scholarly journals Releasing Affects or the Release from Affects. The Case of Freud and Spinoza

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (16) ◽  
Author(s):  
Szymon Wróbel
Keyword(s):  
Natural Position ◽  
Philosophical Texts

In this paper, the author is questioning the very concept of “indifferenceof thinking”. The author also asks: in what sense thinkingleads to “overall indifference”? What, indeed, is indifference? Carefullyreading the philosophical texts on affects, mainly Spinoza, Freud,Bergson and Deleuze, the author argues, that indifference is not akind of non-affection, beside-affection, post-affection, but rather, itis a trace of affect – just as cinders are remnants of fire. Indifferenceis not abnegation either, which is a kind of statement that we couldnot care less. On the contrary, it is in indifference where we find aprofound commitment to bringing back the things of this world totheir natural position.

After Alice After Cats in Derrida's L'animal que donc je suis

Derrida Today ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 180-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Polish
Keyword(s):  
Human Development ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Human World ◽  
Philosophical Texts ◽  
The Sacrifice

In this essay, I argue that Derrida cannot pursue the question of being/following unless he thinks through the question of sexual difference posed by figures of little girls in philosophical texts and in literature, specifically as posed by Lewis Carroll's Alice whom Derrida references in L'animal que donc je suis. At stake in thinking being after animals after Alice is the thought of an other than fraternal following, a way of being-with and inheriting from (other than human) others that calls for an account of development that is not dictated by a normative autotelic and sacrificial logic. I argue that Derrida's dissociation of himself and his cat from Alice and her cat(s) in L'animal que donc je suis causes him to risk repeating the closed, teleological gestures philosophers like Kant and Hegel perpetuate in their accounts of human development. The more sweeping conclusion towards which this essay points is the claim that the domestication of girls and their subjection to familial fates in narratives and the reduction of development to teleology more generally, require the sacrifice and forgetting of ‘nature’, including animals, so that the fates of girls and ‘nature’ are intertwined in the context of projects of human world-building and home-making.

The Problem of the Formation of Philosophical Prose in Persian

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (6) ◽  
pp. 126-137
Author(s):  
Tatyana G. Korneeva
Keyword(s):  
Arabic Language ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Ibn Sina ◽  
Language Of Science ◽  
Persian Language ◽  
Arab Muslim ◽  
History Of ◽  
Philosophical Texts

The article discusses the problem of the formation of philosophical prose in the Persian language. The first section presents a brief excursion into the history of philosophical prose in Persian and the stages of formation of modern Persian as a language of science and philosophy. In the Arab-Muslim philosophical tradition, representatives of various schools and trends contributed to the development of philosophical terminology in Farsi. The author dwells on the works of such philosophers as Ibn Sīnā, Nāṣir Khusraw, Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, Aḥmad al-Ghazālī, ʼAbū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī and gives an overview of their works written in Persian. The second section poses the question whether the Persian language proved able to compete with the Arabic language in the field of science. The author examines the style of philosophical prose in Farsi, considering the causes of creation of Persian-language philosophical texts and defining their target audience. The article presents viewpoints of modern orientalist researchers as well as the views of medieval philosophers who wrote in Persian. We find that most philosophical texts in Persian were written for a public who had little or no knowledge of the Arabic language, yet wanted to get acquainted with current philosophical and religious doctrines, albeit in an abbreviated format. The conclusion summarizes and presents two positions regarding the necessity of writing philosophical prose in Persian. According to one point of view, Persian-language philosophical works helped people who did not speak Arabic to get acquainted with the concepts and views of contemporary philosophy. According to an alternative view, there was no special need to compose philosophical texts in Persian, because the corpus of Arabic philosophical terminology had already been formed, and these Arabic terms were widely and successfully used, while the new Persian philosophical vocabulary was difficult to understand.

A Yogācāra Buddhist Theory of Metaphor

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy Tzohar
Keyword(s):  
Figurative Language ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Potential Contribution ◽  
Philosophical Theory ◽  
Theory Of Meaning ◽  
Philosophical School ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
Philosophical Texts

This book is about what metaphors mean and do within Buddhist texts. More specifically, it is about the fundamental Buddhist ambivalence toward language, which is seen as obstructive and yet necessary for liberation, as well as the ingenious response to this tension that one Buddhist philosophical school—the early Indian Yogācāra (3rd–6th century CE)—proposed by arguing that all language use is in fact metaphorical (upacāra). Exploring the profound implications of this claim, the book presents the full-fledged Yogācāra theory of meaning—one that is not merely linguistic, but also perceptual.Despite the overwhelming visibility of figurative language in Buddhist philosophical texts, its role and use have received relatively little attention in scholarship to date. This book is the first sustained and systematic attempt to present an indigenous Buddhist philosophical theory of metaphor. By grounding the Yogācāra’s pan-metaphorical claim in its broader intellectual context, both Buddhist and non-Buddhist, the discussion reveals an intense Indian philosophical conversation about metaphor and language that reached across sectarian lines, and it also demonstrates its potential contribution to contemporary philosophical discussions of related topics. The analysis of this theory of metaphor radically reframes the Yogācāra controversy with the Madhyamaka; sheds light on the school’s application of particular metaphors, as well as its unique understanding of experience; and establishes the place of Sthiramati as an original Buddhist thinker of note in his own right, alongside Asaṅga and Vasubandhu.

A Classical Ethical Problem in Ancient Philosophy and Rabbinic Thought: The Case of the Shipwrecked

2013 ◽  
Vol 106 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katell Berthelot
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Ethical Problem ◽  
Ancient Philosophy ◽  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Babylonian Talmud ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Jewish Ethics ◽  
Philosophical Texts

The story found in Sifra Behar 5.3 and in the Babylonian Talmud, Baba Meṣi'a 62a, about two persons traveling in a desert and having a quantity of water that allows only one of them to reach civilization and survive, is well known and frequently referred to in books and articles dealing with Jewish ethics. The rabbinic texts raise the question: Should the travelers share the water and die together, or should the person who owns the water drink it in order to survive? This story reminds one of the case of the two shipwrecked men who grasp a plank that can bear the weight of only one person and therefore enables only one of them to reach the coast, a case referred to in philosophical texts from the Hellenistic and Roman periods. The similarities between the issues dealt with in the rabbinic texts and the Greco-Roman ones have indeed been noticed by several scholars working on rabbinic literature (whereas specialists of ancient philosophy generally ignore them). However, a systematic comparative analysis of the rabbinic tradition and the philosophical texts has not been undertaken so far, nor have previous studies paid much attention to the issues at stake within the Greco-Roman texts themselves, to their inner logic and relationships with one another.

Philosophical implications of Tarski's work

1988 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Suppes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
English Translation ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Congress ◽  
Unity Of Science ◽  
Scientific Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Texts ◽  
Concept Of Truth ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Philosophical Questions

In his published work and even more in conversations, Tarski emphasized what he thought were important philosophical aspects of his work. The English translation of his more philosophical papers [56m] was dedicated to his teacher Tadeusz Kotarbiński, and in informal discussions of philosophy he often referred to the influence of Kotarbiński. Also, the influence of Leśniewski, his dissertation adviser, is evident in his early papers. Moreover, some of his important papers of the 1930s were initially given to philosophical audiences. For example, the famous monograph on the concept of truth ([33m], [35b]) was first given as two lectures to the Logic Section of the Philosophical Society in Warsaw in 1930. Second, his paper [33], which introduced the concepts of ω-consistency and ω-completeness as well as the rule of infinite induction, was first given at the Second Conference of the Polish Philosophical Society in Warsaw in 1927. Also [35c] was based upon an address given in 1934 to the conference for the Unity of Science in Prague; [36] and [36a] summarize an address given at the International Congress of Scientific Philosophy in Paris in 1935. The article [44a] was published in a philosophical journal and widely reprinted in philosophical texts. This list is of course not exhaustive but only representative of Tarski's philosophical interactions as reflected in lectures given to philosophical audiences, which were later embodied in substantial papers. After 1945 almost all of Tarski's publications and presentations are mathematical in character with one or two minor exceptions. This division, occurring about 1945, does not, however, indicate a loss of interest in philosophical questions but is a result of Tarski's moving to the Department of Mathematics at Berkeley. There he assumed an important role in the development of logic within mathematics in the United States.

Masterly Maxims

PMLA ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 129 (3) ◽  
pp. 491-497
Author(s):  
Mieke Bal
Keyword(s):  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Teaching English ◽  
Deep Knowledge ◽  
Philosophical Background ◽  
Philosophical Texts ◽  
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Unlike most others teaching (English) literature, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is intimately knowledgeable about philosophy, especially German. Her deep knowledge of Kant, Marx, and Gramsci is a red thread running through her many books. And, given her interest in what we call less and less happily “postcolonial” theory (the hesitation coming from an awareness of the problematic meaning of the prefix post-), her discussions of such canonical and inexhaustible philosophical texts never lose sight of the sociopolitical implications of the ideas gleaned from the encounter. Thus, she brings a philosophical tradition to bear on contemporary social issues of a keen actuality. This solid philosophical background does not make her texts always easy to read for literary and other cultural scholars eager to get ideas—preferably quickly—about “how to do” postcolonial literary studies. Spivak's work is as challenging to read, understand, and absorb as it is important in content.

V.—The Limbs of Lystrosaurus

1913 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 256-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. M. S. Watson
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Natural Position

Lystrosaurus, Cope = Ptychognathus, Owen (non Stimpson), has long been known from isolated but often perfectly preserved skulls. Quite recently the reception of a magnificent skeleton by the Albany Museum, Grahamstown, enabled me to give a restoration of the animal. In this drawing the hand and foot were drawn from incomplete non-associated remains. Whilst travelling in South Africa, with the aid of a grant from the Percy Sladen Trustees, I collected on the farm Klip-kuil a fragmentary skeleton of Lystrosaurus, much of which was so rotten that it could not be preserved, but which included a complete left fore-limb. This was developed by myself and was found to lie in its natural position with the digits very strongly flexed, except that the metacarpals were slightly separated laterally. It is represented in Text-fig. 1, with the humerus, radius, and ulna in the position in which they were found, and with the fingers extended. The humerus is not very well preserved, but agrees exactly with the excellent example figured by Owen, Catalogue of South African Fossil Reptiles. It is of the usual Anomodont type, with a very powerful deltoid crest extending half-way down the shaft, and a much expanded lower end with a large entepicondyle. There is a large entepicondylar foramen,

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