The phenomenology of life is the best available path for phenomenology today. Through new readings of two of the most influential French thinkers of the twentieth century-Michel Henry and Paul Ricoeur, Pathos and Praxis: An Integrated Phenomenology of Life shows that their actual debates over the interpretation of Freud and Marx signal two rival approaches to the phenomenology of life. While Henry reveals the phenomenological meaning of life though an inward turn to a pure subjective feeling of being alive, (...) Ricoeur anchors its significance in the reciprocal interaction between the self and the world. But these two alternatives are not necessarily opposed. This book proposes an integrated phenomenology of life to which each thinker makes an important contribution. To be a self is to suffer the pathos of "having a life" but also to be capable of engaging in the praxis of "leading a life." By thinking the pathos and praxis of life together, the integrated approach preserves human agency against deterministic conceptions of life and at the same time avoids the meritocratic hubris that depicts one's life solely as the result of one's own doing. This integration of having and leading a life reframes our thinking about human capabilities and vulnerabilities in a way that has important implications for biopolitics and the ethics of life. (shrink)

El presente artículo busca interrogar el pathos de la vida y de la existencia, a partir del estudiode las obras de Michel Henry y de Henri Maldiney. Dicho intento de ampliar la razón recobrando ladimensión afectiva de la vida o de la existencia ha orientado a la fenomenologíahacia una reflexión profunda sobre una inmanencia absoluta de la vida o sobre la apertura hacia elacontecimiento de sentido que es propia a la existencia. De este modo, nos pregunatremos quéfenomenología se apropia (...) mejor la tarea de ampliar la razón hacia la dimensióndel sentir y de la afectividad. (shrink)

In praise of cruelty : Bataille, Kafka, and Ling-Chi -- Fragmentary description of a disaster : Claude Simon -- The resistance to pathos and the pathos of resistance : Peter Weiss -- Medeamachine : the "fallout" of violence in Heiner Müller -- Epilogue : Francis Bacon, or, The brutality of fact.

Resumen : A partir de algunas consideraciones propuestas por Georges Didi-Huberman, el artículo se dedica a explorar las vinculaciones que conducen del pathos a la acción política. A través de las concepciones de la imagen como pasaje de la pasión a la acción y de la imagen en su relación con el gesto y la revuelta, se formula un abordaje de No intenso agora. Teniendo en cuenta las indagaciones de El acorazado Potemkin emprendidas por Didi-Huberman, nos proponemos estudiar allí (...) un motivo icono-cinematográfico: la imagen de jóvenes arrojando piedras contra las fuerzas represivas. Si Moreira Salles construye desde allí su interpretación del fenómeno histórico de las insurrecciones del 68 en Brasil, París y China, ponemos esa imagen en relación con sus apariciones en el cine militante latinoamericano de los años sesenta para analizar sus derivas. Finalmente, se plantea una aproximación a la actualidad a partir de la concepción benjaminiana de la melancolía. Palabras clave : Pathos; Didi-Huberman; Revuelta; Cine latinoamericano; Cine político.: Based on some considerations proposed by Georges Didi-Huberman, the article explores the lines that lead from pathos to political action. Through conceptions of the image as a passage from passion to action and the image related to gesture and revolt, these pages pose an approach of No intenso agora. Taking into account the inquiries of Battleship Potemkin undertaken by Didi-Huberman, we propose to study there an icon-cinematographic motive: the image of young people throwing stones at repressive forces. If Moreira Salles builds from there his interpretation of the historical phenomenon of the insurrections of '68 in Brazil, Paris and China, we propose to put that image in relation to his appearances in the Latin American militant cinema of the sixties to analyze its drifts. Finally, the article proposes an approach to the present based on the Benjaminian conception of melancholy. Key Words : Pathos; Didi-Huberman; Riot; Latin American cinema; Political cinema. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: Introduction; Part I. Theoretical Views about Pity and Fear as Aesthetic Emotions: 1. Drama and the emotions: an Indo-European connection? 2. Gorgias: a strange trio, the poetic emotions; 3. Plato: from reality to tragedy and back; 4. Aristotle: the first 'theorist' of the aesthetic emotions; Part II. Pity and Fear within Tragedies: 5. An introduction; 6. Aeschylus: Persians; 7. Prometheus Bound; 8. Sophocles: Ajax; 9. Euripides: Orestes; Appendix: catharsis and the emotions in the definition of tragedy (...) in the Poetics. (shrink)

In this paper, we present a model of pathos, delineate its operationalisation, and demonstrate its utility through an analysis of natural language argumentation. We understand pathos as an interactional persuasive process in which speakers are performing pathos appeals and the audience experiences emotional reactions. We analyse two strategies of such appeals in pre-election debates: pathotic Argument Schemes based on the taxonomy proposed by Walton et al. (Argumentation schemes, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008), and emotion-eliciting language based on (...) psychological lexicons of emotive words (Wierzba in Behav Res Methods 54:2146–2161, 2021). In order to match the appeals with possible reactions, we collect real-time social media reactions to the debates and apply sentiment analysis (Alswaidan and Menai in Knowl Inf Syst 62:2937–2987, 2020) method to observe emotion expressed in language. The results point to the importance of pathos analysis in modern discourse: speakers in political debates refer to emotions in most of their arguments, and the audience in social media reacts to those appeals using emotion-expressing language. Our results show that pathos is a common strategy in natural language argumentation which can be analysed with the support of computational methods. (shrink)

In Pathos und Schwalbe (2018) werden die Möglichkeiten einer aus der pathetischen Erfahrung erwachsenden dichterischen Ekstase verhandelt. Auffallend sind zahlreiche Bezugnahmen auf das Weltgeschehen, vor allem die Natur wird zum Resonanzraum einer sich über schrankenlose Ergriffenheit konstituierenden Subjektivität, die sich im ekstatischen Zustand des Außer-sich-Seins über ontologische Grenzen hinwegsetzt. In Mayröckers eigenwilligen Variationen des nature writing blitzen Blumen auf dem Wege der Dissemination im Text auf, einer Bedeutungsstreuung, die das ekstatische Potential noch kleinster Wortelemente auslotet. Durch die Assimilierung bildkünstlerischer (...) und musikalischer Verfahren werden die Möglichkeit einer Überführung der ekstatischen Erfahrung in die Schrift erkundet. Die Möglichkeit von Text wird dabei allein durch das collagierende Verfahren offengehalten, das ein komplexes Gefüge hervorbringt, in dem Bilder-, Musik- und Textreminiszenzen miteinander verwoben sind. (shrink)

PATHOS is not the same thing as suffering, though, of course, it is bound up with suffering, just as it is bound up with contingency and loneliness. We suffer when somebody dies whom we loved, but pathos makes its appearance only when we turn up a letter and find in it some characteristic turn of expression, brave and cheerful perhaps in face of pain or disappointment, or an old jacket, or a pipe, or things arranged in a certain (...) way in a bedroom or kitchen. Not that pathos has to wait on death: the boy in John McGahern’s novel The Dark sits by the fire at night after his father has gone to bed, and his mood of enmity and disgust is disturbed and broken by the sight of the heavy country shoes his father had thrown carelessly aside—he meets pathos for the first time, and is deeply changed by it, even though the external father-son relationship seems to remain unchanged.…What has happened in this case is that the boy’s personality has been extended in the direction of manhood; suffering was nothing new to him but this was something new, a new dimension, new horizons of the spirit. (shrink)

English summary: In "Also Spoke Zarathustra," Nietzsche referred to, considerably more than in his other writings, the sum-total of the western tradition and condensed within it our cultural heritage in a stupendous synthesis, which he configured in a curious space of citations, parodies, and echoes. Already the colorful singularity makes the text an important bearer and filter of tradition and a model case, on which literary and philosophical approaches, confronted with the question of cultural memory and Nietzsche's reassessment of it, (...) are able to mutually compliment and illuminate each other. This anthology documents a spectrum of possible avenues into Nietzsche's chief work, into his characteristic dynamic of recreation, and to the specific forms in which he actualized the compression of western tradition in "Zarathustra." The pathos of "Zarathustra," Nietzsche's parody, and the concept of cryptomnesia (the forgotten memory), in which the transvaluation of tradition is placed within the horizon of productive forgetting, are therefore special challenges for literary studies as well as the thinking of the present. German description: In 'Also sprach Zarathustra' bezieht sich Nietzsche weit mehr als in anderen Schriften auf den Fundus der abendlandischen Uberlieferung und verdichtet mithin unser kulturelles Erbe in einer riesigen Synthese, die sich als eigentumlicher Spielraum von Zitaten, Parodien und Anklangen konfiguriert. Gerade die schillernde Singularitat dieser Synthese macht den Text zu einem bedeutenden Trager und Filter der Tradition und somit zu einem Modellfall, an dem sich literaturwissenschaftliche und philosophische Zugangsweisen, die sich mit der Frage nach dem kulturellen Gedachtnis und dessen Umwertungspraxis bei Nietzsche konfrontieren, erganzen und gegenseitig beleuchten konnen. Der Sammelband dokumentiert ein Spektrum moglicher Zugange zu Nietzsches Hauptwerk, zu seiner charakteristischen Dynamik der Neuschopfung und zu den spezifischen Formen, in denen sich die Verdichtung der Tradition im 'Zarathustra' artikuliert. Das Pathos Zarathustras, Nietzsches Parodie und der Kryptomnesie-Begriff, der die Umwertung der Tradition in den Horizont eines produktiven Vergessens stellt, werden dabei zu besonderen Herausforderungen der Literaturwissenschaft sowie des Denkens der Gegenwart. (shrink)

Celle de Pathos der Distanz est un notion fondamentale de la réflexion que Nietzsche, aux années 80, consacre à la généalogie des valeurs morales et à la corréspondante hiérarchie des hommes. Le Pathos der Distanz, coractérisant et distinguant la forme de vie la plus noble, excellente, est en soi un objection aux revendications d'egalité universelle, puisqu'il s'oppose à la validité universelle des valuers morales. Un aspect plus profond de la valorisation du Pathos der Distanz renvoie au travail (...) de transformation de l'expérience de soi, de récalibration des puissances individuelles ed des potentialités de l'homme . La dissolution des catéegories de la psychologie et de la morale traditionnelles comporte une revision de l'experience méme de soi: Nietzsche essaie d'articular un parcours de réapprentissage, dont l'une de voies d'accès provilégiée est le phénomène affectif d'autoperception du Pathos der Distanz.Der Begriff des Pathos der Distanz ist fundamental für die Überlegungen, die Nietzsche in den 80er Jahern der Genealogie der moarlischen Werte und der zugehörigen Hierarchie der Menschen widmet. Indem es die vornehmste und ausgezeichnete Lebensform charakterisiert, stecht das Pathos der Distanz im Gegensatz zum Anspruch auf universelle gleichheit und allgemeingültige moralische Werte. Ein tieferer Aspekt des Pathos der Distanz liegt in der Transformation der selbsterfahrung und des immer neuren Ins-Gleichgewicht-Kommens der individuellen Kräfte und der Fähigkeiten. Die Auflösung der Kategorien der traditionellen Psychologie und Moral bringt eine Revision der Selbsterfahrung mit sich: Nietzsche veruscht, einen Parcours des Wiedererlemens zu formulieren, zu dessen Hauptwegen das Pathos der Distanz als affektives Phänomen der Selbstwahrnehmung zählt.Pathos der Distanz is a fundamental notion of Nietzsche's reflexions that he concluded in the 80s on the geneology of moral values and corresponding hierarchy of man. By characterising and distinguishing the most noble and excellent form of life, Pathos der Distanz is an objection to universal equality and opposes the universal validity of moral values. A deeper aspect to the valorization of Pathos der Distanz relates to the perspective of transformation of self-experience, to recalibration of individual powers and human capacities. The dissolution of the categories of traditional psychology and morality leads to a revision of self-experience: Nietzsche tries to provide a method of relearning, one of which is the affective phenomenon of self-perception of Pathos der Distanz. (shrink)

Spricht man heute von Pathos, dann meint man meist peinlichen Gefühlskitsch. Diese Abwertung ist das Ergebnis einer Begriffsgeschichte, die um 1800 kippt. Während die Poetik und Ästhetik des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts den hohen Kunstformen eine pathetische Ausdrucksweise vorschreiben, fasst Hegel das Pathos nur noch als das Leiden des vormodernen naiven Helden. Warburg beschreibt das Pathetische schließlich als eine in der Antike geprägte Stilform. Zu dieser Historisierung des Pathos, das vom zeitlosen Ideal der Kunst zu einer ihrer (...) Entwicklungsstufen wird, gehört die Diagnose vom Pathosverlust in der versachlichten Moderne. Trotz aller Versuche einer Reaktivierung pathetischer Kunst, etwa im Expressionismus, wandert ein mit Übertreibung und Trivialität assoziiertes Pathos im 20. Jahrhundert in die Populärkultur ab. Vom modernen Unbehagen am Pathos aus adressieren die im Band versammelten Beiträge aus Literaturwissenschaft, Rhetorik, Kunstgeschichte und Filmwissenschaft problematische Punkte historischer Pathoskonzepte. Auf der Suche nach Widersprüchen setzen sie an historischen, diskursiven und medialen Übergängen an: am Transfer zwischen Rhetorik und Poetik; zwischen Ethos und Pathos, zwischen realer Gewalterfahrung und ihrer formalisierten Darstellung, zwischen großen Gesten und privatem Gefühlsausdruck im 18. Jahrhundert. Diskutiert werden ebenfalls die Ausprägungen eines prosaischen Pathos im 19. Jahrhundert und dessen Verhältnis zu medizinischen und psychiatrischen Diskursen sowie die Remodellierung des Pathos in den Bildmedien des 20. Jahrhunderts. (shrink)

This paper is a test case for the claim, made famous by Myles Burnyeat, that the ancient Greeks did not recognize subjective truth or knowledge. After a brief discussion of the issue in Sextus Empiricus, I then turn to Plato's discussion of Protagorean views in the Theaetetus. In at least two passages, it seems that Plato attributes to Protagoras the view that our subjective experiences constitute truth and knowledge, without reference to any outside world of objects. I argue that these (...) passages have been misunderstood and that on the correct reading, they do not say anything about subjective knowledge. I then try out what I take to be the correct reading of the passages. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the importance of causes in Greek epistemology. (shrink)

For many of the ancient Greek philosophers, the ethical life was understood to be closely tied up with important notions like rational integrity, self-control, self-sufficiency, and so on. Because of this, feeling or passion (pathos), and in particular, pleasure, was viewed with suspicion. There was a general insistence on drawing up a sharp contrast between a life of virtue on the one hand and one of pleasure on the other. While virtue was regarded as rational and as integral to (...) advancing one’s well-being or happiness and safeguarding one’s autonomy, pleasure was viewed as largely irrational and as something that usually undermines a life of reason, self-control and self-sufficiency. I want to try to show that the hedonist Aristippus of Cyrene, a student and contemporary of Socrates, was unique in not drawing up such a sharp contrast. Aristippus, I argue, might be seen to be challenging the conception of passion and pleasure connected to loss of self-control and hubristic behavior. Not only do I try to show that pleasure according to Aristippus is much more comprehensive or inclusive than it is usually taken to be, but that a certain kind of control and self-possession actually play an important part in his conception of pleasure and in his hedonism as a whole. (shrink)

In Aristotle's Rhetoric, logos must be conceived as enthymematical argumentation relative to the issue of the case. Ethos and pathos also can take the form of an enthymeme, but this argumentation doesn't relate (directly) to the issue. In this kind of enthymeme, the conclusion is relative to the ethos of the speaker or (reasons for) the pathos of the audience. In an ideal situation — with a good procedure and rational judges — logos dominates and in the real (...) situation of Aristotle's time — with an imperfect procedure and irrational judges — ethos and pathos prevail. (shrink)

One of the most striking differences between ancient and modern writings on Homer is the prominence in the former, and the rarity in the latter, of discussions of pathos. The word barely appears in the most characteristic books of our time on the subject. Thus the inquirer will find in Wace and Stubbings's Companion to Homer an index hospitable enough to include ‘Babylonian cuneiform’, and ‘Kum-Tepe, neolithic-site at’, and ‘Pig-keeping, in Homer’; but for ‘pathos’ he will look in (...) vain. (shrink)

As has been widely documented, the human being is the result of his ties. The existence of a human being without networks is not possible. In turn, the network is a result, a human construction. From this reciprocal dynamic, the human being extracts what is necessary both for the configuration of his existence, and his well-being, as well as to evaluate it. In this sense, getting sick or being “healthy” psychologically is inseparable from insertion in networks. The network builds a (...) healthy or sick living being, and provides what gives personal development and what makes sick. At the same time, it evaluates what is healthy or sick and makes the subject feel healthy or sick.In this sense, networks are an increasingly growing space for studies of mental pathologies and human suffering, as well as mental health alternatives and support. Not only in the sense of their own pathologies generated by the networks, but in the generation in networks of concepts and meanings for what should or should not be understood and perceived as pathological and under the protection of connection to exist with a sensation of well-being.The chapter documents some of the discussions on these problems, establishes some conceptual and theoretical references for the study of mental health in networks, and, at the same time, proposes alternative methodologies for approaches to the issue of the relationship between pathos and networks. It is illustrated with some of the results and projects coordinated by the authors in research in this field. (shrink)

Ziel dieses Aufsatzes ist es, die Erfahrung von Vulnerabilität in ihrer Besonderheit darzustellen und zu analysieren. Obwohl Verletzlichkeit zu einer zentralen Kategorie in Diskursen v. a. der praktischen Philosophie oder der Soziologie avanciert ist, wird ebendiese Erfahrung nach wie vor weniger beleuchtet als zumeist schlicht vorausgesetzt. Die Schwierigkeit dabei mag darin liegen, dass es sich dabei um ein Latenzphänomen handelt, denn Vulnerabilität tritt zumeist nicht als solche zutage, sondern deutet sich etwa in Verletzungen, Schmerz, Krankheit, Angst oder auch subtilen Erwartungshaltungen (...) an.Der Text geht dabei von der These aus, dass ein fundamentales (existenzielles) Vertrauen in unseren Leib, die Anderen und die Welt unser In-der-Welt-sein fundiert. Dieses Vertrauen wiederum ist die Grundlage für eine zentrifugale, nach außen bzw. zur Welt hin orientierte leibliche Existenz. Vor diesem Hintergrund ist es von Relevanz, zwei fundamentale Dimensionen des Erlebens von Verletzbarkeit zu unterscheiden. Einerseits kann sich eine Erfahrung von Verletzbarkeit situativ einstellen, weil beim Eintritt etwa von Schmerz oder Erkrankung das Vertrauen in unseren Leib enttäuscht oder – im Extremfall großer Schmerzen, schwerer Krankheit oder exzessiver Gewalt – verraten scheint, wodurch es zwar in Frage gestellt wird, jedoch innerhalb konkreter Umstände; der Begriff des Pathos und das darin implizierte Moment des Überraschtseins bringt dies zum Ausdruck. Andererseits kann sich Vulnerabilität gleichsam chronifizieren, d. h. sich als zentripetale Disposition in unseren habituellen Leib als eine Spur einschreiben, die das In-der-Welt-sein durchdringt. (shrink)

This paper aims to discuss ridicule in Plato. Often neglected in modern accounts of emotions, ridicule is in fact considered a pathos by Plato and extensively deployed in his dialogues. I will analyse ridicule from a descriptive, a normative, and a “practical” perspective, paying attention to how Plato understands its basic functioning, how he thinks that it should be regulated, and how he uses it in his dialogues. More generally, this paper will be an opportunity to explore some issues (...) related to the “pathe of the dialogue”, by which I mean both the emotions that are staged through the characters of Platonic fiction and the emotions which Plato aimed to elicit in his audience. (shrink)

En el presente artículo se pretende clarificar el significado del pathos de lo divino como atributo de la emocionalidad en Dios. Son señalados algunos aspectos esenciales de la tradición judía, refiriendo los vínculos y controversias temáticas entre Heschel, Maimónides y Spinoza en torno a los atributos de Dios y su relación con los hombres. También se alude la crítica que Spinoza dirigió a la tradición judía y las consecuencias de esa actitud para el pensador holandés, incluyendo el rechazo de (...) otros eruditos del judaísmo. Por último, se explican algunas de las confrontaciones recientes hacia la concepción antropomórfica de lo divino y las implicaciones de asumir que Dios tiene emociones. (shrink)

Jean-Michel Rabaté uses Nietzsche's image of a "pathos of distance," the notion that certain values cannot originate in a community but are created by a few gifted and lofty individuals, as the basis for a wide-ranging investigation into the ethics of the moderns. The expression of "pathos of distance" impressed would-be modernists like the American James Huneker and the Irish poet W. B. Yeats as they confronted the new in the arts. Later, it helped Deleuze and Barthes make (...) sense of modernity when they tried to tease out all the implications of "distance." Despite Benjamin criticism of Nietzsche's doctrine of the "eternal return of the same" in the Arcades Project, in his "Theses on the Philosophy of History" Benjamin envisions a redeemed history that follows Nietzsche's basic intuition about the need to make every moment count for history. By first establishing this unlikely meeting of Nietzsche and Benjamin through their ideas of history and ethics, Rabaté is able then to provide an original genealogy for the ethics of the modern, moving through figures and moments as varied as Yeats and the birth of Irish Modernism, the ethics of courage in Virginia Woolf, Rilke, Apollinaire, and others in 1910, Gide and Genet's ethical impulse to combine erotic liberation with the motivation for political revolution, and Derrida's reading of Joyce's Ulysses and a modern mode of writing that sought to get closer to the senses. The result is a fascinating critique of Nietzsche, Benjamin, affect theory, and the origins of the ethics of modernism. (shrink)

O presente estudo tem por objetivo analisar as disparidades existentes entre dois momentos fundamentais quanto à constituição da polis grega, a saber, o trágico e o ligado ao logos e à racionalidade, denominado período socrático/platônico. Primeiramente, lançaremos nosso olhar sobre o chamado período trágico da cultura helênica, buscando contemplar o homem enredado pelo pathos trágico e sua consequente idiossincrasia dionisíaca. Ainda no século V a.C. contemplaremos este que representa um dos principais pilares de sustentação da filosofia do período antropológico (...) do pensamento grego: Platão. Contudo nos deteremos a alguns aspectos do socratismo tendo como ideia disparadora a possibilidade da akrasia. Deste modo entendemos que nos são apresentados dois modelos de homem: O ligado ao período trágico e o oferecido pela ética platônica guiado pelo logos. Utilizaremos como aporte teórico, a contribuição de helenistas como Jean-Pierre Vernant e Romilly, assim como o filósofo alemão Nietzsche. Quanto à contribuição platônica nos deteremos sobres os diálogos platônicos Laques, Protágoras e Górgias. Exatamente por sua importância quanto ao tema da akrasia nos diálogos da primeira fase platônica. (shrink)

Frente al interés por construir un discurso que dé cuenta del momento particular del arte contemporáneo, y que, además, pueda esclarecer y proponer diversas respuestas frente a los productos artísticos que se realizan en la difícil circunstancia actual, se han dirigido diferentes propuestas disciplinares que presentan análisis de la obra de arte y la experiencia que surge en su comprensión. La situación, que a veces se caracteriza por la impotencia de la teoría, la historia y la crítica del arte al (...) ocuparse del arte más reciente, proviene, entre otras razones, de un hecho evidente: nunca estas disciplinas habían tenido que entenderse con tal abundancia de prácticas, fenómenos artísticos, y declaraciones artísticas. Asimismo, las complejas formas vividas por el sistema internacional del arte ha planteado a la comprensión de estos fenómenos una serie de retos de fuerte impacto en la misma actividad de los artistas. Y uno de esos retos ha sido examinar la forma material, los soportes y lenguajes artísticos de obra de arte. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the Nietzschean notion of a pathos of distance, which some democratic theorists would like to recruit in the service of a democratic ethos. Recently their efforts have been criticized on the basis that the Nietzschean pathos of distance involves an aristocratic attitude of essentializing contempt towards the common man that is incompatible with the democratic demand to accord everyone equal respect and dignity. I argue that this criticism is misguided and that the (...) class='Hi'>pathos in question involves encouraging the flourishing of higher types that give meaning and justification to the social order. For Nietzsche, the experience of living under a society that is thus organized leads to the psychological demand to search for spiritual states within a person that can make life worth living. I conclude by considering whether, so conceived, the pathos of distance is compatible with democracy. (shrink)

Se trata aquí de hablar de patologías, de sintomática, de un «afuera» de lo normativo. Se trata de lo extraño, del trastorno, de lo afectivo. Se trata aquí del rasgo manifiesto de lo externo cuando penetra en un presunto cosmos cerrado que, sin embargo, tiene infinidad de fugas. Se trata del decir de todo ello. Se trata del silencio acerca de eso mismo, a veces forzado. Porque se trata de la imposibilidad de expresarse, de decir, no del autor que aquí (...) trata de poner en palabras aquello mismo que está cuestionando, sino que lo áfono adviene cuando se trata de establecer en un diálogo con el otro (o los otros) algo acerca del temple anímico que, en un determinado momento, incluso con la ocasión de dicho diálogo mismo, afecta al «hablante». Cuando adviene el silencio, cuando la palabra no se materializa, sin embargo, no significa que no se diga nada, sino que tal callar ya apunta hacia algo, tal vez, no explícito, pero que, no obstante, late sintomáticamente como sentido último del malestar que provoca lo extraño al irrumpir en lo preceptivo. ---- It is a question here of speaking of pathologies, of symptomatology, of an "outside" of the normative. It is about the strange, the disorder, the affective. It is about the manifest trait of the external when it penetrates a supposedly closed cosmos which, nevertheless, has an infinite number of leaks. It is about the telling of it all. It is about the silence about it, sometimes forced. Because it is about the impossibility of expressing oneself, of saying, not of the author who here tries to put into words the very thing he is questioning, but the aphotic comes when one tries to establish in a dialogue with the other (or the others) something about the mental temper that, at a certain moment, even on the occasion of this dialogue itself, affects the "speaker". When silence occurs, when the word does not materialise, it does not mean, however, that nothing is said, but that this silence already points to something, perhaps not explicit, but which nevertheless beats symptomatically as the ultimate meaning of the discomfort caused by the stranger breaking into the prescriptive. (shrink)

In Survivance des lucioles, Georges Didi-Huberman cites sections from a letter in which Pier Paolo Pasolini describes an encounter with a swarm of fireflies. The sight of the fireflies triggers reflections on various topics on the part of Pasolini. However, at the end of his life, Pasolini lamented the fact that fireflies had disappeared in modern society, serving as a metaphor for the fact that he had lost all hope in the consumerist society in which he was living. Pasolini’s reflections (...) on fireflies illustrate Georges Didi-Huberman’s theories on the current state and politics of images in contemporary society. In this article, several key features of the politics of images, according to Didi-Huberman, are clarified, in particular, the role of pathos and imagination. It is on the role of pathos and imagination that Didi-Huberman’s views will diverge from the theories of other prominent theorists of images, such as Jacques Rancière, Roland Barthes, W.J.T. Mitchell and Bruno Latour. By clarifying these diverging views, the theories of Didi-Huberman can be formulated more precisely. (shrink)

As a response to the decoupling of the ‘talk’ and the ‘walk’ in organizations regarding claimed goodness and actions, this contribution explores the role of the rhetorical modes of ethos, pathos, and logos as a new form of wise communication to handle timely ethical and societal issues. We develop a criticism of one-sided, often logos-oriented and instrumentalizing, irresponsible and unresponsive approaches taken by organizations in their communication efforts, and then go on to propose a more balanced, proto-wise integration of (...) the three modes as part of embodied practice. We differentiate and reintegrate these rhetorical forms, and discuss them in relation to embodied, ethical and aesthetic practices that are qualified as responsible, responsive, and reasonable in and beyond organizations. Finally, some implications and perspectives on organizing an embodied, living ethos of sustainability are suggested. (shrink)

A philosophical critique of George Grant's use of Heidegger that refers in detail to Reiner Schurmann to distinguish the terms "particularity" and "singularity.".

The paper offers a phenomenological interpretation of the temporality of chronic pain. First, I maintain that the field of presence constitutes the exhaustive horizon within which chronic pain is lived. Secondly, I argue that chronic pain is a form of depersonal-ization in that it cuts the field of presence from the past and the future. Thirdly, drawing on some recent phenomenological and neurological findings, I argue that the past and the future, despite their apparent irreality, continue to affect the present (...) “behinds its back”: either through implicit bodily memory, or through implicit bodily anticipation. Thus despite its depersonalizing effects, chronic pain is a deeply personal experience. In my conclusion, I turn to the therapeutic significance of such a phenomenology of tem-porality. I maintain that if chronic pain is nested in implicit temporality, then to confront it, one must become conscious of its effects and, if possible, neutralize their meaning. (shrink)

Nietzsche scholars have developed an interest in his use of “thick” moral psychological concepts such as virtues and emotions. This development coincides with a renewed interest among both philosophers and social scientists in virtues, the emotions, and moral psychology more generally. Contemporary work in empirical moral psychology posits contempt and disgust as both basic emotions and moral foundations of normative codes. While virtues can be individuated in various ways, one attractive principle of individuation is to index them to characteristic emotions (...) and the patterns of behavior those emotions motivate. Despite the surge in attention to Nietzsche’s use of emotions, the literature has tended to lump all emotional states together. In this paper, I argue that what Nietzsche calls the pathos of distance is best understood as the virtue associated with both contempt and disgust. I conclude with a discussion of the bleak prospects for a Nietzschean democratic ethos. (shrink)

This chapter argues that the human, all too human vulnerability to mimesis (imitation) is a central and so far underdiagnosed element internal to the Covid-19 pandemic crisis. Supplementing medical accounts of viral contagion, the chapter develops a genealogy of the concept of mimesis – from antiquity to modernity to the present – that is attentive to both its pathological and therapeutic properties. If an awareness of the pathological side of mimetic contagion is constitutive of the origins of philosophy, in Plato’s (...) Republic, and crowd psychology called attention to the mirroring dynamic of affective contagion among crowds and publics in the modern period, the Covid-19 pandemic crisis highlights the pathological implications of hypermimetic conspiracies reloaded by new media, while also revealing the human ability to develop therapeutic patho-logies – that is, critical discourses (or logoi), on the contagious dynamic of mimetic pathos. Like a Janus-faced mirror, then, this genealogy of homo mimeticus calls attention to both the contemporary dangers of affective contagion and to the urgency of transformations or metamorphosis to counter future pandemic and environmental threats that loom large in the Anthropocene. (shrink)

Obwohl der Begriff der Vulnerabilität im von mir rezipierten Werk von Bernhard Waldenfels nur an vereinzelten, ausgewählten Stellen als „Verletzlichkeit“ auftaucht, lässt sich dieser Phänomenologe ohne große Umschweife als ein Denker der Vulnerabilität ausweisen. Sein Beitrag besteht darin, mit der Affizierbarkeit des Leibes eine differenzierte Sichtweise auf Vulnerabilität erschließen zu helfen. Vulnerabilität erweist sich damit als ein Grundmoment des Erfahrungsgeschehens und rührt so an das zentrale Interesse phänomenologischen Forschens: Die Phänomenologie analysiert, wie unsere Erfahrung von etwas zustande kommt.

The chapter endeavors to present what is known in the legal literature as a rhetorical approach to law. The contribution may be understood as a preface to a broader research agenda, which proposes a conceptual framework to analyze legal argumentation in an international context. The point of departure is that law may be considered as a rhetorical practice. The chapter will justify the theoretical premise that analytical categories from the Aristotelian rhetoric can be useful in understanding the discourse in international (...) courts. To achieve this the paper has been divided into three main parts. In the first section, Aristotle’s rhetorical categories logos, pathos and ethos are defined in accordance with a rhetorical empirical method elaborated by the legal philosophers from the School of Mainz. In the second section, the core of this rhetorical empirical method is outlined following K. von Schlieffen’s work on the analysis of judicial decisions. Finally, as a simple illustration of the rhetorical approach, two decisions on human dignity from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) are examined, taking these two examples as a topos, which in turn, reinforces the case for problem-oriented reasoning in the practice of international law. (shrink)

Cet article cherche à appliquer la phénoménologie matérielle de Michel Henry à la question du rapport entre médicin et patient. A partir de la réflexion sur le statut de l'intersubjectivité en tant que intropathie, l'auteur propose un nouveau modèle de "regard clinique" et de "démarche thérapeutique".