Why immanent critique?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanford Diehl
Keyword(s):  
Immanent Critique

Receptacle/Chōra: Figuring the Errant Feminine in Plato's Timaeus

Hypatia ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 124-146
Author(s):  
Emanuela Bianchi
Keyword(s):  
Western Philosophy ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Immanent Critique

This essay undertakes a reexamination of the notion of the receptacle/chōra in Plato's Timaeus, asking what its value may be to feminists seeking to understand the topology of the feminine in Western philosophy. As the source of cosmic motion as well as a restless figurality, labile and polyvocal, the receptacle/chōra offers a fecund zone of destabilization that allows for an immanent critique of ancient metaphysics. Engaging with Derridean, Irigarayan, and Kristevan analyses, Bianchi explores whether receptacle/chōra can exceed its reduction to the maternal-feminine, and remain answerable to contemporary theoretical concerns.

Merleau-Ponty’s Immanent Critique of Gestalt Theory

Human Studies ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Sheredos
Keyword(s):  
Gestalt Theory ◽  
Immanent Critique

Cultivation as Immanent Critique: Horticultural Metaphors in Gregory of Nyssa’s Reception of Origen and Basil

Open Theology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 388-400
Author(s):  
Taylor Ross
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Basic Premise ◽  
Natural Development ◽  
Origen Of Alexandria ◽  
Immanent Critique ◽  
De Hominis Opificio

Abstract The present article asks after Gregory of Nyssa’s debts to Basil the Great, and this by re-examining two texts the former wrote shortly after the latter’s death: De hominis opificio and Apologia in Hexaemeron. It does so on the premise, mostly promissory for now, that Gregory’s efforts to sort through Basil’s legacy in his late brother’s wake was part and parcel of the Nyssen’s career-long project to reprise Origen of Alexandria under a “pro-Nicene” banner. Defending his elder sibling’s apparently incomplete Homiliae in Hexameron while also disputing their basic premise, that is, gave Gregory an opportunity to negotiate the dialectic of dependence and distinction that ultimately determined his reception of earlier authorities, including the great Alexandrian they both revered. With that much longer story in sight, this article focuses on Gregory’s deployment of horticultural metaphors, especially in the Apologia in Hexaemeron, to describe his stance toward both Basil and Origen. Closer scrutiny of these images alongside his more technical means of differentiating between himself and Basil suggests that Gregory considered his own work to be both a natural development of his predecessors and, precisely thereby, the immanent perfection of their thought.

Augustine's immanent critique of Stoicism

2017 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-197
Author(s):  
Gerald P. Boersma
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethic ◽  
Virtue Theory ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Immanent Critique

AbstractThe broad contours of Augustine's critique of Stoic virtue theory in De civitate dei 19.4 finds a fascinating analogue in Theodor Adorno's theory of immanent critique: Augustine ‘enters’ into Stoic virtue theory and criticises it from its own postulates, illustrating the striking implausibility of Stoic orthodoxy when lived out in concreto and the absurd, but logical, conclusions to which one is necessarily carried by Stoic ethics. Through this deconstruction, Augustine clears a space to propose his own virtue ethic. Augustine maintains that a Stoic virtue ethic fails to deliver on its promised eudaimonistic ends because it lacks a robust eschatological vision. For Augustine, the Christian faith offers a more viable virtue ethic.

scholarly journals Transcending logic: the difference between contradiction and antinomy

2007 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniël Strauss
Keyword(s):  
Single Mode ◽  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Logical Thinking ◽  
Irrational Numbers ◽  
Principle Of Sufficient Reason ◽  
Zeno's Paradoxes ◽  
Immanent Critique ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Alternative Understanding

Philosophy and all the academic disciplines are sensitive to the aim of sound reasoning – except for the dialectical tradition which sanctions contradictions and antinomies (Heraclitus, Nicolas of Cusa, Hegel, Marx, Vaihinger, Simmel, Rex, and Dahrendorf). A brief overview is presented of conflicting theoretical stances within the various academic disciplines before an assessment is given of the positive and negative meaning of ‘reductionism.’ Against the background of historical lines of development the multiple terms employed in this context are mentioned and eventually positioned within the context of the normativity holding for logical thinking. It is argued that the logical contrary between logical and illogical serves as the foundation of other normative contraries, such as legal and illegal and moral and immoral. Through the discovery of irrational numbers the initial Pythagorean conviction that everything is number reverted to a geometrical perspective that generated a static metaphysics of being which challenged the ideas of plurality and motion. This development uncovered the problem of primitive terms in scientific discourse as an alternative for those theoretical attempts aimed at reducing whatever there is to one single mode of explanation. Zeno’s paradoxes are used to demonstrate an alternative understanding of the difference between the potential and the actual infinite as well as the nature of (theoretical) antinomies. It is argued that genuine antinomies are inter-modal in nature (such as is found in the attempt to reduce movement to static positions in space) and therefore differ from logical contradictions (such as a ‘square circle’ which merely confuses two figures within one modal aspect). Although every antinomy does entail logical contradictions, the latter do not necessarily presuppose an antinomy. The implication is that logic itself has an ontic foundation – as is seen from the nature of the principle of sufficient reason (ground) and the principle of the excluded antinomy – and therefore only acquires meaning on the basis of a non-reductionist ontology. When the method of immanent critique unveils genuine antinomies, the way is opened for meaningful intellectual interaction between different philosophical stances. In distinguishing between contradiction and antinomy philosophers are actually challenged to contemplate the implications of a non-reductionist ontology, such as avoiding the stance of monistic isms. 

scholarly journals Life in the nuclear age: Classical realism, critical theory and the technopolitics of the nuclear condition

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 279-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Columba Peoples
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Energy Production ◽  
The United States ◽  
Critical Awareness ◽  
Nuclear Age ◽  
Immanent Critique ◽  
Classical Realism ◽  
Post War ◽  
Production Industry ◽  
Nuclear Condition

Classical realist thought provides a diagnosis of the significance nuclear weapons that calls into question the very possibility of politics in the nuclear age. While sharing similarities with this outlook, critical theoretic reflections suggest a more expansive consideration of the nuclear condition as underpinned by combinations of dystopian fears of nuclear destruction and utopian visions of nuclear futures. Most prominently Herbert Marcuse’s critical theory intimates an understanding of the nuclear condition as one that is rendered tolerable so long as nuclear technologies are associated with and related to innovation, progress and modernity. The study of the technopolitics of the nuclear condition might thus look not only to classical realists’ concern with ‘Death in the Nuclear Age’ but also incorporate corresponding critical awareness of claims to the life-sustaining applications of nuclear technologies in areas such as energy production, industry and medicine. Applying an ‘aporetic’ form of immanent critique, and to exemplify how the international politics of the nuclear age has often been predicated on efforts to distinguish and relate different kinds of nuclear technologies, the article revisits the United States–led post-war vision of ‘Atoms for Peace’ and compares it to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s contemporary ‘How the Atom Benefits Life’ campaign.

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