An historical critique of philosophical universalism through Foucault and Rorty

This thesis examines the critiques of modern philosophy by Foucault and Rorty, which use genealogical and philosophical arguments against the notion of universal truths being fundamental to knowledge. They promote the idea of the autonomy of the self, and the use of discourse to generate pragmatic action within society.

Modern dance, domestic life and civil society

In her book The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt (2000) Seyla Benhabib uses the concept of an ‘alternative genealogy of modernity’ to help her both to understand Arendt’s political philosophy and to rethink the potential for civil society to become a progressive political force at the beginning of the twenty first century. The idea of an alternative genealogy of modernity refers to a heterogeneity of social and political forms, spaces and acts that might be used to remap and redefine a modernity whose dominant topology has been shaped by the binary division between so-called public and private spheres. Alternative modernities have already been elaborated and explored from a range of different perspectives including feminist and postcolonial ones: for example, in Rita Felski’s Gender of Modernity (1995) and Dipesh Chakrabarty’s Provincialising Europe (2000). In this paper I want to elaborate upon the idea of an alternative genealogy of modernity from my perspective as a dancer. Thinking through the sociality of art and, more specifically, of some historical dance-making practices can make visible alternative spaces and processes of the (potentially) political. In the West, the modes of art-making form part of an as yet not fully explored arena of the social and of social practices. Modernist and Romantic ideologies have tended to preclude attention to the specific sociabilities of art-making. On the one hand Modernist ideology and art discourses have promoted the idea of an art work’s ‘autonomy’: its radical separation from the social relationships, the bodies and the conditions of its making. On the other hand Romantic ideology, still pervasive in popular conceptions of art practices, construes creation as interiority and individualistic expression. Socialist feminist and Marxist discussions of art have emphasized the social conditions of art-making but these have tended to be concerned with the social inequalities instituted within the public/private split rather than seeking to destabilize that division itself by posing questions of differences within the social. In my discussion below I draw on aspects of early modern dance practice and creation in taking up Benhabib’s concern to mobilise an alternative genealogy of modernity towards a renewal and reactivation of civic life. This project involves unsettling clear distinctions between the so-called ‘public’ and ‘private’ but, at the same time, as Benhabib cautions ‘the binarity of public and private spheres must be reconstructed and not merely rejected’. (2000:2006)

Dummett and the origins of analytical philosophy

Michael Dummett has argued that the linguistic turn, initiated by Frege, is the decisive moment in the birth of the analytical tradition and what distinguishes that tradition from other movements. The thesis of the paper is that Dummett’s account of the origins of the analytical tradition understates the extent to which Frege’s work, and the linguistic turn more generally, are responses to antinomies in the modern philosophical project. An adequate characterisation of the origins of the analytic tradition presupposes an account of the fundamental conceptual shift that occurred during the time of the scientific revolution and the epistemological problems that arose in conjunction with this shift. This is why it is misleading to assert, with Dummett, that the really interesting developments in terms of understanding the analytical tradition are subsequent to Frege. The most productive contrast in terms of understanding the origins of the analytical tradition is not between pre and post Fregean thought, the paper argues, but between modern and premodern conceptions of philosophy and its relation to the world of everyday experience.

'O que é o "subalterno" da filosofia da religião? / What Is the “Subaltern” of the Philosophy of Religion?

The The 18th-19th centuries orientalist preoccupations with mythology and ancient perennis lacked both a critical-theoretical sensitivity to historiography anchored in radical historical consciousness and a deep sense of philosophical argumentation, as distinct from discerning mythic patterns of textual (intra-textual or internal) disputation and its interpretative ramifications from another felicitous perspective, usually theology mitigated by whatever remains ‘modern’ in the arts. Philosophy of Religion on the other hand remained heavily straddled in the rigors of logic, reason, analysis, dialectic, reason, reductio, aggressive refutation, within established frameworks drawing from the other branches of philosophy, namely, again, logic, epistemology, ontology and metaphyics. This paper presents a view 'from below' to demonstrate and argue how philosophy o religion must change in the post-colonial era and pay more attention to indigenous patterns of theological thinking and critiquing of Western enlightenment-centred philosophy of religion. It is in Portuguese though.

Killing the father, Parmenides: on Lacan’s anti-philosophy

This paper examines the historical claims about philosophy, dating back to Parmenides, that we argue underlie Jacques Lacan’s polemical provocations in the mid-1970s that his position was an “anti-philosophie”. Following an introduction surveying the existing literature on the subject, in part ii, we systematically present the account of classical philosophy Lacan has in mind when he declares psychoanalysis to be an antiphilosophy after 1975, assembling his claims about the history of ideas in Seminars XVII and XX in ways earlier contributions of this subject have not systematically done. In part iii, focusing upon Lacan’s remarkable reading of Descartes’ break with premodern philosophy—but touching on Lacan’s readings of Hegel and (in a remarkable confirmation of Lacan’s “Parmenidean” conception of philosophy) the early Wittgenstein—we examine Lacan’s positioning of psychoanalysis as a legatee of the Cartesian moment in the history of western ideas, nearly-contemporary with Galileo’s mathematization of physics and carried forwards by Kant’s critical philosophy and account of the substanceless subject of apperception. In different terms than Slavoj Žižek, we propose that it is Lacan’s famous avowal that the subject of the psychoanalysis is the subject first essayed by Descartes in The Meditations on First Philosophy as confronting an other capable of deceit (as against mere illusion or falsity) that decisively measures the distance between Lacan’s unique “antiphilosophy” and the forms of later modern linguistic and cultural relativism whose hegemony Alain Badiou has decried, at the same time as it sets Lacan’s antiphilosophy apart from the Parmenidean legacy for which thinking and being could be the same.

On a neglected argument in French philosophy: Sceptical humanism in Montaigne, Voltaire and Camus

This paper wants to draw out a common argument in three great philosophers and littérateurs in modern French thought: Michel de Montaigne, Voltaire, and Albert Camus. The argument makes metaphysical and theological scepticism the first premise for a universalistic political ethics, as per Voltaire's: "it is clearer still that we ought to be tolerant of one another, because we are all weak, inconsistent, liable to fickleness and error." The argument, it seems to me, presents an interestingly overlooked, deeply important and powerful contribution to the philosophical discourse of modernity. On one hand, theological and post-structuralist critics of "humanism" usually take the latter to depend either on an essentialist philosophical anthropology, or a progressive philosophy of history. The former, it is argued, is philosophically contestable and ethically contentious (since however we define the human "essence," we are bound to exclude some "others"). The latter, for better or worse, is a continuation of theological eschatology by another name. So both, if not "modernity" per se, should somehow be rejected. But an ethical universalism - like that we find in Montaigne, Bayle, Voltaire, or Camus - which does not claim familiarity with metaphysical or eschatological truths, but humbly confesses our epistemic finitude, seeing in this the basis for ethical solidarity, eludes these charges. On the other hand, philosophical scepticism plays a large role in the post-structuralist criticisms of modern institutions and ideas in ways which have been widely taken to license forms of ethics which problematically identify responsibility, with taking a stand unjustifiable by recourse to universalizable reasons. But, in Montaigne, Voltaire and Camus, our ignorance concerning the highest or final truths does not close off, but rather opens up, a new descriptive sensitivity to the foibles and complexities of human experience: a sensitivity reflected amply, and often hilariously, in their literary productions. As such, a critical agnosticism concerning claims about things "in the heavens and beneath the earth" does not, for such a "sceptical humanism," necessitate decisionism or nihilism. Instead, it demands a redoubled ethical sensitivity to the complexities and plurality of political life which sees the dignity of "really-existing" others, whatever their metaphysical creeds, as an inalienable first datum of ethical conduct and reflection. After tracking these arguments in Montaigne, Voltaire, and Camus, the essay closes by reflecting on, and contesting, one more powerful theological argument against modern agnosticism's allegedly deleterious effects on ethical culture: that acknowledging ignorance concerning the highest things robs us of the basis for awe or wonder, the wellspring of human beings' highest ethical, aesthetic, and spiritual achievements.

Hard times and the "fact" and "fancy" of modern labour management

Dickens believed that, played out in practical terms, the pursuit of a totally rationalised society devoid of ‘Fancy’ only served to benefit those in power to the impoverishment of those in their charge. He was appalled by a selfish and self-interested philosophy that combined with laissez-faire capitalism to reduce human effort to mere numbers for the sole purpose of determining its monetary worth. His story thus provides a rebuke to the dehumanising effects of utilitarianism and the way it is used to calculate workers in the manner of machines; reducing them to little more than a resource that is no more or less important any other resource used in industrial enterprise. Their modern-day counterparts live in similar Hard Times in being in the grip of laissez-fair economics of global proportions, which visits upon them similar conceptions of their worth, as evidenced by the current precariousness of their employment and their present exposure to the vicissitudes of arbitrary power exercised by managements still wedded to utilitarian principles. As a result, the ‘light of Fancy’ that at one time would periodically burst through in earnest storms of protest, is now refracted into cynical asides directed at rational systems that continue to standardise and homogenise all that ‘counts’ in working life.

Deep ecology and Australian suburbia: learning from Aboriginal Australia philosophy

Naess’ Deep Ecology [50] represents a fundamental philosophical and conceptual shift from the dominant Western thinking that can be traced back to the Greek and Roman Empires. Like all philosophy, Naess’ Deep Ecology was born of and is most relevant to a specific time and place being northern Europe. Although the fundamentals of the Deep Ecology philosophy were new to modern Western thinking, it is not new to traditional Indigenous cultures, including the world’s oldest culture, that of Aboriginal Australia. While the past four decades has seen an increasing recognition of Aboriginal philosophical approaches, there is very little understanding of what this philosophical approach is and means for the management of the Australian environment in which humans are a central part. Since European arrival, Australia has been one of the world’s most urban societies. Unlike northern Europe, urban Australia is low density and suburban, a legacy of British and North American influences. Nearly 90% of Australians live in detached houses surrounded by gardens. Managed by individual residents, this land use accounts for about 70% of the total area of cities like Melbourne. Deeply culturally embedded, the Australian desire for living in low-density suburbs is unlikely to change soon. Contemporary cities are widely recognized as causing severe environmental degradation and are not sustainable. Yet in Australia introduced philosophical and design approaches are still used to address the unsustainable impacts of urban forms introduced from another time and place. While impractical to remove the existing suburban form in Australian cities, there is a significant opportunity to retrofit them using Australian Aboriginal philosophical and land management understandings developed and tested over tens of thousands of years. This paper establishes a contemporary Australian Deep Ecology philosophical approach to sustainably living in the suburbs that recognizes and works with the legacies of Australian Aboriginal, English, North American and contemporary Australian influences.