This paper critiques the view that love has meaning only when it is answered by the same object or fulfilled through a successful relationship, and theorizes how love returns to the life of the one who loves regardless of relational success or failure. Unanswered love, love that never becomes a relationship, and love that has already ended are often treated as failed or extinguished emotions. Yet some forms of love, even when they receive no return from the same object, (...) transform the lover’s sensibility, reorder the standards by which importance is judged, reveal what kind of being the lover is, and leave lasting traces in later choices and life orientation. This paper calls this structure the return of love. In this paper, the return of love refers to the process by which sensibility, values, memory, self-understanding, and life orientation transformed through love are reintegrated into the existential structure of the one who loves. This does not mean that love necessarily comes back from the same object in the same form, nor is it a doctrine of moral compensation or an optimistic consolatory claim about love. The return of love is possible because love is not an emotion that is emitted toward an object and then vanishes into nothingness, but an event that genuinely transforms the world of the one who loves. To explain this structure of return, this paper defines love as an event in which an object acquires a special meaning-position within a human being’s world and thereby transforms the lover’s sensibility and structure of life. The minimal structure of love is analyzed through four elements: responsiveness, the capture of attention, the rise of importance, and the emergence of meaning-position. These four elements do not constitute a stage model in which all love unfolds according to the same temporal sequence. Rather, they are analytical components required for love to arise as love beyond strong preference or temporary interest. Love is not merely a state in which an object is pleasurable or attractive; it is a structure in which that object gains irreplaceable weight within the subject’s world and begins to organize later perception and judgment. This paper distinguishes the formation of love from the continuation of a relationship. Love can arise without the response of the other. Even if a person does not love me in return, that person may already have acquired a special meaning-position within my world, and that love may genuinely transform my sensibility and life. However, for love as a human relationship to continue in a healthy form, a certain degree of mutuality is necessary. When non-mutuality persists in a way that loses contact with reality and erases the other’s independence and possibility of refusal, love may degenerate into obsession or reality-distorting fixation. Thus, this paper affirms the reality of unanswered love while strictly distinguishing the formation of love from the legitimacy of a relationship, and love from obsession. The return of love is analyzed across four primary layers. First, sensory return refers to the way an expanded capacity for responsiveness, opened through love, becomes active again in later experiences of the world. Second, semantic return refers to the way love reorganizes the order of values and importance through which one determines what matters. Third, self-formative return refers to the process through which the subject comes to understand anew what kind of being they are—what they love, and what kind of world makes them feel vividly alive. Fourth, temporal return refers to the way love endures through memory, reinterpretation, later choices, and standards of judgment. These four layers show that love can continue to operate within the life of the one who loves, regardless of the success or failure of a relationship. At the same time, this paper does not identify every transformation left by love with growth. Love changes human beings, but that change does not always expand life. Some forms of love may harden into closure, self-erasure, reality distortion, and obsession. By contrast, return as growth designates cases in which love’s inherently world-opening structure is not damaged, but is integrated into an expanded sensibility, refined values, deepened self-understanding, and renewed openness to the world. The return of love, then, names the structure of transformation, whereas return as growth names a specific realization of that transformation in which the lover is led into a wider world. For this argument, the paper does not restrict the objects of love to human relationships. Not only other persons, but also oneself, animals and living beings, landscapes, objects, places, music, literature, dance, exercise, knowledge, questions, and conversation may become objects of love. These objects have different structures of mutuality, yet all may form the minimal structure of love. This expansion of love’s objects is not the final aim of the paper. Rather, it provides the theoretical ground for showing that the return of love is not merely an aftereffect of a particular romantic relationship, but a general structure through which human beings are deeply moved by something in the world and are transformed by that movement. In conclusion, this paper understands love not as an emotion subordinated to the success or failure of relationships, but as an event through which human beings are deeply moved by something outside themselves and thereby reorganize the meaning structure of their lives. To be capable of love is to remain not entirely closed off from the world. Love need not be answered by the same object in order to return; it returns by transforming the lover’s sensibility, values, self-understanding, and temporal structure, and by reappearing within the life that has been changed through love. -/- Love does not vanish with the success or failure of a relationship. Love returns as the transformed world of the one who loved. (shrink)

The paper studies two fundamentally different forms in which the concept of care makes its comeback in twentieth-century thought. We make use of a distinction made by Peter Sloterdijk, who argues that the ancient and medieval ‘ascetic’ ideal of self-enhancement through practice has re-emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly in the form of a rehabilitation of the Hellenistic notion of self-care (epimeleia heautou) in Michel Foucault’s late ethics. Sloterdijk contrasts this return of self-care with (...) Martin Heidegger’s concept of being-in-the-world as ‘total care’ (Sorge), an utterly ‘secularized’ understanding of the human being as irreducibly world-embedded that rejects the classical ascetic ideal of world-secession. We examine further the historical roots and emergence of these contrasting contemporary reappropriations of care in the Western tradition of thought and show them to be rooted in two different ontologies and ethics of the self as either world-secluded or world-immersed, autonomous or constitutively relational. The historical point of divergence of these two approaches to care, we argue, can be found in the Christian transformation of Hellenistic ethics. (shrink)

From John Maynard Keynes’s prediction of a fifteen-hour workweek to present-day speculation about automation, we have not stopped forecasting the end of work. Critical theory and political philosophy have turned their attention away from the workplace to focus on other realms of domination and emancipation. But far from coming to an end, work continues to occupy a central place in our lives. This is not only because of the amount of time people spend on the job. Many of our deepest (...) hopes and fears are bound up in our labor—what jobs we perform, how we relate to others, how we might flourish. The Return of Work in Critical Theory presents a bold new account of the human significance of work and the human costs of contemporary forms of work organization. A collaboration among experts in philosophy, social theory, and clinical psychology, it brings together empirical research with incisive analysis of the political stakes of contemporary work. The Return of Work in Critical Theory begins by looking in detail at the ways in which work today fails to meet our expectations. It then sketches a phenomenological description of work and examines the normative premises that underlie the experience of work. Finally, it puts forward a novel conception of work that can renew critical theory’s engagement with work and point toward possibilities for transformation. Inspired by Max Horkheimer’s vision of critical theory as empirically informed reflection on the sources of social suffering with emancipatory intent, The Return of Work in Critical Theory is a lucid diagnosis of the malaise and pathologies of contemporary work that proposes powerful remedies. (shrink)

Returning the Self to Nature is written for the person who no longer wishes to function in a world that revolves around selfish, disconnected identities and yearns to step into healthy relationships with one's self, one's community, and our planet. Seeing the suffering of the planet and that of humans as inseparably linked-the ecological crisis as psychological crisis, and vice versa-opens the door to a mutuality of healing between people and nature. At the heart of both chronic and (...) acute forms of narcissism is a socially-constructed false self-an isolated, damaged ego in a delusional cycle of selfishness. Through guided analysis and practices of reflection and embodied meditation, the reader will gain skills to begin experiencing a loving, pluralistic, and ecological self. This book is an invitation to wake up from the dream of the false self and join the movement toward social and planetary healing. (shrink)

This book contends that both Anglo-American analytic philosophy and Continental philosophy have lost their vitality, and it offers an alternative in their place. Donald Phillip Verene advocates a renewal of contemporary philosophy through a return to its origins in Socratic humanism and to the notions of civil wisdom, eloquence, and prudence as guides to human action. Verene critiques reflection—the dominant form of philosophical thought that developed from Descartes and Locke—and shows that reflection is not only a philosophical doctrine but (...) is also connected to the life-form of technological society. He analyzes the nature of technological society and argues that, based on the expansion of human desire, such a society has eliminated the values embodied in the tradition of human folly as understood by Brant, Erasmus, and others. Focusing in particular on the traditions of some of the late Greeks and the Romans, Renaissance humanism, and the thought of Giambattista Vico, this book's concern is to revive the ancient Delphic injunction, "Know thyself," an idea of civil wisdom Verene finds has been missing since Descartes. The author recovers the meaning of the vital relations that poetry, myth, and rhetoric had with philosophy in thinkers like Cicero, Quintilian, Isocrates, Pico, Vives, and Vico. He arrives at a conception of philosophy as a form of memory that requires both rhetoric and poetry to accomplish self-knowledge. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.3 (2000) 381-395 [Access article in PDF] Minds, Forms, and Spirits: The Nature of Cartesian Disenchantment Han van Ruler What is Descartes's contribution to Enlightenment? Undoubtedly, Cartesian philosophy added to the conflict between philosophical and theological views which divided intellectual life in the Dutch Republic towards the end of its "Golden Age." 1 Although not everyone was as explicit as Lodewijk Meyer, who (...) said that his theological doubts were inspired by Descartes's philosophical method, Cartesianism along with Copernicanism, Socinianism, and Cocceianism played an important part in the growing skepticism towards the authority of Scripture. 2 Apart from Descartes's general method, however, specific Cartesian ideas encouraged a new view towards nature and towards God's role in governing it. In physics and physiology the new philosophy replaced the image of mind working on matter with the image of a self sufficient mechanism. This new causal metaphor led to a typically Cartesian form of "disenchantment." In this article I argue that on account of their approval of a Cartesian theory of causality, even authors with sincere religious motives came close to accepting radical and nearly Spinozistic ideas. I start with disenchantment in a very literal sense: Balthasar Bekker's denial of the activities of devils, angels, and other spirits. A comparison of Bekker's arguments with those of another Cartesian, Arnold Geulincx will, I hope, bring out the nature and importance of what I shall present as [End Page 381] Descartes's "mechanical reduction" in physics. Finally, I argue that the Cartesian separation of mind and body gave rise to a form of disenchantment that reached far beyond contemporary debates. Devils, Ghosts, and God's Omnipotence Balthasar Bekker's classic book The World Bewitched (1691-93) does not so much deal with the practice of sorcery as with its theory. Bekker offers a wide range of theological and philosophical arguments in order to combat the idea that ghosts, devils, and angels influence natural or historical events. In particular Bekker draws some important conclusions from the philosophy of Descartes. Yet it is immediately clear to the reader that the motives for his critique are religious rather than philosophical. 3 The World Bewitched is not written as a scientific assault on superstition. Bekker, at the time serving as a Calvinist minister in Amsterdam, presents his work as a new and perhaps final phase in the perfection of Christianity. For two centuries it had been a goal of the Protestant Reformation to accentuate God's majesty and to establish the idea of His absolute power over creation. Bekker's World again expresses this idea. His denial that ghosts and devils are active in the world is a logical consequence of the belief that there is no room for demigods in nature. Bekker thus adds a final touch to the project of the Reformation. The World Bewitched will testify to the fact "that I return as much of the honor of His Power and Wisdom to the Almighty, as they took from Him who gave it to the Devil. I ban [the Devil] from the World and I bind him in Hell." 4 Removing devils and spirits from nature, Bekker aims to distinguish superstition from true faith. The battle against superstitious beliefs had formed a characteristic element of Protestant tactics. Dutch Calvinists, for instance, took offense at the continuing practices of blessings and incantations. 5 Bekker wanted to go even further. The Protestantization of Christian dogma could only be completed by making everything in nature's course depend on God's unique power and providence. 6 "Science" in our sense of the word was a subsidiary matter. 7 Still, Bekker saw the new scientific theories of his day as useful allies. In particular it was the new philosophy of Descartes that attracted him. Following Descartes, Bekker reasons "that I think, that I will, [End Page 382] [and] that I understand something," without any part of my body being involved in this type of consciousness. Mind and body in fact have nothing in common: My... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.3 (2000) 381-395 [Access article in PDF] Minds, Forms, and Spirits: The Nature of Cartesian Disenchantment Han van Ruler What is Descartes's contribution to Enlightenment? Undoubtedly, Cartesian philosophy added to the conflict between philosophical and theological views which divided intellectual life in the Dutch Republic towards the end of its "Golden Age." 1 Although not everyone was as explicit as Lodewijk Meyer, who (...) said that his theological doubts were inspired by Descartes's philosophical method, Cartesianism along with Copernicanism, Socinianism, and Cocceianism played an important part in the growing skepticism towards the authority of Scripture. 2 Apart from Descartes's general method, however, specific Cartesian ideas encouraged a new view towards nature and towards God's role in governing it. In physics and physiology the new philosophy replaced the image of mind working on matter with the image of a self sufficient mechanism. This new causal metaphor led to a typically Cartesian form of "disenchantment." In this article I argue that on account of their approval of a Cartesian theory of causality, even authors with sincere religious motives came close to accepting radical and nearly Spinozistic ideas. I start with disenchantment in a very literal sense: Balthasar Bekker's denial of the activities of devils, angels, and other spirits. A comparison of Bekker's arguments with those of another Cartesian, Arnold Geulincx will, I hope, bring out the nature and importance of what I shall present as [End Page 381] Descartes's "mechanical reduction" in physics. Finally, I argue that the Cartesian separation of mind and body gave rise to a form of disenchantment that reached far beyond contemporary debates. Devils, Ghosts, and God's Omnipotence Balthasar Bekker's classic book The World Bewitched (1691-93) does not so much deal with the practice of sorcery as with its theory. Bekker offers a wide range of theological and philosophical arguments in order to combat the idea that ghosts, devils, and angels influence natural or historical events. In particular Bekker draws some important conclusions from the philosophy of Descartes. Yet it is immediately clear to the reader that the motives for his critique are religious rather than philosophical. 3 The World Bewitched is not written as a scientific assault on superstition. Bekker, at the time serving as a Calvinist minister in Amsterdam, presents his work as a new and perhaps final phase in the perfection of Christianity. For two centuries it had been a goal of the Protestant Reformation to accentuate God's majesty and to establish the idea of His absolute power over creation. Bekker's World again expresses this idea. His denial that ghosts and devils are active in the world is a logical consequence of the belief that there is no room for demigods in nature. Bekker thus adds a final touch to the project of the Reformation. The World Bewitched will testify to the fact "that I return as much of the honor of His Power and Wisdom to the Almighty, as they took from Him who gave it to the Devil. I ban [the Devil] from the World and I bind him in Hell." 4 Removing devils and spirits from nature, Bekker aims to distinguish superstition from true faith. The battle against superstitious beliefs had formed a characteristic element of Protestant tactics. Dutch Calvinists, for instance, took offense at the continuing practices of blessings and incantations. 5 Bekker wanted to go even further. The Protestantization of Christian dogma could only be completed by making everything in nature's course depend on God's unique power and providence. 6 "Science" in our sense of the word was a subsidiary matter. 7 Still, Bekker saw the new scientific theories of his day as useful allies. In particular it was the new philosophy of Descartes that attracted him. Following Descartes, Bekker reasons "that I think, that I will, [End Page 382] [and] that I understand something," without any part of my body being involved in this type of consciousness. Mind and body in fact have nothing in common: My... (shrink)

A Return to Aesthetics confronts postmodernism’s rejection of aesthetics by showing that this critique rests on central concepts of classical aesthetic theory, namely autonomous form, disinterest, and symbolic discourse. The author argues for the value of these concepts by recovering them through a historical reinterpretation of their meaning prior to their distortion by twentieth-century formalism. Loesberg then applies these concepts to a discussion of two of the most significant critics of the ideology of Enlightenment, Foucault and Bourdieu. He argues (...) that understanding the role of aesthetics in the postmodern critique of Enlightenment will get us out of the intellectual impasse wherein numbingly repeated attacks upon postmodernism as self-contradictory match numbingly repeated defenses. Construing postmodern critiques as examples of aesthetic reseeing gives us a new understanding of the postmodern critique of the Enlightenment. (shrink)

Michel Foucault describes how, using technologies of the self, those practices of self on self, necessarily learned in processes of spiritual direction, an individual is enabled to self-constitute an ethical subjectivity, and then, by conducting her own conduct, enjoy a singular style of living that reflects an unmitigated relation between her freedom and truth. The history of these ancient technologies also describes the constitution of ‘ways of being’ or attitudes independent of external power and of unique (...) styles of living in ancient Greece, without reference to essential subjectivity. Foucault’s exposition of this freedom to self-constitute a unique style of existence is to answer the questions: where a concern for truth constantly calls truth into question, what is the form of existence which makes this questioning possible and what life is necessary given that an imposed truth is not necessary? By opposing concepts of self and trans-subjectivation in a new conception of ethics as a relationship of self to self, Foucault demonstrates how a subject might transform herself and refuse to renounce herself as obliged by the deployment of knowledge (connaissance). He asks whether this ethical subject might sustain a modern morality that will, no longer, need to be supported by either traditional ideology, code, or law? The Return of Morality is an exploration of these ancient Hellenistic technologies of selfsubjectivation and their possible use today as the condition of possibility, according to Foucault, for modern strategies that refuse the limits imposed by the internal ruse of freedom and the inverted image of modern forms of pastoral power that govern self-identification and individualisation. This technology might allow the re-establishment of self-government and enable a style of living that might be called a unified morality for today, one referring to all life experience, one that exists outside of imposed code and law. (shrink)

The article explores the concept of co-being as a form of existence rooted in ancient philosophy, particularly in the thought of Heraclitus. The authors argue that the problem of co-being – namely, the mutual existence of the human being, nature, society, and the cosmos – belongs to the sphere of fundamental ontological questions, as it reflects the mode of human existence in the world and its relation to the whole. The study traces how the ancient notion of φύσις in the (...) philosophy of the Milesian school, Anaximander, and Heraclitus shaped an understanding of being as a dynamic, self-unfolding process that maintains the unity of all forms of existence. Heraclitus’s principle of the unity of opposites, according to which conflict and tension constitute the condition of harmony, is interpreted as the first philosophical formulation of the idea of co-being. Drawing on interpretations by modern scholars of ancient philosophy (E. Theodossiou, V. Manimanis, R. Neels, K. Begley, N.-L. Cordero) the authors demonstrate that early Greek thought on phýsis presupposes a relational ontology, in which being is conceived not as a set of isolated entities but as a network of interrelations and mutual dependencies. This ontology of wholeness and interpenetration provides the philosophical foundations for contemporary ecological thinking. Within this context, co-being signifies not merely an ethical demand for coexistence but the very mode of human existence in which the individual is inseparable from the natural and cosmic whole. The ancient conception of world unity expressed through phýsis and logos is interpreted as a philosophical prototype of the modern ecosystemic model of being. The authors emphasize that a return to this worldview principle may offer a way to overcome technocratic and anthropocentric modes of thought that have contributed to the current ecological and spiritual crises. The restoration of co-being thus appears as an ontological precondition for the formation of a new ecological culture and an ethics of responsibility for the integrity of life. Therefore, the philosophy of co-being is understood not only as a rethinking of ancient heritage but also as a conceptual response to the challenges of modern civilization, which urgently requires the harmonization of the relations between humanity, nature, and the cosmos. (shrink)

Why was mythology of vital importance for the romantics? What role did mythology play in their philosophical and literary work? And what common sources of influence inspired these writers across Britain and Germany at the turn of the nineteenth century? In this wide-ranging study, Owen Ware argues that the romantics turned to mythology for its potential to transform how we see ourselves, others, and the world. Engaging with authors such as William Blake, Friedrich Schlegel, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Friedrich von Hardenberg (...) (Novalis), and Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ware shows why they believed that neither perception nor reason alone can sustain a vision of the unity of all things. A new mode of cognition is necessary, they claimed, one that revives the poetic origin of mythology and reveals our own mythmaking powers. _Return of the Gods_ investigates the rise of mythology in the British and German traditions and the romantics’ practices of reinterpreting old myths and inventing new ones. Their shared aim was nothing less than to elevate the human imagination to higher stages of self-development in which philosophy and poetry, as well as intellect and imagination, form an integrated whole. Far from calling us to return to the past, the romantics’ work on mythology points us to a future where we can live in harmony with the personal, social, and natural worlds we inhabit. Owen Ware combines intellectual history with philosophical analysis and literary criticism to offer a bold reflection on why mythology mattered for the romantics—and why it still matters today. (shrink)

Foucault rejects the subject as a center, that is to say, as a transparent self-conscious being who gives meaning to his actions. However, ideas about subjects that are thinking and willing autonomously are still functioning within modern culture. Discourses on subjectivity thus call for an archeological and genealogical explanation. This compels Foucault to view subjectivity increasingly not only as a product and a target of power, but also as a source of resistance and as an agent; for Foucault defines (...) power as “actions about actions.” In his latest writings, Foucault starts to define the teleology of his philosophical ethos as the production of new forms of subjectivity, in terms of freedom and autonomy. I argue that Foucault was always particularly concerned with circling (around) transgression, apprehending subjectivity as an aimless self-negation, rather than with a “return of the subject.”. (shrink)

This book contains reference to a number of Sontag's earlier articles on Becker. Becker won the Pulitzer Prize for writing The Denial of Death. His psychological/anthropological writings examined human nature and its tendency to religion. He proposed a self-made «hero religion», but his critique of the assumptions of modern social science equally make possible a return to traditional forms of religion: the return of the Gods.

We reexamine Plato’s use of visual metaphors by considering his own treatment of light and sight, which differed from the later view that the eye is purely passive. Instead, he considered the eye to be active, sending out beams that contact the “outer fire” and then return to the seer. This essential activity of the act of seeing changes the way we should read many passages in Plato based on metaphors of vision, in order to bring forward the fundamental (...) activity of the soul in knowing. Understood in this way, Plato’s words eidos and idea may refer not only to self-subsistent, transcendent “forms” but also to the active process of “seeing” that connects us with them. (shrink)

The dead will remain with us, Sartre remarks at the end of Les Mots, for as long as humanity roams the earth. The dead are never quite dead; they survive in what Sartre, in L'Etre et le néant, calls 'la vie morte' (dead life). In Huis clos, Sartre envisages an afterlife in which, although they can no longer act, the dead continue to agonize over the meaning of their lives and their now irrevocable actions. Sartre's script of Les Jeux sont (...) faits, filmed by Jean Delannoy and shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 1947, goes a step further. It depicts two dead people given the chance to return to earth in the pursuit of love and, at the same time, the opportunity to rectify their earlier mistakes, to change the meaning of their lives by intervening more effectively in their worlds. Despite its supernatural story line, the stakes of Les Jeux sont faits are recognizably Sartrean. The film serves as an opportunity to probe the themes of freedom, responsibility, choice, the role of the individual agent in history, the self's opacity to itself, the conflict endemic in the human condition and the ways in which external circumstances make a mockery of our endeavours. It asks the question, if we were given a second chance, could we revisit the scenes of our failures and transform them into successes? Could we learn from our mistakes and lucidly remodel the world in the form of our desires? Or are we condemned only to fail again, to make the same mistakes twice over? (shrink)

This article is devoted to a philosophical reflection on the "second navigation" (δεύτερος πλοῦς) as a borderline regime of the subject's existential movement under conditions of a total loss of metaphysical and institutional guarantees. In a situation where homecoming is no longer synonymous with restoration, and "home" has ceased to be a space of harmonious coincidence, navigation is transformed from a technique of achieving a goal into a strategy of enduring the rupture. In contrast to classical teleological readings of the (...) Odyssey, where Ithaca appears as a triumphant finale, this study conceptualizes homecoming as an aporia: a situation of fundamental non-recognition, radical vulnerability, and the disintegration of biographical integrity. The central analytical figure of the article is Calypso and her island, Ogygia, interpreted not as a topos of external coercion or deficit, but as the ultimate temptation of "ontological desertion". Calypso's offer is an invitation to abolish the very need for return through a radical replacement of identity. The immortality she grants appears as a form of "high amnesia": a peace without loss and an existence without the burden of biography. It is a perfect space of incorporeal presence where the subject is relieved of the necessity to testify to who they once were. In this light, Odysseus’s refusal is seen not as a moral act, but as a fundamental choice of mortality as the sole condition for preserving the "Self". An immortal body is a body without scars, and thus an empty archive; gods possess an immutable status, while mortals possess a living, wounded biography. The metaphor of the hand-built raft is revealed as a symbol of "manual", non-delegated agency: a movement through the void, deprived of the fair wind of institutional support or guarantees of social recognition. The second navigation is an ethics in spite of circumstances – the ability to hold a course when the horizon promises neither acceptance nor salvation. The final part of the research deconstructs the act of returning to Ithaca as a series of ontological thresholds of non-recognition. The transformation of the king into a beggar is interpreted not as a clever disguise, but as the attainment of the status of "Nobody" (Οὖτις) – the only possible form of presence in a home that has become foreign. The slaughter of the suitors, in this context, appears not as an act of restoring justice, but as a sacrificial mechanism of the pharmakos: a bloody procedure that does not restore the lost order but creates a fleeting moment of intense, tragic coincidence of the subject with their own fate. The article argues that the second navigation is an endurance between two impossibilities: a sterile paradise without a path (Calypso) and a sacrificial path without the hope of paradise (Ithaca). Home, in this perspective, is not a period at the end of a sentence, but merely a momentary flash of recognition that cannot be sustained. No one returns home in the literal sense, but within this knowledge, a new polytropic subjectivity is born, capable of rowing even through a total fog. (shrink)

René Girard speaks of the return of the religious as a “return of the sacred… in the form of violence.” This violence was inherent in the original “sacrificial system,” which deflected communal violence onto the victim. In this article, I argue that there is a double return of the sacred. With the collapse of the original sacrificial system, the sacred first reappears in the legal order. When this loses its binding claim, it reappears in the political order. (...) Here, my claim will be that Carl Schmitt’s conception of the political is not simply structurally similar to Girard’s conception of the sacrificial system. It is actually a manifestation of this. In this political return of the religious, the religious and the political systems are conflated. What prevents us from seeing this is the self-concealment that is essential to the sacrificial act, a self-concealment that also characterizes its twofold return. (shrink)

This article offers a philosophical analysis of the loss of navigation as a specific regime of contemporary public violence, in which exclusion occurs not through open conflict or rupture, but within a zone of illusory proximity to a goal, consensus, or completion. Publicity increasingly functions not as a route – structured by distances, corrections, and the possibility of return – but as acceleration, where the path appears almost completed, the outcome guaranteed, and the need for orientation rendered excessive. In (...) this regime, language loses its navigational function and becomes a signal of momentum: it compresses the distance between perception and decision, movement and halt, trust and the abdication of responsibility. Violence no longer appears as an event nor requires recognition; it emerges as a side effect of inertia, premature certainty, and the voluntary delegation of navigational freedom. Cancel culture is examined as one symptom of this broader disorientation. Exclusion here is enacted not through argumentation or moral judgment, but through the declaration of deliberation itself as redundant. Responsibility is dispersed across procedures, collective reactions, and algorithmic amplification; navigational freedom is handed over “for safekeeping”, not under coercion, but within a horizon of apparent clarity and safety. In this zone, public violence arises not despite the feeling of proximity, but precisely because of it: stopping is perceived as disruption, and return as increasingly unlikely. The theoretical framework brings together analyses of symbolic violence and linguistic power, performativity and discursive normalization, the sacrificial mechanism, critiques of acceleration and the loss of horizon, algorithmic publicity, and practices of space and movement. Within this framework, the article traces a transformation of public experience through three mythological figures: delegated freedom (Aeolus, where the “right” wind allows the map to be set aside), instantaneous absorption (the Laestrygonians, where a safe harbor collapses into a trap without interval), and the voluntary abandonment of return (Circe, where transformation appears as comfortable normalization and logos is replaced by function). The central analytical concept is the zone of being “too close to return” – a space in which proximity to the goal dulls vigilance and inertial movement becomes more dangerous than the storm itself. Odysseus’s polytropic capacity is opposed to this logic as the ability not to mistake the first island for Ithaca and to preserve the possibility of turning where safety seems self-evident. The conclusion argues that a philosophical analysis of lost navigation functions as a form of critical resistance, restoring distinctions between movement and acceleration, proximity and return, trust and the abdication of responsibility. (shrink)

Lonergan’s written reflections on the notion of form span almost thirty years. Beginning with his 1930s manuscripts on the philosophy of history, Lonergan returned again and again to the problem of clarifying that metaphysical concept. His thought on the issue of form reached its mature stage in 1957 with the publication of Insight. This article first presents an account of the mature, Insight stage of Lonergan’s notion of form. It then shows how Lonergan arrived at that position from his interpretation (...) of Aristotle as set forth in Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas. It concludes with some remarks in response to a criticism of Lonergan, commonly leveled by certain Thomist thinkers, according to which Lonergan’s effort to ground philosophy in self-appropriation rather than metaphysics condemns him to a subjectivist or idealist position. Such a critique, I argue, fails to take into account what Lonergan actually held. Indeed, the preference for a metaphysical point de départ is itself vulnerable to a reverse criticism on Lonergan’s part. (shrink)

This paper analyzes Dolores's case of collective spirit possession as a paroxysmic form of possession idiom, serving as a powerful and creative internal mechanism that both safeguards and revitalizes the core structure of ancestor worship. Drawing on my ethnographic research in North Honduras since 2009, my study reveals that rather than leading to the erosion of possession rituals, entropic forces, such as resistance, modernity, and impiety serve as vital resources, reinforcing the foundations of ancestor worship. This paper explores possession idioms (...) and striking events, such as contagion, abduction, dramatization, illness, and death to highlight the resilience of a possession-based religion as a self-sustaining total social system rooted in “tradition,” yet shaped by a dynamic interplay of historical, cultural, and personal experiences. While traditional interpretations of spirit possession have viewed possession cults as forms of protest against hegemonic power—“a weapon of the weak” used to gain respect and process trauma—I suggest that spirit possession is multifaceted, ambiguous and underdetermined, operating within a social theater where critique, social irony, impiety, historical consciousness, and the carnivalesque intersect. (shrink)

The concept of self-stigmatization is guided by a representational account of selfhood that fails to accommodate for resilience against, and recovery from, stigma. Mainstream research on self-stigma has portrayed it only as a reified self, that is, as collectively shared stereotypes representing individuals’ identity. Self-stigma viewed phenomenologically, however, elucidates what facilitates a stigmatized self. A phenomenological analysis discloses the lived phenomenon of stigma as an act of self-objectification, as related to the experiential self, (...) and therefore an achievement of subjectivity. Following a phenomenological account, the stigmatized self can thus return to a state-of-being, similar to that Jean-Paul Sartre once referred to as bad faith. Regarding your identity as analogous to an inanimate thing is ultimately self-deceptive. Self-stigma is here phenomenologically illuminated as constituted by basic discretion, that is, as a minimal form of agency. The study found that basic discretion can uphold the possibility for emancipation from a stigmatized self. (shrink)

This article reconsiders recognition in Hobbes by revisiting Strauss’s influential account to expand the discussion to wider relational and practical contexts. Returning to Leviathan with a revised Straussian perspective helps clarify Hobbes’s explanation for why the natural condition is a condition of war. The fear of violent death which opposes each man to every other is not a natural aversion to death, but a form of self-consciousness that develops across different contexts. Next, building on this revisionist Straussian interpretation, I (...) examine the mutual renunciation of the right to all things as the foundational act of the state. In renouncing their right, I argue, human beings recognize one another not only as potential enemies, but as partners in peace – a recognition that involves a shared risk. Tracing the movement from mutual fear to mutual renunciation of right, I show that Hobbes also envisions recognition as the self-conscious reconfiguration of relations. (shrink)

A virologist recently made headlines after successfully using an experimental form of oncolytic virotherapy to treat her own recurrent breast cancer. This case has come at a time when regulators are increasingly having to grapple with the proliferation of self-experimentation outside of accredited research institutions. There is, therefore, a pressing need to outline the key ethical dimensions of self-experimentation and to develop ethical guidance for journals that may be faced with decisions about whether to publish research involving (...) class='Hi'>self-experimentation. In this paper, we aim to provide such guidance. We argue that while self-experimentation is not always ethically problematic, neither is there an in-principle moral reason for exempting it from ethical evaluation. After summarising the details of the recent case report of self-experimentation and briefly placing it in historical context, we suggest that it is possible to navigate the ethical issues raised in cases of self-experimentation by returning to fundamental values in research ethics, focusing on the implications of self-experimentation for respect for autonomy, reasonable risk, and preventing harm to others. We apply these principles to the case report and explain why the publication of this report can be morally justified. We ultimately advocate for a case-by-case assessment of studies involving self-experimentation submitted for publication by ethical review boards and journal editors, and we propose a decision-making algorithm to help guide such decisions. (shrink)

This paper uses self-relation to reconstruct Hegel's reasoning in the Logic. In the sphere of "being," selfrelation is self-predication, and the predicate is the active, participial form of the category. Examining the first three and the last category in this sphere, I explain how Hegel argues that each category is itself engaged in the activity that it signifies. However, this self-predication adds new content to the category transforming it into a new category. Ultimately, this process leads to (...) the collapse of "being" into "essence." Categories in this later sphere exhibit a different kind of self-relation : each contains its relation to itself as an activity that negates itself and then, negating this negation, returns to itself. Hegel's analysis at the beginning of "essence" is, I argue, parallel to Kant's "Transcendental Deduction," but relations among categories replace the transcendental ego. The significance of self-relation is that it (1) effects transitions to new categories by an internal mechanism, thereby (2) allowing the Logic to be a self-exposition of the categories that (3) avoids an external (Kantian) transcendental ground. (shrink)

A verification architecture that shares ground with established frameworks is liable to be read as a notational variant of its nearest neighbor. Trisduction, a triaxial epistemic architecture that seals a claim only when three mutually independent lines of warrant converge, sits close to four such neighbors: existentialism and the will to power on one side, the holographic principle and the simulation hypothesis on the other. This paper argues that the resemblances are real but the identity fails, and that a single (...) structural feature blocks every assimilation. Against the two philosophical schools the feature is an independent third axis, the registrational warrant, the recognition by which a verification closes and is read by a party distinct from the thing verified. The will to power folds that axis into the kinetic, existentialism folds it into the self, and because each spends its third warrant neither reaches the convergence the architecture calls the Return. Against the two cosmological frameworks the feature is the handling of the exterior: the simulation hypothesis requires an external host it cannot detect, while the holographic principle and the architecture both decline the exterior, the former by duality and the latter by a closed-world monism whose only opening is located and never crossed. The distinctions are typed. The dependency that no convergence-lock forms once a third axis collapses is theorem-grade; the assignments of each school to its fold are structural lenses anchored on the schools' own primary commitments; the architecture's own metaphysics is held throughout at premise grade. The irreducibility cuts both ways: the neighbors hold a first-person interior the architecture brackets out of band. The contribution is to show that proximity between frameworks is adjudicated structurally, by which terms each keeps free, rather than by doctrinal position on a shared field. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the study of the development patterns of the local government system in the Russian Federation. The submission to the State Duma of the Russian Federation of the draft Federal Law «On the general principles of the organization of local self-government in the unified system of public authority» in December 2021 means the preparation of a new stage of municipal reform and makes it relevant to study long-term changes in the institutional organization of local (...) class='Hi'>self-government. The purpose of the study is to analyze changes in the structure of local self-government bodies and the rules of their formation at each stage of the development of this institution, as well as to identify the main patterns of this process. The analysis of the legislative base regulating the structure and rules of formation of local self-government bodies has been carried out. The data related to the development of the local government system provided by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation were analyzed. It is shown that the structure of local self-government bodies has not undergone significant changes. However, there have been changes in the ways of forming local self-government bodies, which reflect the trend towards their loss of institutional independence and integration into a single system of public power. This trend appeared at the stage of implementation of the Federal Law on Local Self-Government in 2003 and was consolidated in the new Draft law on Local self-government submitted to the State Duma of the Russian Federation in 2021. It is concluded that there is a tendency to increase the dependence on federal and regional legislators of local self-government bodies. For the institute of heads of municipalities, the loss of institutional independence was clearly manifested by the introduction of the procedure for electing heads by competition, displacing both election at municipal elections and election from the Council of Deputies. The formation of representative bodies, having passed the stage of delegating deputies to higher levels, returns to the model of direct elections. However, this happens in the context of the rejection of a two-tier system of local self-government. (shrink)

Puritans had big stories to tell, and they cast themselves big parts to play in those stories. The fervent English Protestants who believed that the Elizabethan Church urgently needed further reformation, and the self-selecting band among them who went on to colonize New England, were sure that they could re-create the churches of the apostolic age, and eliminate centuries’ worth of Romish accretions. By instituting scriptural forms of worship, these purified churches might have a beneficial influence on the state (...) as well, and bring about the rule of the godly. If a purified English church and state could inaugurate reformation across all of Christendom, spread the gospel to infidels around the globe, and usher in the millennium, then all the better. In 1641, an anonymous tract called A Glimpse of Sions Glory announced that the new puritan-controlled Parliament would bring on “Babylon's destruction... The work of the day [is] to give God no rest till he sets up Jerusalem in the praise of the whole world.” The leading minister of colonial Boston at the time, John Cotton, predicted that as soon as 1655, as Michael Winship summarizes Cotton: the states and Christian princes of Europe, under irresistible supernatural influence, would have instituted congregationalism [Massachusetts’ form of church polity] and overthrown Antichrist and Muslim Turkey. The example of their churches’ pure Christianity would have brought about the conversion of Jews and pagans across the globe. Thereafter, the churches of Christ would enjoy the millennium's thousand years of peace before the climactic battle with Gog and Magog at the end of time. Those are big stories. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that corruption research can benefit from studying corrupt transactions as a particular form of social interaction. We showcase the usefulness of a theoretical focus on social interaction by investigating online user reports on the website Frontdesktip.com. Through this focus, we can observe users sharing experiences and tips on the best ways of bribing hotel clerks in Las Vegas for attaining room upgrades and other complimentary extras. We employ a logistic regression analysis to examine what factors (...) influence the “successful” performance of this bribery practice. Our study makes a twofold contribution to existing research on corruption. First, on the theoretical level, we show that the typified and scripted character of social interactions can help explain the occurrence of corrupt transactions. Second, on a methodological level, our study showcases online self-reports as a useful data source to study corrupt transactions in an unobtrusive way. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Ancient Quarrel Revisited:Literary Theory and the Return to EthicsJoseph G. KronickThe modern quarrel between theory and practice, like the ancient one between philosophy and poetry, is at once a practical one—at its heart is the question how we should live—and a pedagogical one—who or what is the proper teacher of virtue? Today, the quarrel is between theory and literature rather than between philosophy and poetry, a change (...) that has not been beneficial. The modern complaint against the abstractions of theory reflects a diminution in the quality of the argument. For the ancient Greeks, to ask about the virtuous life was to inquire into what it is to be human, for aretê, which is typically translated as "virtue," but is understood to mean "excellence" or "goodness," meant acting in accordance with what it is to be fully human. 1 The notion that "real issues," as one prominent theorist argues, belong to the realm of action and epistemological and ontological questions to the abstract realm of theory is a simplification of the more serious question of the relation of particulars to universals. It reverses the Platonic and Aristotelian hierarchy that makes thinking the highest form of activity. But something else is going on in this call to action: in denigrating thinking as abstract, it elevates doxa, opinion, in its place. Under the regime of doxa, two things occur: philosophy and poetry are looked upon as useless because utility becomes the criteria for measuring value, and singularity is looked upon with disdain, if it is, indeed, acknowledged at all, because to the extent the world as it appears is common to us all, doxa is not distinct or individual but uniform or the same. Philosophy and poetry share not only the stigma of being deemed useless, but they are dismissed as odd, singular, not common.This essay is concerned with the status of the singular in philosophy [End Page 436] and poetry. The ancient quarrel has not been settled, which may indeed be a good thing because the quarrel keeps alive the question, who is to speak for that which cannot be spoken of, the singular? Silence may be the appropriate response, yet to preserve the experience of that which resists language is the task of philosophy and poetry, hence the quarrel. A long tradition has it that the philosopher seeks universals, while the poet offers particular images of virtue, but at the heart of this argument over ethics is the question of how to account for the singular or unique. To do so, I turn to Socrates, whose singularity remains unaccounted for to this day.Socrates may be said to embody the very problem of the relation between philosophy and literature, for he left us no writings and exists for us primarily through the writings of Plato. Yet there is widespread acceptance of Plato's portrait of him, particularly as to Socrates' method, the elenchus, and his principle of the priority of definitions. However, Socrates' insistence upon the priority of definition is not an example of the philosopher elevating theory over experience but a practical issue involving the care of the self. Furthermore, in ancient Greece, moral and philosophical questions concerning the soul were as much the provenance of poetry as they were of philosophy. The search for truth is a practical matter concerning the conduct of life, but the Platonic philosopher wishes to give a rational account, or logos, that would link conduct to knowledge, whereas the poet's examples are bound to their representations. Nevertheless, to presume that Socrates was seeking a definition of virtue on the grounds that possession of the definition would translate into a good life is an absurdity, for he could never have sought after the knowledge of virtue if his mode of life depended upon the definition rather than on his character. 2The error is to accuse Socrates of placing abstract knowledge before virtuous conduct. When Socrates asks for a definition of the beautiful, for instance, he does not reject the answer, "the beautiful is a beautiful woman," because it confuses a particular with a universal (when compared to the beauty of the gods, the woman is... (shrink)

As we know, the whole system of Hegel 's thought is based totally on the self-development process of the Geist. In other words, according to dialectical scheme of neoplatonism which Proclus systematized as a triad, μονή-πρόοδος-ἐπιστροφή, Hegel says that the Geist remains in himself, comes out from himself, and then returns to himself. With this process of self-development of the Geist, Hegel tries to explain the realities in general such as nature, history, art, religion, and philosophy. This process (...) of the development of the Geist makes a circle mode with the triadic way of an sich - für sich - an und für sich, but itself as the final destination of the Geist after finishing the whole process, is not a mere itself at the beginning, but the completed itself filled with the self-consciousness and freedom in full bloom. The last moment when the Geist returns to itself, Hegel says it is ‘Ruhe in Gott’. This is the final moment which the Geist as reality of the world and the history arrives and also the conclusion of his philosophy. Then, what happens to this final stage of the return of the Geist to itself, and what does it mean? Most of all, Hegel saw that, as the goal of world history is the achievement of self-consciousness of the Geist on its freedom and the realization of the freedom, this goal was achieved in the self-return of the Geist. And he has seen that the finite and the infinite, which showed constant opposition in the history of Western thought, are united here. According to Hegel, the infinite and finite in the bad concept that came out of the intellect(Verstand) are confronted with each other, and existence and non-existence are substantially separated. However, in the true concept of the infinite derived from reason(Vernunft), is formed the unified moment, in which the confrontations of both parties has been resolved and everything had been included in itself. The transcendence that he advocates is not a transmundane transcendence that is separated absolutely from the finite sensory world in existence and then unreachable absolutely, but a ‘right transcendence’ in which the finite and the infinite are really inseparable and remain as moments of the process of the Geist. In his view, the former which Platonism represents in Western philosophy, is an 'empty transcendence,' but the transcendence that he speaks is a 'full transcendence' that encompasses all moments of the finite in itself. The return of the absolute idea to itself means not only the sublation (Aufhebung) of the finite but also the the sublation of the reality, of the other, of the outwardness, of the abandonment of history, and secures the opposites to those such as ideality, self-identity, inwardness, and trans-historicity. Hegel's Geist as returning to itself has self-consciousness recognizing that it negates and rules the world and the history at the same time. In other words, it is honored and then the glorifying of God has been achieved in the consciousness of itself as the Absolute that it has been the only subject and the sole ruler of world history. According to Hegel, this glorifying of God is the most valuable object of the Geist and history. The Geist that has completed the process of self-development in the return to the itself enjoys the serenity, which is not a 'vacant serenity' but a ‘full serenity’ integrating the finite and the infinite into its inner simplicity. Hegel regarded the transition from the other to being self-internal as a transition from necessity to freedom, and in this serenity the Geist enjoys the freedom that it has in its own nature, as possible as it can. That is to say, in this serenity, the Geist becomes absolutely free and became itself, negating and sublating all other-being(Anderssein). In his view, the "Serenity in God," where the Geist becomes itself and its absolute freedom is obtained, is the ultimate goal of the Geist, and the omega point of the history. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Acts of Enjoyment: Rhetoric, Žižek, and the Return of the SubjectJames J. Brown Jr. and Joshua GunnActs of Enjoyment: Rhetoric, Žižek, and the Return of the Subject by Thomas Rickert. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007. Pp. x + 252. $24.95, hardcover.Thomas Rickert had a falling-out with his brother, and this distresses him so much that his disrupted relation is described as “traumatic.” Rickert reports that (...) while listening to a portable CD player during a run on an unexpectedly warm winter day, a song by the now defunct jazz/rock band Morphine reminded him of a happy time at a pool hall with his brother (24). Mediated—or better, medicated—by music, the homological happiness of running in the sun and a positive past memory also resurfaced a painful relational rupture, the reason of which Rickert omits to underscore that mysterious, “little detail or object” of the Real that marks his singular finitude as a writing subject (216 n. 11). We’ll want to come back to this curiously deliberate omission, but for the present we note Rickert is not simply an undead author but a human being with relations and feelings. He is not just a gifted scholar or a bundle of reflections, but a nexus of body and movement and words and affect. If there is anything that Rickert’s study can be said to work through with brilliance, humor, and grace, it is the reality of complex personhood.Rickert’s brotherly confession comes in Chapter 1 as a way to introduce a psychoanalytic understanding of subjectivity, and more specifically, to help illustrate how trauma works itself out as an afterwardness or “belatedness” ( Nachträglichkeit ): traumatic events from the past are not reckoned with or worked-through until some coincidence or reminder, such as a similar [End Page 183] sensory experience, reintroduces the event in doubled re-presentation (18–27). This implies the “subject” (a paradigm person) is a kind of timedelay, a self-conscious temporal moving that becomes this way through re-presentation. The rhetorical subject is analogously a retrojected reckoning with events past (not all traumatic) that Rickert identifies as a scene of writing, a locus that has important implications for rhetorical studies in general and writing pedagogy in particular. Rickert’s logic is as follows: if we agree that the subject is a belated one in the psychoanalytic sense, then how we teach rhetoric needs to change. Rickert opens the book with the observation that his students are producing excellent cultural critiques but that such critiques do not lead the students to change their actions (1–7), perhaps evidence enough that something is not quite right in a classroom grounded by “cultural studies pedagogy” and ideology critique—or at the very least, proof that something has changed. The opening gambit is simply that a “postpedagogy” premised on an understanding of rhetorical subjectivity as belatedness is better than a status quo rooted in the rational subject of the Enlightenment.Mostly through a Žižek-filtered, Lacanian lens, Acts of Enjoyment then undertakes a retake of the rhetorical field, frequently scanning from the traumatic ontology of the rhetorical subject to that domain of knowledge that we hold dear, the subject of rhetoric. In Chapter 2, the (primal) scene thus shifts from the slo-mo subject to rhetorical studies, initially through a reassessment of Kinneavy’s “communications triangle,” but ultimately in response to the shock treatment of poststructuralism. The initial theoretical traumas introduced by Victor Vitanza, Diane Davis, Sharon Crowley, and others discussed in Chapter 1 are threaded into an account of “poststructural” redress in Chapter 2: as is true of all forms of trauma, the initial poststructural jolt delivered to the concept of subjectivity was deadened; poststructural theory was eventually used to “shore up rather than challenge Kinneavy’s triangle” (37). To truly work-through our traumatized subject in both senses, we need a second trauma: Lacanian psychoanalysis. Presumably, “poststructuralist thought” is to be opposed because it has no account of the subject (21–24); “Lacan,” after all, “is not a poststructuralist” (48). The remainder of the chapter is then used to deploy Lacan’s conceptual lexicon.Just as... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Acts of Enjoyment: Rhetoric, Žižek, and the Return of the SubjectJames J. Brown Jr. and Joshua GunnActs of Enjoyment: Rhetoric, Žižek, and the Return of the Subject by Thomas Rickert. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007. Pp. x + 252. $24.95, hardcover.Thomas Rickert had a falling-out with his brother, and this distresses him so much that his disrupted relation is described as “traumatic.” Rickert reports that (...) while listening to a portable CD player during a run on an unexpectedly warm winter day, a song by the now defunct jazz/rock band Morphine reminded him of a happy time at a pool hall with his brother (24). Mediated—or better, medicated—by music, the homological happiness of running in the sun and a positive past memory also resurfaced a painful relational rupture, the reason of which Rickert omits to underscore that mysterious, “little detail or object” of the Real that marks his singular finitude as a writing subject (216 n. 11). We’ll want to come back to this curiously deliberate omission, but for the present we note Rickert is not simply an undead author but a human being with relations and feelings. He is not just a gifted scholar or a bundle of reflections, but a nexus of body and movement and words and affect. If there is anything that Rickert’s study can be said to work through with brilliance, humor, and grace, it is the reality of complex personhood.Rickert’s brotherly confession comes in Chapter 1 as a way to introduce a psychoanalytic understanding of subjectivity, and more specifically, to help illustrate how trauma works itself out as an afterwardness or “belatedness” ( Nachträglichkeit ): traumatic events from the past are not reckoned with or worked-through until some coincidence or reminder, such as a similar [End Page 183] sensory experience, reintroduces the event in doubled re-presentation (18–27). This implies the “subject” (a paradigm person) is a kind of timedelay, a self-conscious temporal moving that becomes this way through re-presentation. The rhetorical subject is analogously a retrojected reckoning with events past (not all traumatic) that Rickert identifies as a scene of writing, a locus that has important implications for rhetorical studies in general and writing pedagogy in particular. Rickert’s logic is as follows: if we agree that the subject is a belated one in the psychoanalytic sense, then how we teach rhetoric needs to change. Rickert opens the book with the observation that his students are producing excellent cultural critiques but that such critiques do not lead the students to change their actions (1–7), perhaps evidence enough that something is not quite right in a classroom grounded by “cultural studies pedagogy” and ideology critique—or at the very least, proof that something has changed. The opening gambit is simply that a “postpedagogy” premised on an understanding of rhetorical subjectivity as belatedness is better than a status quo rooted in the rational subject of the Enlightenment.Mostly through a Žižek-filtered, Lacanian lens, Acts of Enjoyment then undertakes a retake of the rhetorical field, frequently scanning from the traumatic ontology of the rhetorical subject to that domain of knowledge that we hold dear, the subject of rhetoric. In Chapter 2, the (primal) scene thus shifts from the slo-mo subject to rhetorical studies, initially through a reassessment of Kinneavy’s “communications triangle,” but ultimately in response to the shock treatment of poststructuralism. The initial theoretical traumas introduced by Victor Vitanza, Diane Davis, Sharon Crowley, and others discussed in Chapter 1 are threaded into an account of “poststructural” redress in Chapter 2: as is true of all forms of trauma, the initial poststructural jolt delivered to the concept of subjectivity was deadened; poststructural theory was eventually used to “shore up rather than challenge Kinneavy’s triangle” (37). To truly work-through our traumatized subject in both senses, we need a second trauma: Lacanian psychoanalysis. Presumably, “poststructuralist thought” is to be opposed because it has no account of the subject (21–24); “Lacan,” after all, “is not a poststructuralist” (48). The remainder of the chapter is then used to deploy Lacan’s conceptual lexicon.Just as... (shrink)

This essay consists of a set of digital (post-)pandemic email correspondence held between a political sociologist and an interdisciplinary philosopher working at western European universities while the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly unfolded itself. Starting from an unsettling point in time in 2021, during which vaccination strategies and numerous eugenic pandemic containment measures were being discussed, the authors touch upon issues as diverse as the importance of embodied feminist theorising in pandemic crisis times; neoliberal extractive capitalism’s influence on society, pandemic (mis)management, and (...) higher education; the problematic (post-)pandemic business-as-usual-narrative; grief, mourning, and trauma; the power of anger and protesting; and the forced return to normal(cy). These conversations are held together by an irruptions-based methodology based on Deleuze and Guattari (2000). This methodology tries to make sense of the (post-)pandemic as a disruptive event while forming the backdrop for conversational and critical theoretical snippets, self-designed memes, and critical race, queer, disability, and feminist theoretical perspectives that all conceptualise (post-)pandemic somatechnics as a ‘form of ethico-political critical practice’ (Sullivan and Murray 2011: vii). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Self-Knowledge, Friendship, and the Promulgation of the Natural LawScott J. RonigerKnow Thyself.—Inscription on the pronaos of the Temple of Apollo at DelphiChristian, remember your dignity, and now that you share in God's own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. Know who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Do not forget that you have been rescued from the (...) power of darkness and brought into the light of the kingdom of God.—Pope St. Leo the GreatIn this essay, I wish to discuss the relationships between self-knowledge, ethics and political life, and our knowledge of the natural law. I hope to show that our knowledge of natural law depends to a large extent on what we take ourselves to be, simply as human beings, and that our knowledge of what it is to be human is foundational for and textured by our social and political life. It is through the lens of these interconnected issues that I will engage Pierre Manent's thoughtful and provocative book, Natural Law and Human Rights: Toward a Recovery of Practical Reason. I will not simply provide an exegesis of Manent's work, which is rich and repays careful reading, nor will I argue directly for or against his fundamental points; rather, I take his work as a springboard to discuss the connection between our knowledge of ourselves, our ethical and political lives, and our knowledge of the natural law. In so doing, I will perhaps confirm and strengthen what I take to be Manent's central thesis. [End Page 287]Manent claims that the project of human rights, with the modern "state" understood as the guarantor of such rights, is inextricably tied to an erroneous understanding of human beings as naturally isolated and apolitical individuals. He shows that this impoverished modern understanding of human nature, and of human rights protected by the state as its offspring, distorts our self-understanding and saps the intelligibility of law, natural or otherwise, as well as the fecundity of human action. According to Manent, and contra Jacques Maritain, modern human rights must be understood as a feeble replacement for, not founded upon, the classical understanding of natural law.1 Further, Manent argues that it is modern political philosophy that generates the modern state as the "sovereign instrument" wielded to protect human rights, with the result that civic and political friendship becomes more difficult as the state becomes more powerful. Modern political philosophy is therefore at the basis of our distorted understanding of ourselves and our inability to engage in the friendships that hold polities together.Before discussing these issues in detail, it will be helpful to say a word about the way in which Manent approaches them and about how my own approach relates to his. Manent says that he is "inside a triangle: politics, philosophy, religion." He claims that he has never been able to devote himself entirely to any one of those three poles and that he finds "a fragile equilibrium, or rather a productive disequilibrium, in this questioning... concerning the very manner in which these three dimensions are articulated throughout Western history."2 Manent's book on natural law and human rights evidences this fecund triangulation of politics, philosophy, and religion. Manent also says that, through his studies, he has come to adopt a "'classic' view of political life, which gives... a better view of the eternal play between the few and the many, beyond the democratic enthusiasm characteristic of modern societies."3 Aristotle, as the political scientist and philosopher par excellence, occupies a prominent place in Manent's classical [End Page 288] view of political life, and the central role of Aristotle's ethics and political philosophy is also on display in Manent's work on natural law, especially in the book's final chapter. Manent's knowledge of modern political philosophy and his Aristotelian view of political life give him a sharp awareness of the differences between ancient and modern approaches to philosophical, ethical, and political questions, an awareness that permeates his previous work on political form and his recent book on natural law.I will concentrate... (shrink)

The following offers a critical appraisal of the themes of self-directedness and self-relatedness in Gadamer’s hermeneutics. It does so through an examination of solitude as a moment of what I call self-solicitude which, while emerging from and responding to various forms of otherness and encounter, has an ineliminable singularity to it that Gadamer misses. The case is made that Gadamer’s critique of subjectivity causes him to neglect the singularity of such selfdirectedness and self- elatedness and, by (...) extension, to undervalue the importance of solitude when outlining a hermeneutics of the self. The aim is to offer a course correction to Gadamer’s own course correction, both endorsingmany of his readings, while also pressing him on where he fails to examine more thoroughly the experience of returning to oneself and getting on with oneself in self-understanding and solitude. (shrink)

This book argues that the primary function of human thinking in language is to make judgments, which are logical-normative connections of concepts. Robert Abele points out that this presupposes cognitive conditions that cannot be accounted for by empirical-linguistic analyses of language content or social conditions alone. Judgments rather assume both reason and a unified subject, and this requires recognition of a Kantian-type of transcendental dimension to them. Judgments are related to perception in that both are syntheses, defined as the unity (...) of representations according to a rule/form. Perceptual syntheses are simultaneously pre-linguistic and proto-rational, and the understanding makes these syntheses conceptually and thus self-consciously explicit. Abele concludes with a transcendental critique of postmodernism and what its deflationary view of ontological categories—such as the unified and reasoning subject—has done to political thinking. He presents an alternative that calls for a return to normativity and a recognition of reason, objectivity, and the universality of principles. (shrink)

Odon Lottin, O.S.B. was an historian and a moral theologian. As an historian, he studied the scholastic attention to human psychology and morality. As a theologian, he studied the roles that thought and action play in the development of the moral agent. His influence in historical and moral theology has been significant. Nonetheless, moralists and medievalists independently have appropriated his insights. No one has yet studied the relationship between his historical investigations and his moral theology. This work accomplishes that study. (...) ;This dissertation considers Lottin's contributions to both historical and moral theology. Lottin studies the medieval history and understanding of free choice, moral action, the acquired virtues and conscience. He traces this history to uncover specific ideas, expose the development of thought, recognize the emergence of consensus, and find whether satisfying resolutions were achieved. Many of his contemporaries in the manual tradition misinterpreted this history. This misinterpretation was due to their inaccurate or undeveloped historical method. And, just as there was deficiency in their method, there were significant shortcomings in the scope of their theological investigations. Thus, by looking back to history, Lottin presents a moral theology more substantive than the manuals. Each of the first four chapters of this dissertation presents Lottin's historical studies of the major debates, examines his incorporation of that material into his own contribution to the debates' resolutions, and concludes with how his work has been appropriated and where it may yet lead. The final chapter considers Lottin's contribution to the discipline of moral theology. ;Moral theology can neither be ahistorical nor impersonal. Lottin's work demonstrates the necessity of accurate history for interpretation and of critical reflection on the cause of human action. His return to medieval moral theology is a return to human agency. His agent-centered moral theology retrieves prudence and the moral virtues as dynamic means for rightly forming consciences and determining action. Historical and agent-centered moral theology is concerned with theory and practice. The theory of the moral life looks at human intentionality, the practice is its free expression; together they comprise the meaning of self-determination. (shrink)

With the collapse of the bipolar system of global rivalry that dominated world politics after the Second World War, and in an age that is seeing the return of "ethnic cleansing" and "identity politics," the question of violence, in all of its multiple ramifications, imposes itself with renewed urgency. Rather than concentrating on the socioeconomic or political backgrounds of these historical changes, the contributors to this volume rethink the _concept_ of violence, both in itself and in relation to the (...) formation and transformation of identities, whether individual or collective, political or cultural, religious or secular. In particular, they subject the notion of self-determination to stringent scrutiny: is it to be understood as a value that excludes violence, in principle if not always in practice? Or is its relation to violence more complex and, perhaps, more sinister? Reconsideration of the concepts, the practice, and even the critique of violence requires an exploration of the implications and limitations of the more familiar interpretations of the terms that have dominated in the history of Western thought. To this end, the nineteen contributors address the concept of violence from a variety of perspectives in relation to different forms of cultural representation, and not in Western culture alone; in literature and the arts, as well as in society and politics; in philosophical discourse, psychoanalytic theory, and so-called juridical ideology, as well as in colonial and post-colonial practices and power relations. The contributors are Giorgio Agamben, Ali Behdad, Cathy Caruth, Jacques Derrida, Michael Dillon, Peter Fenves, Stathis Gourgouris, Werner Hamacher, Beatrice Hanssen, Anselm Haverkamp, Marian Hobson, Peggy Kamuf, M. B. Pranger, Susan M. Shell, Peter van der Veer, Hent de Vries, Cornelia Vismann, and Samuel Weber. (shrink)

How should we respond to evidence when our evidence indicates that we are rationally impaired? I will defend a novel answer based on the analogy between self-doubt and memory loss. To believe that one is now impaired and previously was not is to believe that one’s epistemic position has deteriorated. Memory loss is also a form of epistemic deterioration. I argue that agents who suffer from epistemic deterioration should return to the priors they had at an earlier time. (...) I develop this argument regarding memory loss then extend it to cases of self-doubt. (shrink)

This paper proposes a structural theory of selfhood, identity, and desire grounded in Judgemental Philosophy. We argue that identity—including aspects like gender, ethnicity, nationality, and sexual orientation—is not a fixed essence or biological given, but rather an emergent structure constituted through the successful operation of the Judgemental Triad (Constructivity, Coherence, Resonance). Identity exists and is validated where meaning can be symbolically formed (Constructivity), integrated consistently (Coherence), and most crucially, returned meaningfully through intersubjective loops (Resonance). Analyzing disputes surrounding non-normative identities and (...) desires, we contend that ethical conflicts often stem not from inherent immorality or biological inaccuracy, but from structural failures, particularly the blockage or denial of Resonance (misrecognition, stigma, silencing). We conclude that ethical recognition requires moving beyond mere tolerance to actively enabling the structural conditions for resonant attribution, affirming that true identity lies where judgement—and thus meaning—can return. (shrink)

I present empirical evidence suggesting that an infant first becomes aware of herself as the focal center of a caregiver's attending. Yet that does not account for her awareness of herself as agent. To address this question, I bring in research on neonatal imitation, as well as studies demonstrating the existence of a neural system in which parts of the same brain areas are activated when observing another's action and when executing a similar one. Applying these findings, I consider gestural (...) exchanges between infant and caregiver, such as reciprocal smiles and imitative vocalizations. Lacking self-awareness at first, the infant is unaware of her own agency. By returning her unwitting gesture, the caregiver singles out for her—thanks to neural matching—the gesture's kinesthesis. Moreover, the caregiver's smile, imitative vocalization, or other gesture is the form that focusing takes. The kinesthesis of the infant's gesture, in being singled out, is experienced by the infant as what the caregiver is focusing on. It is experienced as being within the focal center. In this way, the infant becomes aware of herself as a bodily entity acting toward the caregiver. Exchanges that involve matching are at first essential, I argue, in making the infant present to herself in action. Matching will cease to be necessary, but self-awareness continues to depend fundamentally on others until the acquisition of language, when the child becomes capable of talking to herself as if she were the caregiver. (shrink)

As an emancipatory political project, cosmopolitanism always invited skepticism. This paper focuses on the economic-progressivist line of critique of cosmopolitanism, which has gained momentum in recent years. This critique is based on real concerns that the economic left must prioritize and integrate into its thinking; however, it is also fatally flawed. Any progressive project that takes seriously strong democratic self-determination for all peoples needs some version of a commitment to a global order that is democratically politically integrated, and this (...) means stronger forms of supranational political integration, not weaker ones. I argue that the allure of progressive economic statism rests on erroneous assumptions about the character of the Westphalian state system and its relation to the evolution of global capitalism, which give a misleading impression that this system is somehow less friendly than neoliberal globalization to capitalist imperatives for extraction, accumulation, and growth. But there are equally expropriative and violent versions of capitalism that thrive in a closed Westphalian world. With great power rivalry once again emerging as a structuring feature of world order, signs of such versions are already making their appearance today. (shrink)

This chapter explores the role of self-knowledge in the Socratic and Buddhist ethical traditions. Socrates (in Plato’s “early” dialogues) and the Buddha (in the Pāli Canon) diagnose the primary cause of human suffering as a widespread misunderstanding of the self. They recommend a radical reconceptualization of selfhood as a necessary step toward their ultimate concerns of human well-being (eudaimonia) and liberation (nirvāṇa). In particular, they argue, we wrongly identify bodies, physical states, social status, or possessions as self. (...) But Socrates endorses a view that the Buddha rejects, namely, that certain conscious states of mind (psychē) are self. Buddhists would object that the irreducible complexity and impermanence of mental states render them implausible candidates for selfhood. Similar concerns motivated Plato to advance the metaphysical theory of Forms, which may offer resources for a reply. The chapter closes with a review of an apparent tension, shared by both traditions, between the goals of embodied social virtue and world-transcendence. The Platonic philosopher and the Mahayāna Bodhisattva both experience a liberating insight which motivates them to return to the “cave” of social service or saṃsāra: both motivations are susceptible to consequentialist, deontological, and virtue-ethical interpretations, and I suggest that the two traditions are mutually illuminating. (shrink)

After a brief review of the literature on Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET), I employ a Foucauldian analysis to argue that student evaluations are forms of power that involve aspects of both discipline and governmentality. After examining how SETs are used to improve teaching, I identify some techniques that instructors use to respond to SET that undermine the legitimate interests of students or the educational institution. I endorse a hybrid model where a single global teaching question is used for summative (...) purposes and fifteen or twenty additional questions are used for formative purposes. Finally, I argue that to resist the normalizing pressure of SET, instructors might, as Foucault suggested, return to the Hellenistic concept of the care of self. Through techniques of the care of self, it is my hope that instructors could cultivate a more robust subjectivity, a subjectivity less vulnerable to the normative power of student evaluations. (shrink)

Why are today's students not realizing their potential as critical thinkers? Although educators have, for two decades, incorporated contemporary cultural studies into the teaching of composition and rhetoric, many students lack the powers of self-expression that are crucial for effecting social change. _Acts of Enjoyment_ presents a critique of current pedagogies and introduces a psychoanalytical approach in teaching composition and rhetoric. Thomas Rickert builds upon the advances of cultural studies and its focus on societal trends and broadens this view (...) by placing attention on the conscious and subconscious thought of the individual. By introducing the cultural theory work of Slavoj Zizek, Rickert seeks to encourage personal and social invention--rather than simply following a course of unity, equity, or consensus that is so prevalent in current writing instruction. He argues that writing should not be treated as a simple skill, as a naïve self expression, or as a tool for personal advancement, but rather as a reflection of social and psychical forces, such as jouissance (enjoyment/sensual pleasure), desire, and fantasy-creating a more sophisticated, panoptic form. The goal of the psychoanalytical approach is to highlight the best pedagogical aspects of cultural studies to allow for well-rounded individual expression, ultimately providing the tools necessary to address larger issues of politics, popular culture, ideology, and social transformation. (shrink)

In “Tragedy and Resentment” Ulrika Carlsson claims that there are cases when we are justified in feeling non-moral resentment against someone who harms us without wronging us, when the harm either consists in their attitude towards us or in the emotional suffering triggered by their attitudes. Since they had no duty to protect us from harm, the objectionable attitude is not disrespect but a failure to show love, admiration, or appreciation for us. I explain why unrequited love is the wrong (...) example to use when arguing for the possibility of justified non-moral resentment—and why, therefore, Carlsson’s claim remains unsubstantiated. Pace Carlsson, people who fail to return our love are not best described as harming us, but as merely failing to benefit us by saving us from harm. Moreover, their role in the causal chain that results in our coming to harm is insufficient to warrant our resentment; more plausibly, we ourselves play a greater and more direct causal role in this process. This is a welcome result: Responding with resentment to someone’s failure to return our love indicates that our love has not taken the form of a genuine gift. When we put conditions on successful gifting by allowing for justified resentment if the gift is not returned we are not in fact giving gifts but making a bid for an exchange: I love you so that you love me back. (shrink)

This chapter situates Murdoch’s thought amidst recent efforts to retrieve the forms and practices of ancient philosophy. Thanks in large part to the work of Hadot, there has been renewed interest in the ancient idea of spiritual exercises, prompting a fundamental rethinking of philosophy as a therapy of the soul or a practical discipline of self-formation. Murdoch argued explicitly for such a conception of philosophy and saw its significance for a rapprochement between philosophy and religion or theology. This chapter (...) develops what I call a “reflexive” model of _askesis_ from the resources of Murdoch’s thought, and compares it with alternative models of _askesis_ advanced by thinkers such as Hadot, Nussbaum, and Foucault. (shrink)

This paper examines the structural transformation of consciousness that occurs when an individual stands before an artwork and begins to encounter their own inner state. Before conscious recognition takes hold, the inner world exists as a layered, undifferentiated field — not absent, but without orientation. The act of sustained aesthetic encounter initiates a phenomenological reversal: consciousness turns back upon itself not through deliberate effort, but through the gradual release of its outward momentum. Drawing on Husserl's account of pre-predicative experience, Merleau-Ponty's (...) analysis of pre-reflective bodily consciousness, and Noë's concept of aesthetic arrest, this paper argues that artworks function not as objects of interpretation but as conditions of presence — structural grounds upon which self-aware perception can emerge. Darkness, in this account, is not a deficiency to be overcome but a necessary phenomenological condition that preserves the density of inner experience before it is fragmented into language and concept. The paper traces five structural moments: the invisible place of pre-reflective suspension, the density of darkness, the turning of consciousness toward itself, the artwork as ground of presence, and the altered temporality of return. Together, these moments describe a form of self-awareness that does not arise from interpretation but from the cessation of its urgency. (shrink)

Business firms play an increasingly influential role in contemporary societies, which has led many scholars to return to the question of the democratisation of corporate governance. However, the possibility of democratic deliberation within firms has received only marginal attention in the current debate. This article fills this gap in the literature by making a normative case for democratic deliberation at the workplace and empirically assessing the deliberative capacity of self-organised teams within business firms. It is based on sixteen (...) in-depth interviews in six German firms which practice various forms of self-organised teamwork. The article argues that self-organised teamwork can create a space for authentic, inclusive, and consequential deliberation by suspending authoritarian control structures within business firms. Finally, the article proposes the consideration of firms not only as necessary parts of a larger deliberative system but also as deliberative systems in themselves. (shrink)

Based on the hypothesis that the selfhood is the last outpost of sociality within a person, consciousness and the self are considered as complex spiritual and material phenomena, they include at least three main components: neurobiological activity, intimate personal environment and social context. The author analyzes an internal materialistic perspective, which infers the reduction of self and consciousness to ordinary neural processes of the brain. With this perspective, the main thing for neural activity is to maintain homeostasis, first, (...) within the brain itself, and then within the organism as a whole. Based on the latest achievements of neuroscience and the constructions of neurophilosophy, the impossibility of a significant accentuation of the production of the self against the background of the default activity of brain activity is demonstrated. The concept of protoconsciousness is introduced. In its context, it is shown that even the simplest ones can use complex algorithms for processing information, correcting behavioral errors to ensure effective existence in the life world intended for them. As a result – there is an integrative behavior, when one or another of its elements is not just a single reaction to a stimulus but formed as a result of the execution of a certain algorithm (of yet not clear structure and origin), data and commands for which come from several sources. Attention is drawn to the fact that even for a quite simple behavior there is need for some built-in spatio-temporal matrix which will be typologically similar to Kant’s forms of perception. From the standpoint of a materialistic perspective, it is proposed to consider rationality and the self, which is associated with it, as a kind of superstructure over the outconscious interaction with reality that our biological predecessors developed. However, both rationality and the self inevitably presuppose a return to sociality, without which neither the first nor the second can be conceived. (shrink)