological catastrophe, one of the most pressing tasks of contemporary philosophy is to understand normativity in non-anthropocentric ways, so that humans are no longer considered as the only entities that respond to normativity. Such an attitude conceives humans as estranged normative creatures amidst a meaningless, indifferent natural world, toward which they would have no ethical responsibilities. The essay finishes by suggesting ways in which to develop an account that does not fall into this ethical vacuum.
{"title":"Nihilism Lost and Found: Brassier, Jonas, and Nishitani on Embracing and/or Overcoming Nihilism","authors":"Andrea Lehner, Felipe Cuervo Restrepo","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2022-0241","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2022-0241","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This essay confronts Ray Brassier’s vindication of nihilism with other two important but frequently underexamined philosophical attempts to overcome nihilism: Hans Jonas’ and Keiji Nishitani’s. By putting these different takes on nihilism into dialogue, it explores some blind spots in Brassier’s position, as well as some of the practical consequences, for our current planetary situation, of undertaking a radical divorce between the normative and the natural that results from his radical nihilism. The article opts for a more moderate acceptance and eventual self-overcoming of nihilism, according to which, even if natural entities are indifferent to human reasons and meanings, this does not entail that nature is bereft of a human-independent normative dimension. In other words, the essay argues that care must be taken not to confuse criticisms of an anthropocentric conception of reasons and meanings with the belief that meaning is completely absent from the natural world. Thus, the central contention of the article is that, given our current climate and ecological catastrophe, one of the most pressing tasks of contemporary philosophy is to understand normativity in non-anthropocentric ways, so that humans are no longer considered as the only entities that respond to normativity. Such an attitude conceives humans as estranged normative creatures amidst a meaningless, indifferent natural world, toward which they would have no ethical responsibilities. The essay finishes by suggesting ways in which to develop an account that does not fall into this ethical vacuum.","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44323637","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 : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2022-0242
M. Leegsma
Abstract The end of metaphysics problematizes philosophy, for it implies the end of thought “itself.” Though this raises the question how to think after the end of metaphysics, the question can only be asked on the condition that the “problem of philosophy” is posed, presupposing an answer to the question what the end of thought is. This article critically compares two ways of posing that problem. It argues that one, here called active nihilism, poses the problem falsely: it implies an answer to the question what the end of thought is, even as it makes that question impossible to answer, rendering the very problem unsolvable. The true problem of philosophy, the article argues, is what is here called the entanglement of thought and experience. In order to demonstrate what active nihilism and entanglement actually come down to, the article then presents two cases. One involves a detailed analysis of Meillassoux’s refutation of correlationism, showing how the problem of philosophy is rendered unsolvable in actual fact. The other case concerns what is called catastrophal thought. An effective demonstration of the end of thought, this first answers the question what the end of thought really is.
{"title":"What End of Thought? On the True and the False Problem of Philosophy","authors":"M. Leegsma","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2022-0242","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2022-0242","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The end of metaphysics problematizes philosophy, for it implies the end of thought “itself.” Though this raises the question how to think after the end of metaphysics, the question can only be asked on the condition that the “problem of philosophy” is posed, presupposing an answer to the question what the end of thought is. This article critically compares two ways of posing that problem. It argues that one, here called active nihilism, poses the problem falsely: it implies an answer to the question what the end of thought is, even as it makes that question impossible to answer, rendering the very problem unsolvable. The true problem of philosophy, the article argues, is what is here called the entanglement of thought and experience. In order to demonstrate what active nihilism and entanglement actually come down to, the article then presents two cases. One involves a detailed analysis of Meillassoux’s refutation of correlationism, showing how the problem of philosophy is rendered unsolvable in actual fact. The other case concerns what is called catastrophal thought. An effective demonstration of the end of thought, this first answers the question what the end of thought really is.","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45755486","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}
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