Laruelle’s non-philosophy vs. non-entity Speculative Realism

Google Reader (35): "As that non-entity Speculative Realism continues to be the buzzword of the day on philosophy blogs the philosophical taxonomy of a few individuals threatens to kill the reception of Laruelle in English before it has even begun. While it is true that Laruelle is a major influence on the nihilistic work of Ray Brassier, it isn’t the case that Laruelle’s and Ray’s work are of a piece. The fact that Ray was able to use the methods of non-philosophy in a way that seems, at least to me, very contrary to the aims of Laruelle himself is a testament to the model of heresy non-philosophy employs. In short, non-philosophy is worth considering, not because it is the savior of philosophy we’ve all been waiting for, not because it can become the latest fan boy craze, but because it offers us a theory of philosophy in its strengths and weaknesses and a methodology to use when attempting to construct other ways of thinking from the Real. It allows us to be bold in our thinking with a guide telling us where the traps, bind alleys, and false problems lie in the way we think itself. Laruelle’s non-philosophy is a way of thinking that allows for mutation according to knowledge of the Real as given in philosophy and other regional knowledges (science, religion, erotics, poetry, etc.). So, as I have already said, the hope in sharing these notes with the general public is to give interested readers an entry into Laruelle’s thought as directly as possible and to show that it can be both understood and used – in fact, in this case they are the same thing." Notes on François Laruelle’s Les Philosophies de la différence: Introduction critique: “Instructions for Use”
from An und für sich by Anthony Paul Smith

Hegel, Kant, and Marx repeatedly ignored information about the Muslim world

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Mullah Sadra, Simone Weil, Jacques Maritain, & Abh...":

Greetings. I am the original author of that post. Your current hyperlink is no longer active. The correct link is http://www.farashaeuker.com/blog/islamic-existentialism/. Thank you. Posted by Anonymous to Savitri Era Learning Forum at 9:26 PM, September 14, 2009

Tusar N Mohapatra has left a new comment on your post "Mullah Sadra, Simone Weil, Jacques Maritain, & Abh...":

[History of Islam in German: Thought From Leibniz to Nietzsche By Ian Almond

This concise overview of the perception of Islam in eight of the most important German thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries allows a new and fascinating investigation of how these thinkers, within their own bodies of work, often espoused contradicting ideas about Islam and their nearest Muslim neighbors. Exploring a variety of 'neat compartmentalizations' at work in the representations of Islam, as well as distict vocabularies employed by these key intellectuals (theological, political, philological, poetic), Ian Almond parses these vocabularies to examine the importance of Islam in the very history of German thought.

Almond further demonstrates the ways in which German philosophers such as Hegel, Kant, and Marx repeatedly ignored information about the Muslim world that did not harmonize with the particular landscapes they were trying to paint – a fact which in turn makes us reflect on what it means when a society possesses 'knowledge' of a foreign culture. ; ISBN: 9780415995191 Published September 15 2009 by Routledge.] Posted by Tusar N Mohapatra to Savitri Era Learning Forum at 7:14 AM, September 15, 2009

Hume, Kant, Heidegger, & Sri Aurobindo

a critique from India via Object-Oriented Philosophy by doctorzamalek on 9/12/09

I wasn’t expecting a critique from India this soon, but here it is (just a couple of sentences and some reading advice, not a full critique):

“SR/OOO is poised dangerously to foist yet another fallacy in philosophy. A thorough reading of The Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo can redeem the situation.”

Actually, I paid a visit to the Aurobindo complex near Pondicherry a year and a half ago. (The exact name of the place escapes me at the moment.)

on speed in philosophy from Object-Oriented Philosophy by doctorzamalek

Is Kant’s Prolegomena really inferior to the First Critique? In some respects, maybe, but the Prolegomena might also be said to be a more lucid work that gets to the point more effectively. And I definitely prefer Hume’s crisp Enquiry to his boated Treatise, as even Hume himself did, and as many readers do...

Is Heidegger’s Being and Time worthy of a 700-page commentary? Sure, there’s enough going on in the book to warrant it. But it’s also possible to summarize Being and Time in 20 or so pages. I’m proud of Heidegger Explained, even though at least one reviewer seemed offended by the presumptuousness of summarizing Heidegger’s entire career in a single short book.

Husserl, Levinas, & Sri Aurobindo

supplement to the last post from Object-Oriented Philosophy by doctorzamalek

A non-negotiable point with me: anyone who thinks Husserl is not one of the greatest philosophers of recent centuries simply isn’t working hard enough. They are relying on caricatures and impressionistic diatribes. They are not doing their homework. He’s not always fun to read (though his wit is badly underrated). But if you read him with even a modicum of care, it should be evident that there is much more going on in his work than is found in the off-the-shelf caricature of Husserl that his most arrogant and facile critics delight in offering. (And here I am referring to critics within the continental community, in the broadest sense.)

Studies abroad: Levinas dharmavidyakshetra.blogspot.com

Levinas is trying to develop a theory of the Ethical (which is not the same as Ethics) devoid of rationality, casuistry and legalism but built on the idea of existential right. The Other has a right that precedes my own existence. We are bound together in bonds stronger and more insidious than blood. It's a far more demanding ethical code than a personal or universal code system. It puts human rights, the asymetrical right of the Other as a necessary condition for existence. I think it has to do with Aurobindo and Advaita, he is placing the ethical drive as something to do with the Other, something to do with God, but not the God of dogmatic propositions, the mystic one of Neti Neti, Nada nada nada. Posted by Mar Dezie at 8:46 PM Studies abroad: Levinas

So I shall now try and get two readable books on Levinas, I think he will fit in with Aurobindo. Posted by Mar Dezie at 1:00 AM Saturday, September 12, 2009 So what does bring me to India

Sri Aurobindo picks up formal logic and runs with the ball. Unlike most Indian mystics who do something surreal with it. The standard problem with the law of Contradiction is that its mere tautology. If you try to use the law to say anything you can't. So in the statement if it A is true then Not A is false doesn't work if you try to make it mean if A is Black then not A is White because it might be green...

What was interesting in ploughing through Aurobindo and then reference works on Aurobindo is a quote that, God is not a sceptic Logician intent on denying the validity of all other propositions, he is pure being life giving and generous and is not diminished by the existence of contingent or finite beings rather it is his nature to create and pass on Being. Something like that. I think he may be on to something. Posted by Mar Dezie at 4:06 AM Friday, September 11, 2009 John the Just

Ernest Haeckel is the figure to whom Western Integral theory can be traced back

Science, Culture and Integral Yoga Re: Objectivity by Lorraine Datson & Peter Galison (Book Review by Norberto Serpente)
by Tony Clifton on Sat 05 Sep 2009 03:07 PM PDT Profile Permanent Link

I cant speak to the return of Vedic wisdom or metaphysics, but the evolution of objectivity (as part of the general evolution of consciousness) is precisely the moving away from metaphysics toward epistemology, from wisdom of the spiritual to knowledge of the sensible world that has followed and determined the course of the modern era. Prior to the advent of what Datson and Galison call "mechanical objectivity" circa mid 19th century the primary epistemic virtue they declare to be "truth to nature" in which objectivity was seen to be more a "mental representation" than an actual state of physical reality (aka object minus a subject) in which what was sought after in science (what was then called natural philosophy) was an idealized -archetypal- truth of essences of phenomena rather than a quantitative inquiry into their sensible appearances.

Most variants of" truth to nature" had a metaphysical dimension. "For Enlightenment thinkers this reality did not necessarily entail a commitment to Platonic forms at the expense of the evidence of the senses. On the contrary, sharp and sustained observation was necessity prerequisite for discerning the true genera of plants and organisms . The methodological goal of "truth to nature" was that the eyes of both body and mind converge to discover a reality otherwise hidden to each alone" (Datson/Galison).

However, the quest to discover a hidden reality or truth entailed that models were carefully selected and anomalies were smoothed out in order to produce idealized images. Selecting, perfecting, idealizing the goal was to tame natures variability. "It was a science about the underlying rules rather than the exceptions or excesses of nature. They were depictions of the idea of the observation not the observation itself. Naturalist and painter alike sought the invariable general form incorporating the beautiful and the true" (Datson/Galison).

This was the scientific methodology of Goethe who described the quest for pure phenomena which could be discerned only in a sequence of observations never in an isolated instance "To depict it the human mind must fix the empirically variable exclude the accidental, eliminate the impure, unravel the tangled, discover the unknown" (Datson/Galison). Goethe's approach to uncovering the ur-phenomena or archetypal forms underlying natures sensible reality is characteristic of the "truth to nature" approach to science.

The transition from "truth to nature" science to "mechanical objectivity" can be seen in the works of people like von Humboldt, Helmholtz, Huxley, Bernard who took up the terminology of Kant's critical philosophy and the meaning he assigned to subjective and objective and who began to covert empirical observations urging metaphysical restraint. Yet the goals of these scientist still sought a reality organized around idealized notions of unity and truth that undergirded reality in which it was not so much objective reality but the minds apprehension of reality that was prioritized. Huxley for example, attributed the progress of modern science to an "exclusive concentration on verifiable hypothesis regarded not as ideal truth, the real entities of an unintelligible world, behind phenomena, but as a "symbolic language" by the which nature can be interpreted in terms of apprehension by our intellect" (Datson/Galison).

This transformation of objective knowledge was also associated with transformation of the self, in which the subject was transformed from disconnected sensations organized around a continuous thread of consciousness, to one in which the subject was organized around a central will. According to Datson and Galison:

"The Enlightenment self was imagined as a pastiche and conglomerate. It was a pastiche of sensations and the traces of memory they left, combined by principles of association and held together by a continuous thread of consciousness. It was a conglomerate of faculties, chief of which were reason, memory and imagination. ..

"It was a self constantly menaced by fragmentation -so much so that 18th century philosophers notably Hume wondered whether having a coherent self might not be illusionary. Hume mused personal identity may be but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity and are in perpetual flux and motion" (Datson/Galison) .

This all began to change after Kant and the evolution of his idea of a unified willful self. By the time of the positivism of Ernst Mach, August Comte one of the main concerns of the method of scientific observation was to purge the individual will from the scientist in order to achieve a state of objectivity. Facilitated in part by new technologies such as photography there was an epistemic shift away from subjective idealism to objective realism.

The difference can be seen between "truth to nature" and "mechanical objectivity" is reflected in the following instance ""when in 1890 Eduard Jaeger chose to devote forty to fifty hours of painstaking effort to each of the images of his atlas of the eye he was self-consciously plumping for a particular type of meticulous representation. He dismissed flights of genus in scientific representation as ephemeral. Only the suppression of all subjectivity - even individual brilliance- could produce an objective image that endured. A century earlier Goethe had, with firm conviction and care insisted on the insight and synthetic judgment required to detect the idea of observation . Both Goethe and Jaegar took considerable pains to uphold the highest standards of epistemic virtue, even if both these standards entailed entirely different. (Datson/Galison)"

The clash of these difference of epistemic virtues between the metaphysical associations of "truth to nature" and quantitative sensible reality of "mechanical objectivity" is no where as apparent as in the controversy involving Ernest Haeckel -who I argue in other places is the figure to whom Western Integral theory can be traced back [...]

Returning to the metaphysical claims of Vedic wisdom, whether it renters into science is open to speculation, perhaps one day the Vedic path to knowledge will be reintegrated into science in much the same manner as the subjective elements of intuition are reentering science as the most recent epistemic virtue that Galison and Datson call "trained judgement".

However, the absence of Vedic Wisdom from scientific thinking through the course of the past centuries is indicative of one path that the evolution of human consciousness has taken. Perhaps -even though it may seem to contradict Vedic wisdom- as Sri Aurobindo says this advance of scientific reasoning is essential in order to forge a greater harmony. Whether Vedic knowing is superior or inferior to scientific knowledge is therefore as I see it irrelevant to the question of the truth of structure of reality that we know today. Anyone who takes seriously the idea of evolution of consciousness who dismisses or diminishes objectivity does so at the own peril, for it is one of the unique ways of knowing the world that nature's yoga through its evolution of consciousness continues to reveal to us Reply

by Tony Clifton on Sun 06 Sep 2009 10:05 AM PDT Profile Permanent Link

The very idea of any "absolute" including an "absolute objectivity" is itself always based on prior assumptions What the authors of this book wish to demonstrate is that very fact, and its inevitable consequence namely that an "absolute objectivity" -given the evolving nature of epistemic virtues- is for us, symbolic beings that we are; an impossibility. Reply

by Tony Clifton on Sun 06 Sep 2009 10:30 PM PDT Profile Permanent Link

In this instance it is enough for the unmanifest world we treat as relevant to be that one that generates the social field from which we derive the assumptions we make about the world and to understand the structuring nomos that provides us with an epistemology or frame of reference to construct those conventions we accept as real, distinguishing in them their historicity and evolution so we can better come to understand the epistemic virtues and constraints of our present moment. [...]

Well its not so much that, then it is the fact that any aprori programs or cosmic plans are shot through with a structuring nomos that requires critical inquiry into to determine the validity and relativity of the truth claims they make and comprehend the unconscious assumptions derived from them, be they the materialist assertions of science or the metaphysical assertions of the Vedas. Reply

Deleuze was thinking about relations, complex systems, becoming, emergence, etc.

larvalsubjects Says: Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 10:10 am
Hill nails my concerns.

What worries me is this strong focus on philosophies to what I take to be the detriment of philosophy. Now, like Derrida, I am not denying that in engaging with philosophies in this way Laruelle is doing “something more” than simply analyzing philosophies. But I still find this focus on philosophies to be problematic from an institutional perspective. It seems to me to risk more of the same sort of cloistered philosophical practice that we’ve seen in Continental philosophy for the last forty years where we endlessly talk about the texts of the tradition that preceded us as if there were nothing more to philosophy. The impression I’ve gotten from my readings of Laruelle is that he all too easily appeals to a number of bad habits among Continental thinkers.

But again, I could be mistaken. I think what Laruelle needs is, above all, a good apostle or advocate. Nate from “What in the Hell” suggested something along these lines over at Larval Subjects. I’d like to know what Laruelle can do. I’d like to know what one can do with Laruelle. I’d like to know how Laruelle assists me in theory building. And I’d like to know the specifics of the theory that he’s building or developing. That’s all.

When I first started reading Deleuze it was a painful experience. I’d throw Difference and Repetition and The Logic of Sense across the room in fits of frustration and irritation. I finally began to get a foothold in his thought with What is Philosophy?. The hook that got me in that book was the idea of philosophy not as a representation of the world, but as a construction and creation of concepts. Deleuze’s philosophy told you that you could do something with it. In addition to that, it was evident to me early on that Deleuze was doing metaphysics and that he was thinking about relations, complex systems, becoming, emergence, etc. These were all things I wished to understand or think about more, so I dealt with the pain of reading Deleuze and trudged on.

The case was similar with Lacan. I first started with Ecrits. Big mistake. It struck me as a bunch of nonsense and I put it down for a long time. However, a year or so later I happened to pick up Zizek’s Sublime Object of Ideology and Fink’s Lacanian Subject. Zizek showed me what could be done with Lacan and how Lacan could help me both to understand all sorts of things about the social and political world and other persons, but also how Lacan could help me to understand all sorts of trends in French Continental theory. So given that hook, I trudged through Lacan and gradually began to make sense of his work. This has been my problem with Laruelle so far: I haven’t found an answer to the “what is it for?” “what does it do?” questions. Without that telos it’s difficult to see how the concepts are organized and what they’re doing.

Adam Kotsko Says: Monday, September 7, 2009 at 8:58 am
Levi,

What you are saying is critical of philosophy, at least certain practices of philosophy. Some of them have gone in unproductive directions, and you don’t want to follow them. Some have done things you want to emulate in your own way. Figuring out what you want to do as a philosopher requires you to do that. Therefore, it seems to me that your discourse, too, is about philosophy. And that insofar as Laruelle is trying to figure out a way to get past certain recurring impasses in philosophy, you have something in common, even if his particular method of doing so doesn’t convince you.

Numbers are symbols of the mortal

Mediation and memory in the theory of money via The Memory Bank by keith on 9/10/09 According to Spengler, the West had exhausted the historical impulse given by its modern version of economic life (featuring money and machines) and a new phase, based on politics, national religion and war, was about to take over. This was not a bad prediction, but Spengler’s interest for us lies in how he conceived of the relationship between money and other universals.

Following Goethe, Spengler made a contrast between history (becoming) and nature (what has become). The counterpart of longing, of the desire to move forward that is becoming, is the dread of having become, of finality or death; and this pair together drive cultural creativity.

‘Life, perpetually fulfilling itself as an element of becoming, is what we call ‘the present’, and it possesses that mysterious property of ‘direction’, which men have tried to rationalize by means of the enigmatic word ‘time’.’

On the one hand, there is measurement of time as duration; but the idea of history as becoming, as irreversible direction, is particular to the West. Number belongs to nature as the chief sign of completed demarcation, of all things that have become themselves.

‘Mathematical number contains in its very essence the notion of a mechanical demarcation, number being in that respect akin to word, which…fences off world-impressions.’

Spengler identifies a break between classical antiquity and the modern West. For the Greeks, number is magnitude, the essence of all things perceptible to the senses. Mathematics for them was thus concerned with measurement in the here and now, visible and tangible. ‘Numbers are symbols of the mortal’. All this changed with Descartes whose new number-idea was function – a world of relations between points in abstract space. Whereas the Greeks sought perfection within the concrete limits of nature and society as they experienced them, now a passionate Faustian tendency towards the infinite took hold, married to abstract mathematical forms that increasingly freed themselves from concrete reality in order better to control that reality. The new mathematics was thus immaterial, resting on abstract analysis, dissociated from magnitude and transferred to a transcendental relational world, a process culminating in ‘victory over the popular and sensuous number-feeling in us all’.

‘The nexus of magnitudes is proportion, that of relations is function…All proportion assumes the constancy, all transformation the variability of the constituents…Every construction affirms, and every operation denies appearances, in that one works out what is optically given and the other dissolves it….The classical mathematic of small things deals with the concrete individual instance and produces a once-for-all construction, while the mathematic of the infinite handles whole classes of formal possibilities, groups of functions, operations, equations, curves…There has been growing up the idea of a general morphology of mathematical operations.’

Western mathematics is ‘the copy and the purest expression of the idea of the Faustian soul’. This leap from a geometry of the concretely real to a world of pure relations was mediated by the algebra of the ‘Magian’ Arabs (and, we may add, by the Indian discovery of the number zero).

Spengler returns to this theme when considering ‘the form-world of economic life’. Economics is British, materialistic and has no room in it for a notion of the national soul. There has been a shift, parallel to that in mathematics, from thinking in terms of goods to thinking in terms of money.

A form of limit-defining is abstracted from the visible objects of economics just as mathematical thought abstracts something from the mechanistically conceived environment. Abstract money corresponds exactly to abstract number. Both are entirely inorganic. The economic picture is reduced exclusively to quantities, whereas the important point about ‘goods’ has been their quality.

He points to the widespread confusion between pieces of money, the value-token, and money as a category of thought. In fact, tangible property has been replaced by fortune, a purely numerical quantum of money that is mobile and undefined. The middle-man elevates mediation between producer and consumer to the level of monopoly and ultimately primacy. ‘He who commands this mode of thinking is the master of money’. The result, citing G. B. Shaw, is that money and life ‘…are inseparable: money is the counter that enables life to be distributed socially: it is life…Every idea, to be actualized, has to be put into terms of money’.

The Apollonian idea of money as magnitude (which is classical) and the Faustian conception of money as function are opposites. ‘Classical man saw the world surrounding him as a sum of bodies; money is also a body’ (talents, coins). With the rise of double-entry book-keeping, economic function became not even the ledger entry, but the act of writing it. When a businessman signs a piece of paper to mobilize remote forces, this gesture stands in an abstract relationship to the power of labor, machinery etc. which only takes the form of money numbers in a retrospective accountancy process. In this way, western economic life was progressively emancipated from the notion of magnitude. Modern money is the result of creative thinking, mentally devised as an instrument of Faustian life. Thinking in money generates money. It turns the world into subjects and objects, consisting of a few executives and the many who follow them. Each individual is either a part of the money force or just a mass.

‘And so they created the idea of the machine as a small cosmos obeying the will of man alone.’

Spengler concludes with a prophecy that the world of money and machine-industry will be overthrown by ‘blood’ as the dominant life-principle; and at this point we leave him. But his framework contains much of value for an analysis of the conscious and unconscious influence of money on our actions today.

Spengler points to the important relationship of money to time, specifically as a promise to pay in future. This obligation, as is well-known, is of uncertain value. It therefore requires belief for the promise to work; and this may take the form of faith, trust or confidence. The degree of our emotional attachment to a belief is inversely related to the empirical evidence for holding it, strong in the case of ‘blind faith’, weak for ‘open-eyed confidence’, with ‘trust’ somewhere in between. Money therefore always exists in time as something apparently certain, yet deeply uncertain. It appears in society temporally both as ‘work’, a tangible principle of scarcity (magnitude), and as a principle of virtual increase, ‘interest’ (function). The payment of money, like words and numbers, fixes the transience of life and lends it a certain finality. But, in the historical form of modern capitalism, money also makes a break with the object-world and becomes the aspiration to infinite growth. The power of money to mobilize resources at distance is commanded by only a few — once the ‘captains of industry’, now in the age of finance ‘masters of the universe’ — while the masses experience money mainly as the immediate consequences of an anonymous force organizing their lives.

Spengler’s argument that magnitude was replaced by function in Western history would serve our purposes better if conceived of as an ongoing dialectical relationship. In this context, we must also acknowledge the machine revolution of the last two centuries, the latest stage of which involves perhaps the most dramatic transformation of money to date, its digital separation from material existence (from atoms to bits) as a virtual artefact of the internet. Paper presented at the workshop ‘On either side of the economic science of money’, Université de Paris X, Nanterre, 18-19th September 2009 2:21 PM

I clearly want to have my cake (object) and eat (relate) to it too

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Pagan Metaphysics is written by Paul Reid-Bowen, a lecturer in Philosophy and the Study of Religions at Bath Spa University (UK). His research and teaching interests encompass metaphysics, existentialism, feminist and ecological philosophy, and a number of new religious movements (notably feminist and nature religions). 09:47 About Me
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(title unknown) via enowning by enowning on 9/3/09 Simon Critchely explains Meillassoux.

For the English-speaking reader, the force of Meillassoux's polemic against correlationism requires some explanation... But what exactly is the problem with correlationism? Well, it is twofold. First, by denying thought any rational access to primary qualities or things in themselves, correlationism allows that space to be filled by any number of irrational discourses, such as religion. In a powerful critique of the theological turn in French phenomenology, for example in the work of Jean-Luc Marion, Meillassoux shows how the flip side of correlationism is fideism, that is, the rather vague discourse on the numinous that one finds in many followers of Heidegger, but also - it should be added - in Wittgenstein's curious remarks about the mystical towards the end of the Tractatus. Such is what Meillassoux calls "the religionizing of reason".

After Finitude is the best diagnosis of the problems with contemporary philosophy

Thursday, August 13, 2009 Interview with Nick Srnicek
Nick also has a personal blog which I cannot recommend enough. Paul John Ennis

Undoubtedly, all three of the books selected will be indicative more of my interests rather than suggestions about what are objectively the 'best' books. There's already a large and increasingly growing collection of SR-related work, and to name all the great books would take some time. With that caveat, the first work one needs to read if one's interested in SR is Meillassoux's After Finitude. It simply is the best diagnosis of the problems with contemporary philosophy, and it's argued with a clarity that proves logic, surprise and wonder don't need to be mutually exclusive. Nearly everyone I've seen write about it, says that it was a shock to their system after years of training had led them to focus on subjective and linguistic structures. The arguments may be debatable (and there's already a small cottage industry in discussing the book), but the sheer force with which they hit you when you first read it makes it the best introduction to SR.

The second book I'd suggest is Brassier's Nihil Unbound. His work is a strikingly original and provocatively argued work that aims to shatter all the comforts of a human-centric worldview. It is an unflinching look at nihilism and the Enlightenment project, and I think as neuroscience continues to progress and exteriorize the interiority of the mind, Brassier's work will be the foundation for the rethinking of ourselves that neuroscience triggers. As such, it's a crucial work that may still be ahead of its time.

The third and final work I'd suggest is Harman's Prince of Networks, which I think is the clearest and most developed exposition of his philosophy yet. Not only is the second half devoted to a highly illuminating defence and explanation of his work, but the first half provides the best philosophical reading of Bruno Latour available. It is my belief that Latour provides the key insights into rescusitating continental philosophy's politics from its indecisive and abstract doldrums, and as such, Harman lays down the path for a debate between them. And with Harman's powerful critiques of Latour in the second half, it's like getting two books for the price of one. Definitely recommended.

***

Science, Culture and Integral Yoga Saturday, August 22
On Universalism: In Debate with Alain Badiou by Etienne Balibar
by Debashish on August 22, 2009 12:21 AM (PDT)

Etienne Balibar (1942- ) is a French philosopher and political theorist who was among the principal students of Louis Althusser. In this thought dialog with Alain Badiou (a worthy counterpart of the interview on Universalism carried on sciy earlier), Balibar conducts a sophisticated investigation on universalism - its dichotomies, its establishment as truth and the responsibility implicit in its pursuit.

Why is universalism always ridden with contradiction? Can it be spoken of in a singular fashion or can it be reduced to the proper side of a single dichotomy? In tracing a speculative history of universality, Balibar moves through the variety of dichotomous displacements through history to bring to focus the intrinsically dialectic essence of universalism.

Which leads to the political question of the establishment of universalism. Balibar extends the philosophical discourse of dialectics to the perpetuallly revolutionary essence of the politics of universalism - that is, it is in ceaseless reviolution that the single-dual ideal of what Balibar calls "equaliberty" becomes the quasi-transcendental horizon of realization. One may say that social consciousness expands in this process in unpredictable dimensions.

Finally, on the question of the responsibility intrinsic to the pursuit of universalism, Balibar points out how the question of violence is also intrinsic to it. This question is not merely an external or extensive one, a fact of revolution as mentioned before, but an internal and intensive responsibility - that of the violence of internal exclusivism. This is the specter of the terror of totalism or absolutism which we are so familiar with today. Balibar points to the always present specter of this danger and something the responsibility of the pursuit of universalism needs to be constantly vigilant about. - db more » Leave Comment Permanent Link

Friday, August 21 Capitalism a Love Story by Michael Moore
by Rich on August 21, 2009 05:37 PM (PDT) Michael Moore returns with class warfare on his mind. more » Leave Comment Permanent Link

Science, Culture and Integral Yoga Thursday, August 20
An Interview with Alain Badiou: “Universal Truths & the Question of Religion” by Adam S. Miller, Journal of Philosophy and Scripture
by Debashish on August 20, 2009 01:11 AM (PDT)

Is universalism an ideology in the self-proclaimed name of the Human which is meant to spread its normative hegemony over all forms of particularism, with a discursive disciplinary and regulative mechanism so ubiquitous that it disappears into unnoticeability? And in doing so, does it indeed wipe out all particularisms, or being itself a particularism pretending to be undeniably universal, does it instead enable a numberless plethora of fundamentalistic particularims to be equal claimants to the right of universalism in innumerable contested definitions of the Human?What then happens to universalism? Must we discsard this utopian ideal of the Enlightenment in the rubbish heap of History? Or is it an alternate locus that we must seek for it, a locus in which difference can inhere at the horizon of identity ?

Alain Badiou (1937- ), prominent French philosopher and former chair of Philosophy at the Ecole Normale Superieure, addrersses these questions in a book on St. Paul, where he develops his notion of universalism as a revolutionary aspect of becoming rooted in the idea of the Event. Such an Event cannot be predicted outside the appearance of dialectical contradictions, but in its appearance, such contradications lose their contradictory significance, either in an indifference or in a coexistence where new properties subsume their significance beyond contradiction.

Perhaps it may not be too far to apply Sri Aurobindo's phrase to this event-ual nature of the becoming: "Trasncendence transfigures," though to Badiou such transcendence does not bear any inevitability or predictability to it. In the present interview with Adam S. Miller of the Journal of Philosophy and Scripture, Badiou expands on his views on universalism and also inflects his positions vis-a-vis that of Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Zizek. - db more » Leave Comment Permanent Link

Ronald Bogue first introduced Deleuze to the English speaking world

Aug 18, 2009 Review of Difference and Givenness
from Larval Subjects . by larvalsubjects

For those who have online access to Project Muse, Ronald Bogue’s review of Difference and Givenness is now available volume 16 of Symploke. From the final paragraph:

His argumentation is dense, yet pursued with rigor and systematic coherence. His reading of Difference and Repetition is one of the finest now available and a significant contribution to the growing body of serious engagements with Deleuze as a philosopher. Bryant’s study will be difficult going for anyone unfamiliar with the Deleuzian corpus, but for those who have struggled with Deleuze’s complex works, this book will prove an invaluable guide and an essential stimulus to further discussion of his thought. In every way, Difference and Givenness is a major achievement.

This is a truly gratifying review, not only because it was Bogue that first introduced Deleuze to the English speaking world and because he has done so much excellent work on Deleuze (particularly his three volumes on Deleuze and the arts), but also because Ronald Bogue’s work has been so influential in my own thought. Difference and Givenness would not have been possible without his book Deleuze & Guattari, and especially the chapters on Difference and Repetition and The Logic of Sense.

Material History from Larval Subjects . by larvalsubjects

Marx famously said that Hegel must be made to walk on his feet. By this Marx meant that history does not move as a result of the agency of the concept, spirit, or the idea as Hegel would have it, but rather as a result of this material history that Braudel is referring to and which Braudel explores in satisfying detail dwarfing anything like what we find in Marx. Of course, from the standpoint of my object-oriented ontology I would include signs, minds, and all the rest as real actors as well.

Nonetheless, in a philosophical context intoxicated by texts, signs, language, and mind, a historian like Braudel is discovered like a breath of fresh air, reminding us of another domain of mute objects that everywhere intertwine with imbroglios of human and non-human actors. In this respect, Braudel’s Civilization & Capitalism is also a therapeutic work as it reminds us of what becomes invisible in approaches to thought saturated by textuality and a reflection on mind.

The trick is to tolerate uncertainty without becoming either a skeptic or a dogmatist

Monday, August 10, 2009 Augustine, Husserl, and Certainty

In his magisterial Augustine of Hippo, Peter Brown writes of Augustine, "He wanted complete certainty on ultimate questions." (1st ed., p. 88) If you don't thrill to that line, you are no philosopher. Compare Edmund Husserl: "Ohne Gewissheit kann ich eben nicht leben." "I just can't live without certainty." Yet he managed to live for years after penning that line, and presumably without certainty.

I would say that the ability to tolerate uncertainty without abandoning the quest for certainty is a mark of intellectual and spiritual maturity. A truth seeker who can tolerate uncertainty is one who will not seek false refuge in dogmas that provide pseudo-certainty. I cannot help but think of Islamo-terrorism in this connection. Had Muhammad Atta and the boys entertained some doubts about the bevy of black-eyed virgins awaiting them at the portals of paradise, they and three thousand others might still be alive. The trick is to tolerate uncertainty without becoming either a skeptic or a dogmatist. [...]

I conclude that there are some propositions the truth of which can be grasped with objective certitude even though these propositions are not about such mental data as pleasures and pains. The mind has the power to transcend its own states and not only to know, but to know with objective certitude, truths whose truth is independent of mind. That is amazing.

One some days, existence strikes me as the deepest and most fascinating of philosophical topics. On other days, I give the palm to time: "What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to someone who does ask me, I do not know." (Augustine, Confessions, Bk. 11, Ch. 14) But today, the honor goes to knowledge. Posted at 08:12 PM in Augustine, Certainty, Husserl Permalink .. Maverick Philosopher: In Praise of Blogosophy by Bill Vallicella 9:31 AM 9:54 AM

One of Rorty's central and oft-repeated themes is anti-essentialism

A Psychology of Reading Rorty Oct 1, 2007
from philosophy autobiography by Jeff Meyerhoff

More than any other philosopher I keep reading Richard Rorty; its been 20 years now. What is it that draws me back to him when I don’t read any other philosopher with that consistency? Rorty himself recently said that nowadays he’s just “tweaking” what he’s already written. If it’s the same old stuff repackaged why do I keep wanting to read it? Of course the ease with which he delivers his views makes for a pleasurable read, but there wouldn’t be such a level of desire to keep reading him unless there was something I needed to get from his work. Somewhat contradictorily, I understand what he’s saying while at the same time I can’t quite grasp something and so need to keep reading.

One of Rorty's central and oft-repeated themes is anti-essentialism. That philosophy presumes that things, its objects of inquiry – knowledge, truth, the good, reality, the mind – have an essential, unchanging nature which we can grasp by thinking rigorously about them. It’s assumed that the entities of the world have a nature, are a particular way, and we can finally grasp their nature by thinking rationally about them.

Rorty asserts that this assumption of the essentialism of the objects of philosophy has created problems for philosophy and that a better understanding is that these objects are always meaningful objects that arise from language which in turn arose and arises through our social practices and interactions. Words serve useful purposes for contingent occasions and as those occasions and our needs change so too do our words and their meanings. The concept of “the soul” was a palpable reality (and still is for many), but in philosophical circles it has been replaced by the concept of “the mind” which, for many, has a palpable undeniability.

I ‘m drawn to reading Rorty saying this over and over in a variety of different ways even though I can already state the idea accurately and believe that he’s right. But if I understand the point, why not be done with him? Because there is a level at which I don’t understand it and don’t believe it. So on one level I believe it and on another I believe the opposite. What are those two levels?

On an intellectual level I’m mostly convinced and yet on a psychological level I believe the opposite. Psychologically, in my moment-to-moment, daily living, I assume and operate as if there is an objective way that the world is, objectively right things I should be doing and that it is my job to try to discern them. I live as if my true life course is objectively out there, but I don’t know it and that it is my job to fathom it. This is another example of “the pathos of distance,” the sad separation of humans from some eternal, certain, completing Other which life seems inexplicably constructed to keep us from, or make it monstrously hard to grasp. This Other has taken many forms: it is the nature of the virtues in ancient Greece, it is God in Christianity, Nature in science, the Truth in philosophy.

More specifically, I live as if the central ruling conceptual scheme of my psyche, which I wrote about in my first few blog entries: the fact of being a nobody and the corresponding desire to become a somebody, has an essential and substantive character and reality. It’s an essentialism of the psyche which rules my life, but which, upon reflection, I can see as a mutable, human creation that I needn’t be subject to. But while I can see it intellectually, just as I understand Rorty’s work intellectually, psychologically I continue to act out their dictates as if they were an essential and real polarity of life. Since this living, concrete polarity of nobody and somebody operate in my day-to-day living despite my best efforts to escape them, I gain a secondary, but never completely liberating satisfaction from reading Rorty. Oct 1, 2007

DeLanda’s Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy

The Insufferable Figure of the Scholar from Larval Subjects by larvalsubjects

Derrida’s Speech of Philosophy, despite being devoted exclusively to Husserl and a close reading of certain key moments in Husserl’s thought is not a work of scholarship but a genuine work of philosophy in its own right. Derrida does not set out to represent Husserl, but produces something new in and through Husserl.

Heidegger’s Sophist lectures or his massive four volumes on Nietzsche, while engaging with a particular thinker, are not scholarship but genuine works of philosophy.

Iain Hamilton Grant’s book on Schelling is not scholarship, though it is very scholarly, but is a genuine work of philosophy. Although the dividing line is fuzzy, the difference between a scholarly work on a philosopher and a philosophical engagement with a philosopher seems to revolve around whether the work seeks to represent the philosopher or whether it is engaging with the philosopher to produce a new work of philosophy.

In this respect, my Difference and Givenness is a work of scholarship insofar as it seeks to represent Deleuze and explain his transcendental empiricism and how it is working with the rationalist tradition and the tradition of transcendental idealism,

whereas DeLanda’s Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy is a genuine work of philosophy in that it takes up Deleuze’s thought to produce a philosophical work of its own. Both types of work are valuable and make their own contributions.

Sri Aurobindo comes at a very crucial moment in the history of thought

Through sheer human efforts and by mere aspiration
Sri Aurobindo's influence by Tusar N Mohapatra

Sri Aurobindo's extensive mapping of consciousness and his life-long endeavour to fathom the overhead regions through poetry and yoga are seminal contributions. His emphasis on attainability of highest possible perfection through sheer human efforts and by mere aspiration is a great message of hope. Further, the adventure of consciousness is not aimed at isolated spiritual salvation. Rather, a harmonious collective living is the ultimate destination. By translating this ideal to practical terms, Sri Aurobindo draws an elaborate blueprint concerning the ideal of human unity leading to the establishment of a World-Union.

Sri Aurobindo comes at a very crucial moment in the history of thought when Marxist materialism, Nietzschean nihilism and Freudian vitalism were popular and fashionable. Besides, phenomenology and existentialism had their run along-side him. On the whole, along with the new-fangled science and Theosophy, these new philosophical formulations fermented enough confusion among the elite. In a way, the disparate positions arrived at in Western thought find their synthesis in Sri Aurobindo's philosophy. By aligning them with the ancient Indian wisdom, he comes up with an integral vision that breathes universality as well as contemporarity.

Thus, Kant's sublime, Hegel's absolute, Schopenhauer's will, Kierkegaard's passion, Marx's matter, Darwin's evolution, Nietzsche's overman, Bergson's élan vital, all find their due representation in Sri Aurobindo's grand exposition. His thought successfully overarchs cultural as well as religious chasms. S. K. Maitra and Haridas Chaudhuri are first among the academicians to discern the import of Sri Aurobindo's integral philosophy. D. P. Chattopadhyay wrote a seminal treatise juxtaposing Sri Aurobindo and Marx to examine their utopian prophecies. [ Wikipedia Posted by Tusar N Mohapatra at 2:54 AM ] Wednesday, 20 December, 2006 Posted by Tusar N Mohapatra at 1:17 PM

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Saturday, February 21, 2009 Zizek and Rorty on the Real

An interesting aspect in Slavoj Zizek’s writings is the way he says something about and uses the concept of “the Real,” yet the Real he describes is similar to the reality that Rorty describes which philosophers and other beings have tried to grasp. For Rorty the real or reality is a philosophically empty concept. We have different candidates for the Real: God, Matter, What Is, Truth, Nature, Knowledge, but the debates about it are inconclusive and it seems to just serve as an unknowable ultimate justifier for our beliefs. Rorty’s pragmatic solution is to stop talking about it.

Zizek’s Real from Lacan is a gap, lack or absence, in a way not there, yet it’s incorporated into a psychoanalytical-philosophical understanding that gives it a useful role in helping us to understand ourselves and the world. The Real as a lack or absence lay at the center of our symbolic order and is why we can’t create a finished intellectual system. It is that uncanny, indefinable attractive something that causes certain objects to attract and entrance us. It is the trauma around which we construct our selves and repeat our behavioral patterns which contradictorily both offer to resolve the trauma and help us to avoid confronting it. So Rorty says reality as the really real is not there and not a good use of our time to think about. Zizek says yes, it isn’t there in the way people want – a substantial something, a graspable bedrock – but in its absence it is there and has a determining presence which we see in its effects. He analyzes its qualities of attractiveness and repulsiveness. It’s the psychology of what ultimately isn’t there but can’t be gotten rid of.

There’s an Eastern spiritual version of this. The ultimate stuff is paradoxical: The Tao, Nirvana, Atman, the Non-Dual are ineffable and yet named. We try to grasp It or surrender to It but the very effort to know It causes It not to be known. It is beyond conceptuality. But the Eastern practices do believe there is a final attainment or resolution, whereas Zizek and Lacan don’t think there is. Posted by Jeff Meyerhoff at 1:37 PM 13 comments

I see the world as a messy, complex place with theory as only the best approximation

Keith M Ellis Says: August 8th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Myles, our disagreement in the specific reflects our disagreement in the general. The supposed ultimate outcomes of “classical liberalism” and libertarianism are, in my opinion, mostly beside the point. Postulating so is a bunch of hand-waving. I’m not very interested in political theory that has little relevance to what’s actually happening in the world. The same was true when I was in school (and now) with regard to philosophy.

I am interested in what I believe is the most meaningful descriptive level upon which to examine a political philosophy that has influence in this world: the psychological/sociological/historical context in which it formed and exists. I think that context is both far more predictive as to what particular positions will be widely adopted as orthodox by that philosophy and how the group which holds this philosophy will influence the greater polity.

People have, and will, construct elaborate intellectual edifies rationalizing their favored political philosophy but, in practice, the larger group of people who hold that philosophy will adopt beliefs and positions largely independent of that rationalization and, more to the point, they will be quite often inconsistent beliefs and positions. Coherent theory has utility at some rarified level where the intellectuals and the powerful intersect—occasionally at pivotal moments—but, generally, comprehension of the politics of the matter is more greatly limited by ignorance of the sociological context of the political philosophy than by its theory.

Those who write and talk about libertarianism (as distinct, I think, from those who merely adopt libertarianism as a felicitous set of political beliefs) are the type of people who have a great fondness for simplifying abstract theory and naturally expect the world to conform to it. In this they are quite like, say, Marxists. I am not like this. I have a great love for, and facility with, theory of all kinds but I see the world as a messy, complex place with theory as only the best approximation for something we probably don’t understand very well, anyway.

Demoralizing caution and prudence of professional academic philosophy

New Metaphysics
Series Editors: Graham Harman and Bruno Latour
Open Humanities Press is pleased to launch a new series in continental philosophy published in conjunction with the University of Michigan Library's Scholarly Publishing Office. Each New Metaphysics book will be freely available as an electronic book (open access) and as reasonably priced paperbacks.

The world is due for a resurgence of original speculative metaphysics. The New Metaphysics series aims to provide a safe house for such thinking amidst the demoralizing caution and prudence of professional academic philosophy. We do not aim to bridge the analytic-continental divide, since we are equally impatient with nail-filing analytic critique and the continental reverence for dusty textual monuments.

We favor instead the spirit of the intellectual gambler, and wish to discover and promote authors who meet this description. Like an emergent recording company, what we seek are traces of a new metaphysical 'sound' from any nation of the world. The editors are open to translations of neglected metaphysical classics, and will consider secondary works of especial force and daring. But our main interest is to stimulate the birth of disturbing masterpieces of twenty-first century philosophy. To contribute to the series, please contact Graham Harman

Alterity, comparative philosophy, and colonialism

CFP: Levinas and Asian Thought from Continental Philosophy by Farhang Erfani
Call for Papers: Levinas and Asian Thought Edited by Leah Kalmanson, Frank Garrett, and Sarah Mattice

Comparative philosophy has often reached out to major figures within the continental European tradition, resulting in such successful publications as Heidegger and Asian Thought and Nietzsche and Asian Thought. In recent years, the editors of the present volume have noted a growing number of journal articles and conference presentations exploring connections between Emmanuel Levinas and various Asian philosophies. The time is ripe for an essay collection that will help highlight and bring into focus this developing field of inquiry. We invite submissions addressing any one of many possible topics falling under the theme of Levinas and Asian thought, including but certainly not limited to:

* Alterity, inter-subjectivity, and the relational self. * The implications of Buddhist “no-self” for alterity. For example, does no-self imply, in any way, no-other? * Alterity and the family in Levinas and Confucian role ethics. * Infinity and nothingness in Levinas and Kyoto School philosophy. * Being, non-being, and “otherwise than being” in Levinas and Daoism. * Alterity, as articulated in either non-dualist or dualist schools in Indian philosophy. * Alterity and the problematizing of comparativist projects. For example, is the “other” philosopher always the non-western one? * Critique directed at Levinas’s own accounts of Asian “others.” * Alterity, comparative philosophy, and colonialism. * Levinas, Asian traditions, and feminist discourse. * Comparative explorations of Levinas’s Judaism and the religions of Asia. * Levinas, Asian thought, and environmental ethics or animal studies. For example, how might an Asian tradition help us think through the idea of a non-human other?

Other than philosophy and philosophical texts to determine what needs to be thought

Short-Circuits from Larval Subjects by larvalsubjects

What is needed is an ontology that straddles, as Paul Ennis puts it, both nature and culture; but this is accomplished not through treating the natural as a social construction, but rather through treating the cultural as a dimension of the real. If the necessity of this move is needed, simply listen to the sorts of problems eco-theorists, media theorists, technology theorists, feminists, artificial intelligence designers, neurologists, and so on are working with. Note the manner in which they all take meaning, texts, discourses, etc., seriously while also constantly grumbling over the inadequacy of these human centered approaches for their own work.

The chorus of conflicting charges from within philosophy strikes me as a sign that object-oriented ontology is hitting a nerve, while the enthusiasm for object-oriented thought among ecologists, critical animal theorists, artists, media and technology theorists, feminists, queer theorists, AI folk and so on suggests to me that a useful set of tools are being developed that help to navigate the way out of what initially appears to be a dead end. As always, look to those that are working on something other than philosophy and philosophical texts to determine what needs to be thought.

How Did Caesar Cross the Rubicon?
from Larval Subjects by larvalsubjects: No doubt I’ve exacerbated the problem because I’ve developed a somewhat abstract vocabulary with mysterious expressions like “there are no differences that do not make a difference”, “there is no transportation without translation”, and “nothing is either reducible or irreducible to anything else”, all situated in terms like “objectiles”, “actors”, “exo-relations”, “endo-relations”, “attractors”, “phase spaces”, “endo-consistency”, and so on. Faced with this infantry of terms and expressions, it’s difficult to determine what I might be getting at. A good deal of this has been my fault as I seldom give very elaborate examples to develop my claims. Hopefully I can rectify some of this today through the question “how did Caesar cross the Rubicon?” [...]

In other words, such an account gives us only a very small portion of what is going on. Moreover, it does not capture the manner in which the horses and soldiers must be fed, the soldiers must maintain their equipment, and so on and so forth. Finally horses, equipment, soldiers, officers, carts, swords, armor, supply lines, and so on are not simply docile bodies that jump to action like a television changes channel when a button is pushed. No. No body is ever a perfectly formed content, but rather there is always an element of friction whenever putting-in-form takes place. It takes quite a bit of work to hold a multiplicity together, as anyone who has ever done administrative work knows all too well.

We might also ask how it is possible for the simple act of crossing the Rubicon to become an event. Presumably Caesar’s army had crossed many rivers, but very few of these crossings were incorporeal transformations in the sense that crossing the Rubicon was an incorporeal transformation. Here, again, we might fall back on discursivity, examining Roman law, its oppositions, its structures, and how these come to be intertwined with a geography, rendering an event in the sense of an incorporeal transformation to become possible. Again, this analysis wouldn’t be mistaken either.

Finally, we have the engineering problem. How does a legion with its supply lines get across the river? Was there a reason the army chose this particular site rather than another? Did the weather conditions on January 10th play a role? What role did the mountainous territory play? In the event of crossing the Rubicon, a whole swarm of differences play a role in the production of the event. We get everything from the biological bodies of the soldiers and horses, the weather conditions, the fitness of the supply lines, the relationship between the foot and a stirrup, the geography of the shores, signs, legal systems, the circulation of orders from Caesar to his officers to the troops, and so on. While some of these differences play a larger role than others, we cannot say that one of these differences makes the event the event that it was. Rather, when we open our blackbox we have to look at how these differences related together, conspired together, to produce the particular event that took place.

Theories and concepts are not reality laid bare, but rather are more like instruments and lenses

anotherheideggerblog Thursday, July 23, 2009 Interview with Levi R. Bryant
Today we interview Levi R. Bryant, author of Difference and Givenness: Deleuze’s Transcendental Empiricism and the Ontology of Immanence and co-editor (along with Graham Harman and Nick Srnicek of the forthcoming The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism. Many of you will also know Levi from his excellent blog Larval Subjects.

Freud, for example, gives all sorts of reasons pertaining to desire as to why people believe in God, but his analysis, in no way, undermines the existence of God. To do that you would need another sort of argument. In other words, it’s entirely possible that everything Freud says about why people are led to belief in God is true, and God nonetheless exists. I think those that practice psychoanalytic critical theory sometimes forget this.

Nonetheless, I do think that psychoanalysis can be of great value in helping philosophers to recognize blind spots in their discourse and philosophical practice. Indeed, Lacan argued that for any discourse to establish itself, it must repress or exclude some element so as to achieve internal consistency. With this repression, of course, there is always a return of the repressed that plagues the discourse in the form of a symptom. Lacan always claimed that philosophy is the discourse of the master, which is to say that it is a discourse that disavows the split in the subject and strives to achieve mastery by unifying the slaves knowledge under a master-signifier transforming it into a smooth conceptual system. We can certainly see this notion of a sovereign and transparent subject without split in Descartes and even Husserl, but I also think this conception of the subject is ubiquitous in the practice of many philosophers. Thus, while the contemporary thinker-- including the psychoanalytically inflected thinker --might give lip service to how the subject is split, going so far as to make it the center-point of their entire system of thought, they nonetheless proceed in practice as if they were sovereign masters. Really this is a variation of the famous Socratic thesis that the source of our tragedy lies in believing that we know when we do not.

Symptoms of this can be detected all over the place. Thus, those who have been influenced by Lacan often approach popular culture, political events, and various cultural artifacts as if they had the interpretive master-key that lays everything bare to the eye that wishes to know. In this way, texts no longer have the capacity to surprise them as readers as they’re already looking for mere exemplifications of their theory. I think, despite all its talk of free play, deconstruction has fallen into a similar cul-de-sac. Calls for a critical stance also strike me as suffering from a similar desire for mastery. They would like to know before they know, determining the conditions under which knowledge, for example, is possible, thereby saving themselves the trouble of going through the process of arriving at knowledge as a result. This can be seen as a defense against the aleatory nature of the world that resists our drive to represent it. Similarly, it is today seen as the height of naivete to actually advocate for a particular position. Rather, one is to be critical of all positions, showing how they are all secretly about something else. In many respects, this resembles the attitude of the obsessional that is perpetually preparing without ever doing anything. In this way, the obsessional is able to disguise his split or incompleteness by never engaging with the world. In my view, philosophical practice can be assisted by becoming more aware of these psychic structures and their role as defences. [...]

At any rate, psychoanalysis taught me that theories and concepts are not reality laid bare, but rather are more like instruments and lenses. In the clinic, psychoanalytic concepts draw your attention to certain things, make you cognizant of certain things that you might otherwise not notice, but they do not lay bare the truth of your patient. That is something that is only revealed-- if at all, it’s the patient that comes to know, not the analyst after all; the analyst is just a midwife --through long engagement. Often clinical experience contradicts these concepts and calls for the entire remaking of analysis. This lesson significantly transformed my attitude towards philosophy and what it is about... Posted by Paul Ennis. Labels: Interview, levi r. bryant, phenomenology, philosophy, speculative realism

Properties of a medium really do matter

Media Studies and Realism: A response to Levi Bryant
July 22, 2009 tags: Atari , books , philosophy , writing
In a lengthy comment on my pragmatic speculative realism post, philosopher Levi Bryant asks what issues in technology and media studies prompted my interest in object-oriented ontology... Ian Bogost

Chalk it up to C.P. Snow's two cultures problem if you'd like, but it's undeniable that few successful humanities scholars possess both experience with and interest in matters of science and technology—practical matters that would allow them to theorize smartly about such topics. Even in Science and Technology Studies (STS), it is common to hold the actual science and technology somewhat at arms length in order to focus on the human aspects of its use, and the "policiing" of that practice.

Here again I find myself agreeing with Levi:
Here, I think, the charge of "technological determinism" is rather stupid and reactionary. The point isn't that technology determines particular social phenomena, but that it plays an organizing role.

In an interview with Paul Ennis that appeared the day following Levi's comments, Graham Harman notes that Marshall McLuhan is not taken as seriously as he should be, as a philosopher. Perhaps part of my dissatisfation with cultural studies in general and game studies in particular can be summarized by a simple pointer to McLuhan: the properties of a medium really do matter, and thinking that attending to them amounts to technological determinism is a perverted and backward mistruth.

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Science, Culture and Integral Yoga Re: Reinventing the Sacred by Stuart Kauffman (preface)
by Rich on Sun 12 Oct 2008 07:27 AM PDT Profile Permanent Link

It seems that the objections raised here to Kaufman's book are similar in kind to the ones brought up in Proust was a Neuroscientist. Namely that the 3rd Culture (aka C.P. Snow's 1959 essay on bridging of the humanities and the sciences) thus far has been mostly composed of scientific writers who rather than actually building bridges between disciplines, have ultimately reduced the dialog to a one way street.

In the case of Kauffman however emergence has replaced reductionism as a description and metaphor. Although the principles of emergence itself are still somewhat incomplete I do find them somewhat more of promising a paradigm to begin a "cross-cultural" conversation. But it would be certainly interesting to explore other communicative platforms malleable enough to hold an authentic dialog. Reply

Re: Reinventing the Sacred by Stuart Kauffman (preface)
by Debashish on Sun 12 Oct 2008 12:55 PM PDT Profile Permanent Link

Rich, I'm glad you contextualized this discussion within the cultural history of C.P. Snow's 1959 essay on The Two Cultures. It shows the continuing dominance of "Science" as the hegemonic modern discourse. And I agree that here, that being the case, attempts such as Kauffman's could be considered "more promising" as a "paradigm for a cross-cultural conversation." DB Reply

Re: Reinventing the Sacred by Stuart Kauffman (preface)
by koantum on Sun 12 Oct 2008 05:49 PM PDT Profile Permanent Link

Rich, your saying that "the principles of emergence itself are still somewhat incomplete" reminds me of the frequent euphemism "something is not yet completely understood" which does duty for "something is not understood at all." To understand emergence, one has to understand Sri Aurobindo's concepts of involution and evolution. Reply

Re: Reinventing the Sacred by Stuart Kauffman (preface)
by Debashish on Sun 12 Oct 2008 12:49 PM PDT Profile Permanent Link

I see. Most of these thinkers seem to be blocked by the "necessary and sufficient" criteria of materialism, and thus obliged to come up with descriptions which don't necessitate the assumption or priority of consciousness.

In his chapter on "The Philosophy of Rebirth" and its succeeding chapters in the Life Divine (and in several other places - we are presently going through these chapters in our Skype study, that is why I am reminded of them), Sri Aurobindo takes up a variety of arguments (including ones such as Kauffman's) and ends up with a divine Person and his self-conceptive act of infinite fragmentation and involution that originates and initiates the re-membrance of "evolving emergence" and the flowering of the play of souls in a temporality of progressive consciousness.

By the time he gets to his description, one has a bird's eye view of the entire terrain of possibilities and why they fail to be adequate - neither a "creative Materialism" nor an intelligent Becoming without an independent Conscious Being at its origin, nor even a Conscious Being without Personhood can suffice to explain the emergence of the grades of consciousness in Matter and the reversal in the equation of cosmos and individual implied by the appearance of human will, creativity, consciousness and aesthetic and ethical sense and idealism.

In both, the cosmos and the individual, and in all individuals, the self-exploration of the "infinite Person" proceeds temporally and perpetually towards the enduring vindication of its identity, immortal and integral, yet radically different (in its infinity) in each, at play in a self-conscious universe. DB Reply

Re: Gaston Bachelard: poet/philosopher of the imagination and epistemological rupture
by Debashish on Mon 06 Jul 2009 12:09 AM PDT Profile Permanent Link

Bachelard is among the most influential philosophers of the transition from modern to postmodern Francophone philosophy. His work spans the gamut of modern thought yet retains the quality of an eclectic mystic philosophy predating the age of specialization. Apart from the Philosophy of Science, which has been highlighted in this introduction, what he has left as an even more importanrt legacy, imo, are his wide-ranging writings on the imagination.

Of particular significance here and still replete with untapped fertility, are his works on the Imagination of Matter, which he develops in terms of a psychology of the elements (as excerpted here) - earth, water, air, fire and space/ether. This aspect of his work edges in the direction of the mysticism of the elements touched on by Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo's physics of the elements stretches across the spectrum through material, vital, mental and spiritual potencies of manifestation for each of the same. In both these cases, what these phenomenologies of the elements inaugurate are a new Physis - or a postmodern recovery project of ancient substance-knowledge - where the objectification of Matter is sought to be overcome by the recognition of its place in the ontology of the imaginary, no less real in its practical effects, in fact far more so in its reintegrated subjective-objective wholeness. Such a new Physis challenges the epistemology of modernity. DB Reply

Re: The Resonant Soul: Gaston Bachelard and the Magical Surface of Air by Robert Sardello
by Debashish on Tue 07 Jul 2009 02:08 PM PDT Profile Permanent Link

Here's where the Integral Yoga demands a framework of comparative hermeneutics to extend its perception if it is to arrive at a universal epistemology. A universal epistemology cannot be a monolithic metaphysics but a burgeoning cross-cultural dialog. Bachelard's "reverie" can map interestingly into Sri Arobindo's phenomenology of knowledge. "Aurobindonians" who remain stuck in the vocabulary of Sri Aurobindo too readily dismiss any such alternate formulations as irrelevant, but in the process deny themselves the benefit of a practical approach to certain possibilities of consciousness as well of course of the sheer poetic delight of a mystic enjoyment.
Reply

Re: The Resonant Soul: Gaston Bachelard and the Magical Surface of Air by Robert Sardello
by Tony Clifton on Wed 08 Jul 2009 07:45 PM PDT Profile Permanent Link

To dismiss as irrelevant other epistemologies without appreciating the local context they emerge from and the historical gestalt that backgrounds them is a movement of consciousness toward small mindedness. Its also an occasion for spiritual chauvinism when this is accompanied by a smugness in exhorting the superiority of ones own belief system. Profoundly anti-integral this movement of consciousness doxa, ad hoc dismisses other forms of knowing because they do not conform to the categorical structure of the system they have learned or memorized. At its worst this is also a form of epistemological imperialism that obliterates reaching an integral understanding in asserting its mental mapping of spirituality onto the territory of all other ways of knowing. Reply

Re: The Resonant Soul: Gaston Bachelard and the Magical Surface of Air by Robert Sardello
by Debashish on Wed 08 Jul 2009 10:47 PM PDT Profile Permanent Link

Well put. In most such cases a second order mental reality comes to take the place of the phenomenology of consciousness, leading to a metaphysical imprisonment which validates itself in propaganda and fanaticism. Reply