April 30, 2009

Sorel's great accomplishment was to marry James' "Will to Believe" and Nietzsche's "Will to Power"

Jonah Goldberg

In Germany, Pragmatism was a more Nietzschean affair. But as Richard Rorty argued vigorously, the similarities and ties between American Pragmatism and German deconstructionism and post-structuralism were profound. According to Rorty, James and Nietzsche and Dewey and Heidegger, were parallel thinkers who agreed in their prescriptive understanding that the age of Socratic man was over, but disagreed about what that meant for the future.

In short, the American and German post-Socratics agreed on philosophical means but diverged sharply on philosophical ends. There's much that I liked about Rorty's analysis, and some that I disagreed with. But it was supremely convenient for the arguments I wanted to make that one of America's foremost liberal philosophers basically agreed with me (I wish I had known when I was writing the book that Rorty was Rauschenbusch's grandson) and was simultaneously desperate to revive the American Progressive tradition of Herbert Croly and Richard Ely.

Anyway, in Italy, Pragmatism became an obsession among the early nationalist intellectuals who helped lay the ground work for fascism. Mussolini said more than once that William James was one of the three most important philosophical influences in his life (though he was probably embellishing for American audiences). He sold many of his policies as applications of William James' idea of the "moral equivalent of war" — just as FDR had done with his New Deal.

Moreover, Georges Sorel, the philosophic father of both Italian Fascism and Leninism, was a devout follower of James. It's been said many times that Sorel's great accomplishment was to marry James' "Will to Believe" and Nietzsche's "Will to Power." Moreover, the influence worked both ways. James was hugely influenced by the Italian Pragmatists. He deeply admired Giuseppe Prezzolini — later a New Republic contributor and muckety-muck at Columbia University's pro-fascist Casa Italiana. In a letter to the philosopher FCS Schiller James wrote of Giovanni Papini: "Papini is a Jewel! To think of that little Dago putting himself ahead of every one of us … at a single stride.”

The relationship between Pragmatism and Statism is hard for some to see at first blush. But it boils down to the fact that the Progressives used Pragmatic philosophy (correctly or not) to destroy the Old Order of liberal democracy. It was a tool, sometimes sledgehammer, sometimes scalpel, aimed at dismantling the "old ideas" that held back the free exercise of will by social planners and others who wanted to start the world over at year zero, or at least to reshuffle the existing deck for a "new deal." More later, if any one is still reading. 04/27 10:00 AM Share

April 27, 2009

Hegel’s Science of Logic has always been the great white whale, Ulysses, or Finnegans Wake of philosophy

Sri Aurobindo - A Contemporary Reader Edited by Sachidananda Mohanty, Routledge India: 2008

Theory after Derrida: Essays in Critical Praxis Edited by Kailash Baral, R. Radhakrishnan, Routledge India: 2009

Reading Hegel: The Introductions by G.W.F. Hegel (edited and introduced by Aakash Singh and Rimina Mohapatra) ►re.press 2008
"Hegel’s reflections on philosophy, religion, aesthetics, history, and law—all included here—have profoundly influenced many subsequent thinkers, from post-Hegelian idealists or materialists like Karl Marx, to the existentialism of Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre; from the phenomenological tradition of Edmund Husserl to Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida and other post-moderns, to thinkers farther afield, like Japan’s famous Kyoto School or India’s Sri Aurobindo." 3:09 PM

Difference and Givenness: Deleuze's Transcendental Empiricism and the Ontology of Immanence (Topics in Historical Philosophy) by Levi R. Bryant, 2008

Without Criteria: Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Aesthetics (Technologies of Lived Abstraction) by Steven Shaviro, 2009

Passion and Excess: Blanchot, Bataille and Literary Theory by Steven Shaviro, 1990

After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency by Quentin Meillassoux (Author), Ray Brassier (Translator), Alain Badiou (Introduction), 2008

A Secular Age by Charles Taylor [4:16 AM]

The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West by Mark Lilla

The Quarrel of Reason With Itself: Essays on Hamann, Michaelis, Lessing, Nietzsche

Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder

Joint Programme in Sri Aurobindo Studies by IGNOU and SACAR
Amazon.com Reviews
Bodies of Thought: Embodiment, Identity and Modernity
Jean Baudrillard: A Study in Cultural Metaphysics
Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference
One Cosmos Under God: The Unification of Matter, Life, Mind & Spirit
Ontology of Consciousness: Percipient Action
Sri Aurobindo and Integral consciousness
Sri Aurobindo and Karl Marx: Integral Sociology and Dialectical Sociology
Sri Aurobindo, Jung and Vedic Yoga
The Meeting of the East and the West in Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy
Tradition and the Rhetoric of Right: Popular Political Argument in the Aurobindo Movement

Aspects of Sri Aurobindo
Consciousness and its Transformation
Integral Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo
Integral Psychology
Integral Yoga Psychology & A. Maslow
Patterns of the Present
Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy of Evolution
The Destiny of the Body
The Lives of Sri Aurobindo
India's Spiritual Destiny: Its Inevitability and Potentiality
Nature of God
Patterns of the present
Sri Aurobindo and the New Age
Sri Aurobindo, Jung and Vedic Yoga
Vedic Symbolism

Prof. Indrani Sanyal & Dr. Sampadananda Mishra

International Conference on The Culture and Philosophy of Science in India April 4-6, 2009 Venue: The Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture Golpark, Kolkata Organized by Project on “Indian Perspectives in Science and Spirituality,” Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi in collaboration with Indian Council for Philosophical Research and Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Kolkata. Seminar Director: Professor Makarand Paranjape, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Background The Project on “Indian Perspectives in Science and Spirituality,” whose Director is Dr Makarand Paranjape, Professor of English, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, JNU, has organized three seminars so far on the relationship between science and spirituality in India. Conference Booklet by Samvad India Foundation Day 2- Sunday, 5th April 2009 Ist Session: 09.30 am- 11.00 am Chair- T.K Goswami Speakers...

Professor Indrani Sanyal: Exploring the Relation between Science and Spirituality in the Aurobindonian Discourse. This paper will focus upon Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine, Savitri, Letters on Yoga and on Different interpretations of the Upanishd to develop his viewpoint. To bring out clearly his position the views of his opponents like the materialists or rigid spiritualist will be also discussed.

Bio Note: Indrani Sanyal is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Coordinator of the Centre for Sri Aurobindo Studies at Jadavpur University, Kolkata. She has published On Essentialist Claims and co-edited books such as Wittgenstein: Jagat Bhasa O Cintan, Siksaksetre Parasparika Samparka, Understanding Thoughts of Sri Aurobindo, Sri Aurobindo and His Contemporary Thinkers, Dharmaniti O Sruti and Ethics and Culture.

IInd Session: 11.15 am- 01.00 pm Chair- Professor Probal Dasgupta Speakers...

Dr. Sampadanand Mishra: Principles of Plant Taxonomy: A Fresh Insight into the Ancient Indian Methodology and Philosophy of Naming and Classifying the Medicinal Plants. Proper nomenclature and classification play important role in the systematization of any branch of knowledge. In this regard the ancient Indian Rishis and Acharyas have shown much transparency in their scientific observations. To them to name was to touch the essence of the thing or object named. They could really enter into the soul or the consciousness of the thing or the object and then gave the name as per their experience. We find a clear reflection of this in the names of the plants as they appear in various texts of Ayurveda. From the various names given to one plant one can truly understand not only the various morphological characteristics of that plant but also the special medicinal properties that the plant has. This is still a mystery that how the ancient Indian Vaidyas or medical scientists could discover the exact property of a plant and its multidimensional aspects when there was no such facility what the empirical science has today. This paper brings a fresh insight into this aspect and throws light on the ancient Indian methodology and philosophy of naming and classifying the medicinal plants.

Bio Note: Dr. Sampadananda Mishra is a free-lance researcher. He was initiated to Sanskrit by his grandfather, Pandit Paramananda Mishra. He came in contact with Sanskrit from his very childhood. In 1993, after finishing his post-graduation in Sanskrit from Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, he came to do his M.Phil in Sanskrit in Pondicherry Central University. There he was awarded Gold Medal for his excellent performance in the subject. In 1995, he got an invitation to work for an important project,“ The Wonder that is Sanskrit”, undertaken by Sri Aurobindo Society, Pondicherry. In the past twelve years he has worked on many projects and published many books including The Wonder that is Sanskrit , The Century of Life, Chandovallari and Hasymanjari.

Debashish Banerji, Educational Coordinator for the University of Philosophical Research, Los Angeles

Debashish Banerji, Ph.D.
Ph.D., Indian Art History, University of California, Los Angeles; MA Computer Science, University of Louisville
Dr. Banerji is the former president of the East-West Cultural Center and Sri Aurobindo Center, Los Angeles. Teacher of Indian spiritual culture. Education Coordinator for the University of Philosophical Research.

The University of Philosophical Research is a graduate-level distance learning university, nationally accredited by the DETC (Distance Education and Training Council). Employing a leading-edge, internationally renowned faculty and a curriculum which incorporates the latest research in modern knowledge paradigms and all the wisdom traditions of the world, it offers Masters Degree programs in Consciousness Studies and Transformational Psychology, representing an emerging cross-discipline approach to the study of human consciousness and transformation.

A Letter From The President Dr. Obadiah Harris Wisdom: Security in Times of Trouble read full text
Consciousness Studies Master of Arts Degree Year-round Enrollment curriculum details
Transformational PsychologyMaster of Arts Degree Year-round Enrollment curriculum details
Multimedia Lectures, interviews, and more with UPR President and Core Faculty view all
Meet Our Faculty On the cutting edge of Consciousness Studies faculty bios
Symbols for the Ages Culture and Mythology UPR Library of Symbols visit gallery
Living Luminaries Upcoming FilmInterview with President Obadiah Harris www.livingluminariesmovie.com

Announcements University of Philosophical Research Granted Accreditation
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Spring Term registration deadline is April 24, 2009
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IY Fundamentalism - Banerji, Debashish Debashish Banerji, Ph.D., is a co-founder/administrator of the weblog Science, ... Coordinator for the University of Philosophical Research, Los Angeles and iyfundamentalism.info

SCI-Y Home of Debashish Banerji > Science, Culture and Integral Yoga :: SCIY EDITORS Debashish Banerji, Ph.D. (Indian Art History, UCLA). ... of The Gnostic Center in India and the University of Philosophical Research (UPR) in Los Angeles, ... sciy.org/blog/

Derrida the Movie - a Review by Debashish Banerji Derrida deftly dodges attempts to disclose the traumas and ecstacies of his life (though of this more later) and his "philosophy" remains unexplored in its major aspects.

Debashish Banerji, PhD > Writing, Consciousness, Arts, Translations Debashish Banerji finds himself performing his liminal and dialogic identities from day to day between a variety of cultures, disciplines and social realities. Stationary and mobile between transnational and transepochal zones in Los Angeles and New Delhi, with occassional immersions in Pasadena, Griffith Park, Culver City, Westwood, Puducherry, Kolkata, Bhopal, Bangkok, Singapore, Osaka, Tokyo, London and other unspecified locations, Banerji spends his mundane hours offering himself as a site of precarious integration and his transcendental hours observing the simultaneity of location and momentum.

Aspiring to the posthuman subjectivity of Durga with her blur of hands and Nataraja uniting creation, preservation and destruction, stillness and motion, Banerji tries to center his reality in the perpetual motion machine of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother's bi-directional yoga.

Culture studies, pre-modern, modern and contemporary Indian, Japanese, Islamic and transnational art histories, Savitri, The Life Divine, Gita and Upanishad, comparative mysticism, subjective science, multimedia authoring, Jazz, Sri Aurobindo, Coomaraswamy, Abanindranath, Derrida, Foucault, Bourdieu, Dipesh Chakrabarty, and a number of other voices, languages, flavors, styles and texts weave in and out of his expressions, talks, projects, workshops, courses and creative and critical writings.

The text of a world history and a cosmic person in the making, not the post-Enlightenment postnational multicultural globalization narrative, nor the narrative of localized anarchistic cosmo-cultic avataric fundamentalisms, but the amplifying overlap of horizontal cultural hybridities, affective communities of resistance and aspiration towards the re-membering of the subjective-objective body of the Infinite One, is the transitional evolutionary project for which Banerji attempts to make himself an occassion. L'avenir, it is hoped, beckons.

Debashish Banerji is the former president of the East-West Cultural Center and Sri Aurobindo Center, Los Angeles. Teacher of Asian Art History and Indian Spiritual Culture. Educational Coordinator for the University of Philosophical Research, Los Angeles and Director of the International Centre for Integral Studies, New Delhi. Ph.D., Indian Art History, University of California, Los Angeles; MA Computer Science, University of Louisville, KY; BA English Literature, Elphinstone College, Bombay University.

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Links Here, information and downloads for Debashish Banerji's writings, ... Educational Coordinator for the University of Philosophical Research, Los Angeles and ...
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Siddhartha Shah & Suneet Verma to speak at Cultural Integration Fellowship

CULTURAL INTEGRATION FELLOWSHIP
Founded in 1951 by Dr. Haridas and Bina Chaudhuri, the Cultural Integration Fellowship is a non-profit, non-sectarian, religious, cultural, and educational ... CIF: April, May, June 2009 Program Listing PROGRAM LISTING Note: Sunday Service starts at 11:00 a.m. Sunday Morning Service is free will offering. Your
donation helps us continue these offerings. April May June

April 2009 Program
Date April 5 TOPIC AND SPEAKER INFORMATION
Satsang: Chanting, Meditation, and Psycho-Spiritual Work
Community Event. Bring a chant, a mantra, a story to share.
April 12 Easter Celebrations: Significance of Easter-- Resurrection
About the Speaker:We will listen to a recorded talk by Dr. Haridas Chaudhuri, the Founder of CIF and CIIS, and author of many works including Integral Yoga, The Essence of Spiritual Philosophy, The Evolution of Integral Consciousness.
April 19 Goddess Sri Lalita and Sri Yantra
About the Speaker: James Ryan, Ph.D., is a Vice President of CIF Board and a Professor of Asian and Comparative Studies at CIIS. He is also the co-author of The Encyclopedia of Hinduism.
April 26 Ashkenazim: A Cultural and Spiritual History of Early German Jewry
About the Speaker: Ken Blady, M.A., is an educator, writer, and Yiddish translator. He was born in Paris and grew up in Chassidic Brooklyn, where he attended yeshiva and rabbinical seminary. Ken is the author of The Jewish Boxers  Hall of Fame, Jewish Communities in Exotic Places, and translator of The Journeys of David Toback. He recently appeared on the History Channel documentary, Operation Magic Carpet. Ken is currently a lecturer in Jewish History at the American Jewish Whizin Center and Shurgin Elder Hostel Program.

May 2009 Program
Date May 3 TOPIC AND SPEAKER INFORMATION
Tagore Jayanti - Celebration of Sri Rabindranath Tagore's Birthday
About the Speaker: Shyamoshree Diamond Gupta, Jaya Basu, Sudip Nag, Sky Basu, Mandipa Bhattacharya, Aditya, Oli Das, and Prodipta Gupta. Shaymoshree was born in Calcutta, and she sang for West Bengal State Radio, Akashbaani Calcutta.
May 10 Mother's Day Celebrations: Women in Sufism
About the Speaker: Rabia Ana Perez-Chisti, is the Chair of the Psychology Online Ph.D. program at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto. She is also a Sufi Movement Lineage holder.
May 31 In Defense of the Sacred: The Necessity of Contemporary Sacred Art in Our World Today
About the Speaker: Siddhartha Shah, M.A., studied History of Art and Classics at Johns Hopkins University, focusing on the representation of gods and goddesses in art and mythology, and holds a Masters degree from the California Institute of Integral Studies.

June 2009 Program
Date June 7 TOPIC AND SPEAKER INFORMATION
An Emerging World: Its Future Horizons
About the Speaker: Suneet Verma, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in Psychology, University of Delhi, India. His doctoral work was on 'The Scientific Paradigm in Psychology: Challenges and Possibilities', which critiqued the Logical Positivist paradigm in Psychology and reviewed the potency of the Cultural Psychology/Social Constructionist perspective and Spiritual/Transpersonal Psychology as a more holistic, meaningful, and fruitful way of doing Psychology.
June 14 Voices of the Bard
About the Speaker: David Williams is the illustrator and writer of "Gilleasbuig Mac bruic," appearing in "Naidheachd" Magazine. He compiled an historical map "Baird na h-Alba," displaying the last 500 years of Gaelic poetry in Scotland. He has studied the Irish and Scottish Gaelic languages in the Bay Area, Eastern Canada and Scotland.
June 21
Integral Yoga Documentary Film: Dr. Haridas and Bina Chaudhuri Memorial Day Celebration
Produced by Alan Bais, Directed by Mark Kitchell. We will view a documentary on Integral Yoga, a story on the spiritual philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and how Dr. Haridas Chaudhuri brought it to the West. The film also focuses on the key concepts of integral philosophy such as integral yoga, psychic being, the supermind, and conscious evolution. The film is produced by Alan Bais and directed by Mark Kitchell.
June 28 Integral Learning through Group Coherence: A Cooperative Inquiry
About the Speaker: JoAnna Zweig, Ph.D. has worked with groups in theatrical production and software application development in large companies for more than 35 years. She holds a Ph.D. from CIIS in Integral Studies. JoAnna is also the CEO of the Integral Systems Response, a technology project management firm as well as a belly dance and Iyengar Hatha Yoga teacher.

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Jean-Luc Nancy’s ontology

Narrative CV: Adam Kotsko Sunday, April 26, 2009

As I look at my dissertation project, I am impressed by how much of my previous work has come together. Influences from as far back as my time studying with Craig Keen at Olivet –namely Barthian theology and “postmodern theory” — have made themselves felt, though significantly displaced by now. Though I remain a great admirer of the work of Barth and hope my theology evinces a certain kind of loyalty to him, I am now much more interested in the later German theology that followed in his wake, as illustrated by my use of Bonhoeffer and Soelle.

My interest in “postmodern theory” began with a focus on Derrida but increasingly mutated into an interest in Marxism after my encounter with Zizek, and several core convictions that I would call “Marxian” — convictions surrounding notions of property and community — are very much at work in the dissertation. At the same time, I have followed up on my initial interest in Derrida by using the basic concepts of Jean-Luc Nancy throughout. [...]

My question now is where to go from here. My initial obligations are to produce more work related to contemporary continental philosophy, in the form of a book chapter and a review essay (and perhaps an additional article), along with a side project on the concept of awkwardness for Zer0 Books, which will also be drawing on continental philosophy. My ultimate goal is to go through all the major loci of systematic theology by means of a close reading of representative texts, as I have already done with atonement theory — all with a focus on developing the social-relational ontology that I believe is implicit in the Christian tradition.

Given my social-relational focus, my first step along these lines will most likely be the doctrine of the Trinity, with a particular focus on Augustine’s De trinitate. Yet I believe that I need to enrich the philosophical side of my approach as well, and that will most likely take the form of a book-length study of Jean-Luc Nancy’s ontology. Posted by Adam Kotsko Filed in narrative CV 3 Comments »

Fertility, falsifiability, simplicity and elegance

Re: Devolution: Why Intelligent Design isn't by H. Allen Orr (The New Yorker) Tony Clifton Wed 22 Apr 2009 04:05 PM PDT: Well as stated in my essay all good scientific theories usually do the following things:

  • predictive accuracy - the ability to forecast what we have not yet observed
  • internal coherence - the various parts of the theory should not contradict each other
  • external consistency - the theory should not contradict other accepted theories, or 'laws of nature'
  • unifying power - the theory should bring together and explain previously disparate areas of knowledge
  • fertility - the theory should generate novel hypotheses
  • falsifiability - it should be possible to construct hypotheses that could lead to the rejection of the theory - this is an especially important scientific value
  • simplicity and elegance - this is a value judgment i.e. it is a subjective judgment made by scientists. Consequently simplicity is a desired characteristic rather than a defining characteristic of a scientific theory
  • It should lead to reproducible experiments that are empirically verifiable.

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Re: Devolution: Why Intelligent Design isn't by H. Allen Orr (The New Yorker) Tony Clifton
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Re: Cybernetics Is An Antihumanism: Advanced Technologies and the Rebellion Against the Human Condition: Metnexus (Global Spiral) Debashish
Re: Devolution: Why Intelligent Design isn't by H. Allen Orr (The New Yorker) Kepler
Re: Devolution: Why Intelligent Design isn't by H. Allen Orr (The New Yorker) Tony Clifton
Re: Devolution: Why Intelligent Design isn't by H. Allen Orr (The New Yorker) ned
Re: Devolution: Why Intelligent Design isn't by H. Allen Orr (The New Yorker) Kepler
Re: Devolution: Why Intelligent Design isn't by H. Allen Orr (The New Yorker) Kepler
Re: Devolution: Why Intelligent Design isn't by H. Allen Orr (The New Yorker) Tony Clifton

April 25, 2009

Finally, to be honest, it is a desire for prestige or recognition

Home About Larval Subjects March 31, 2009
Other Political Pet Peeves– Accumulation as Our Prime Motive Posted by larvalsubjects under Politics [9] Comments

As an academic, my motive for writing articles, books, and innovating in the classroom has nothing to do with the financial benefits I receive from these activities. I’ll never forget the shock and surprise in my father’s voice when I told him that I don’t get paid at all for the articles I write or the conferences where I present, and that the royalties I receive for my book are a pittance. Having observed me working tirelessly doing this sort of research and writing, often driving myself to the point of exhaustion and illness, he simply couldn’t understand what motivated me.

The motive here lies outside of economic incentives. On the one hand it is simply an obsession with certain problems and questions. On the other hand it is a desire to understand the lunacy of this universe we live in. Finally, to be honest, it is a desire for prestige or recognition. These motives, I think, are far more intoxicating than wealth. Indeed, it seems to me that wealth only becomes an intoxicating motive when one experiences their work as otherwise lacking satisfaction.

I do not think this sort of motivation for innovation is restricted to the domain of academia. Most research scientists are paid very little for the work they do. In this respect, they are deeply exploited by the system of capital that expropriates their intellectual labor– a labor that properly belongs to the common, not to any corporation, by virtue of only being possible based on the common –without giving them much in the way of compensation for that labor at all. Growing up I recall my horror and outrage at discovering how my father’s pharmaceutical company would get private patent rights to new drugs and procedures that were the result of publicly funded research. No, like the academic, the research scientist is by and large motivated by a burning desire to solve certain puzzles, to figure out how that DNA works, to create that new technology like a child building a fort just because he or she can, and by the desire for prestige. The case is similar with artists, musicians, novelists, etc.

larvalsubjects Says: March 31, 2009 at 9:41 pm All of that aside (and I have problems with Dawkins as well that I won’t get into here), the sleight of hand with the particular ideology I outline in this post lies in conflating self-preservation with the thesis that people are primarily motivated by profit incentives. Profit incentives are one way in which beings such as ourselves can be motivated. In other words, there are a variety of forms this drive to survive can be met.

My thesis would be that the money incentive is not the only way nor even historically the most predominant way in which this drive has been met and that the myth of the hard working capitalist “savage” is just that, a myth not reflective of other forms of “economy”, how they are organized, and what has motivated human bodies within these forms of economy. Here I think my observations about upsetting coworkers is particularly salient with respect to incentivization. There we find a motive that is entirely non-economic in nature but which is nonetheless extremely compelling to those within its grip.

Sri Aurobindo, Shakespeare, Judith Butler, Adorno

Home Books Browse Cultural Studies Titles:

Sri Aurobindo A Contemporary Reader
Edited by Sachidananda Mohanty
This book compiles some of the finest writings of Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) — the nationalist, visionary, poet-philosopher. It reflects the range, depth and outreach of… read more 2008 Hardback: 978-0-415-46093-4 (Routledge India) more information about Sri Aurobindo

Media, Gender and Identity

An Introduction, 2nd Edition
By David Gauntlett
Popular media present a vast array of stories about women and men. What impact do these images and ideas have on people’s identities?
The new edition… read more 2008 Paperback: 978-0-415-39661-5 (Routledge) more information about Media, Gender and Identity

Profiling Shakespeare

By Marjorie Garber
The title of this collection, Profiling Shakespeare, is meant strongly in its double sense. These essays show the outline of a Shakespeare rather different from… read more 2008 Paperback: 978-0-415-96446-3 (Routledge) more information about Profiling Shakespeare

Political Language and Metaphor

Interpreting and changing the world
Edited by Terrell Carver, Jernej Pikalo
Until a century ago, a metaphor was just a mere figure of speech, but since the development of discourse analysis a metaphor has become more… read more 2008 Hardback: 978-0-415-41735-8 (Routledge) more information about Political Language and Metaphor

Popular Culture, Globalization and Japan

Edited by Matthew Allen, Rumi Sakamoto
Japanese popular culture is constantly evolving in the face of internal and external influence. Popular Culture, Globalization and Japan examines this evolution from a new… read more 2008 Paperback: 978-0-415-44795-9 (Routledge)more information about Popular Culture, Globalization and Japan

Judith Butler

Sexual Politics, Social Change and the Power of the Performative
By Gill Jagger
Judith Butler's work on gender, sexuality, identity, and the body has proved massively influential across a range of academic disciplines in the humanities and social… read more 2008 Paperback: 978-0-415-21975-4 (Routledge) more information about Judith Butler

Judith Butler's Precarious Politics

Critical Encounters
Edited by Terrell Carver, Samuel A. Chambers
Judith Butler has been arguably the most important gender theorist of the past twenty years. This edited volume draws leading international political theorists into dialogue… read more 2008 Paperback: 978-0-415-38443-8 (Routledge) more information about Judith Butler's Precarious Politics

Judith Butler and Political Theory

Troubling Politics
By Samuel A. Chambers, Terrell Carver
Over the past twenty-five years the work of Judith Butler has had an extraordinary impact on numerous disciplines and interdisciplinary projects across the humanities and… read more 2008 Paperback: 978-0-415-38366-0 (Routledge) more information about Judith Butler and Political Theory

The Sexual Politics of Time

Confession, Nostalgia, Memory
By Susannah Radstone
Looking at a diverse range of texts including Marilyn French's The Women's Room, Philip Roth's Patrimony, the writings of Walter Benjamin and Fredric Jameson, and… read more 2007 Paperback: 978-0-415-06691-4 (Routledge)more information about The Sexual Politics of Time

Theodor Adorno

By Ross Wilson
The range of Adorno's achievement, and the depth of his insights, is breathtaking and daunting. His work on literary, artistic, and musical forms, his devastating… read more 2007 Paperback: 978-0-415-41819-5 (Routledge)more information about Theodor Adorno

The daevas of the Avesta are hateful spirits of evil

We have a curious instance of the confusion caused by the ambiguity and variations in the meaning of the word, in the case of the celebrated "Daemon" of Socrates. This has been understood in a bad sense by some Christian writers who have made it a matter of reproach that the great Greek philosopher was accompanied and prompted by a demon.

But, as Cardinal Manning clearly shows in his paper on the subject, the word here has a very different meaning. He points to the fact that both Plato and Xenophon use the form daimonion, which Cicero rightly renders as divinum aliquid, "something divine". And after a close examination of the account of the matter given by Socrates himself in the reports transmitted by his disciples, he concludes that the promptings of the "Daemon" were the dictates of conscience, which is the voice of God.

It may be observed that a similar change and deterioration of meaning has taken place in the Iranian languages in the case of the word daeva. Etymologically this is identical with the Sanskrit deva, by which it is rendered in Neriosengh's version of the Avesta. But whereas the devas of Indian theology are good and beneficent gods, the daevas of the Avesta are hateful spirits of evil. (See also Demonology.) W. H. KENT Home Curricula Apologetics Art

The effect of the 1956 Supramental Descent on the world toady

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The Integral Paradigm - provisional overview of a book in progress

I've been working on a book, previously called Integral Metaphysics and Transformation, for several years now. I'm renaming it because Integral Metaphysics is just one aspect of the Integral Paradigm (albiet an important one)
The current plan is that the book will consist of the following topics - Introduction, Manysidedness, Metaphysics, Evolution, Ethics, Co-Creation, Synthesis, and Divinization, plus glossary. Some topics discussed are as follows.

Introduction
Asking Big Questions, worldview, paradigm, introduction to the Integral paradigm.
Manysidedness
The basis of the Integral paradigm; Anekantavada, Broadness, All-Inclusiveness. Refutation of all fundamentalism and one-sidedness
Metaphysics
Presents an integral, all inclusive and esoteric metaphysics. Authentic metaphysics cannot be distinct from Gnosis. Refutation of Wilber's exoteric "post-metaphysics". Transcendent metaphysics, Great Chain of Being, esoteric cosmology, evolving body of godhead, esoteric and occult realities, planes and dimensions of consciousness etc. Weaves together the Aurobindonian progressive, Gnostic-Manicahean-Lurianic-Theonist dualistic, Theosophical cyclic, perspectives in a single multidimensional account of the origin and destiny of the Earth.
Evolution
Both Spiritual and scientific e.g. Darwinian, evolution, creativity, spontaneity. An Integral theory of evolution. Brings together esoteric and occult, integralist, and Secular Scientific insights to create a big picture view of cosmic evolution, the evolution of consciousness and of matter, life, mind, and postsapience, and the History and Destiny of the Earth
I-Thou
Empathy for all beings, I-Thou (Buber), Integral ethics, Sentientism/sentient rights (Animal Liberation etc), p2p, Eco-spirituality, Participatory epistemology and spirituality, the "Great Turning", etc etc.
Co-Creation
Personal and social transformation; Social and global transformation, The Counterculture, the New Age as "public esotericism", Alternative/New Age (1960s onwards), Ecological spirituality, the role of the Internet in the developing Noosphere (1990s onwards), the Integral Movement which develops from the New Paradigm
Synthesis
Synthesis of all partial perspectives and practices ina larger or universal integral whole; Philosophical/Scientific/Spiritual synthesis, Integral movement, Integral Yoga, Esoteric Spirituality, etc
Divinization
Towards the divine transformation. The effect of the 1956 Supramental Descent on the world toady. Topics include the Aurobindonian tradition (1900s onwards), ascension, reality co-creation, transformation of the cells, the "twelve strand DNA" (not to taken literally as it is psuedo-scientific nonsense, it actually refers to etheric resonances), transformation of the body, intermediae zone Guruism, Drugs, other dangers on the path, The three-fold Integral Transformation (physical, esoteric/occult, and divine). Singularity, Divinization, Perfection, Omega Point, Supramentalization, Transhumanist themes of the Singularity. Integrates Transhumanist and Wilberian, and Transhumanist and Aurobindonian perspectives.

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Incalculably complex and productive social orders emerge from billions of individual actions

Social Engineering Vs. Piecemeal, Competitive Creation (by Don Boudreaux)
from Cafe Hayek by Don Boudreaux

Here's a letter that I sent to Newsweek in response to this article on Paul Krugman (an article, by the way, that quotes my GMU colleague Dan Klein): Editor, Newsweek

Dear Editor:

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman says that he was attracted to economics because it seemed to him to reveal "the beauty of pushing a button to solve problems" ("Obama's Nobel Headache," April 6). Alas, like all economists who mistake their theories for reality, Mr. Krugman misses far too many of the all-important nuanced and ever-changing real-world facts masked by the Greek letters that economists of Mr. Krugman's ilk use in their complex-seeming but inevitably simplistic mathematical equations.

I was attracted to economics for a reason quite the opposite of the one that appealed to Mr. Krugman, namely, because it helps explain how incalculably complex and productive social orders emerge from billions of individual actions, where no one of these actions is meant to achieve anything more than improvement in the welfare of the individual actor. This type of economics - associated most famously with Adam Smith - teaches that it is hubris of the most extreme sort to imagine that problems can be solved by pushing buttons.

Social-engineer wannabes such as Mr. Krugman might mean well, but they are dangerous; they suffer from what another Nobel laureate economist, F.A. Hayek, called "the fatal conceit."

Sincerely, Donald J. Boudreaux Chairman, Department of Economics George Mason University

April 24, 2009

Merleau-Ponty, Marion, Meillassoux

Meillassoux I: Primary Qualities and Correlationism
from Larval Subjects by larvalsubjects

The first thing one notes upon opening the pages of After Finitude is the clarity and preciseness of his exposition, so unusual for a Continental philosopher, and the manner in which he crafts his arguments like a jeweler carving a fine gem. Regardless of whether or not Meillassoux’s arguments ultimately attain the status of “singular arguments” in the history of philosophy, it is difficult not to delight in the ingeniousness of his arguments, their athleticism, their vigor, even if one does not ultimately agree or know where these arguments will lead.

One More Time Into the Breach, Dear Friends
from Larval Subjects. by larvalsubjects

Although I worked heavily on Deleuze throughout my five years in graduate school, the best description of my philosophical orientation at this time would be phenomenological. I think, maybe, I’m one of five people in the world that actually devoured Husserl’s various texts and lectures with delight. I suspect that means I’m cracked in some way. It is certainly a good thing that I eventually entered analysis with Bruce Fink.

I delighted in the work of Merleau-Ponty. I thought Levinas was perhaps the most beautiful stylist of all the philosophers who had ever written. I shivered with pleasure at Jean-Luc Marion’s discussions of givenness. I ravenously read the work of Ed Casey. I guiltily read Sartre throughout, believing him to be gauche at that time, but still secretly loving his work. For some reason I had largely lost interest in Heidegger, wondering why I had been so enchanted with him. Perhaps it was his style. At any rate, my friends would joke that I was living in a permanent “transcendental epoche chamber”.

Apr 4, 2009 Without Criteria from The Pinocchio Theory by Steven Shaviro

MIT Press informs me that my new book, Without Criteria: Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Aesthetics, has now been published and will shortly be available (Amazon.com still lists the book as not being published until May 29, but you may be able to order it well before then elsewhere)... I don’t have a pdf of the book as published, I’m afraid, but near-final drafts of all the chapters are available here.

For the most part, I am happy with how Without Criteria came out. I managed to work through, to my own satisfaction (and hopefully other people’s as well), some of Whitehead’s weirder notions, like “eternal objects” and (especially) “God.” I developed Whitehead’s ideas about what he calls “feeling” in relation both to contemporary affect theory, and to contemporary biology. And I showed how strongly and deeply Whitehead’s metaphysics resonates with that of Deleuze.

April 12, 2009

If the identity of philosophy is so slippery, this is because philosophy is always a relation to its outside

Apr 11, 2009 Silence as Found Object from Fido the Yak by Fido the Yak
The very existence in Greece of a "code of silence" that involves the body and pervades cultural manifestations as diverse as religious rituals, Homeric epic, drama, and medical texts, points to a shared tendency to associate an absence of words with specific gestures and postures; an association, in turn, which suggests that for the Greeks silence was a highly formalized behavior, much more so than it is for us. (Silvia Montiglio, Silence in the Land of Logos, p. 8)

(title unknown) from enowning by enowning
In-der-Blog-seindenske.com on the spirit of edo, or understanding what's going on in On the Way to Language.
And then he talks about the emptiness of the Japanese Noh-stage as something unaccceptable to Europeans for some reason, apparently content to ignore similar European art forms, from ancient Greek drama through to Elizabethan drama.I think it helps to understand the larger context.

Raymond Williams on "Sesame Street" from The Joyful Knowing by Mike Johnduff
Certain forms have evolved within the conventions of current television programming. In American television, with its extraordinarily short units and as it were involuntary sequences, mainly determined by commercials, there have been such interesting innovations as Laugh In, Sesame Street and The Electric Company. The comic effects of fast-moving disconnection, using many of the local techniques [...]

Apr 11, 2009 The Ricardian case against YouTube from Marginal Revolution by Tyler Cowen
I love being reminded of the history of economic thought:
It seems safe to assume that YouTube’s traffic will continue to grow, with no clear ceiling in sight. Since the majority of Google’s costs for the service are pure variable costs of bandwidth and storage, and since they’ve already reached the point at which no greater economies of scale remain, the costs of the business will continue to grow on a linear basis. Unfortunately, far more user-generated content than professional content makes its way onto the site, which means that while costs grow linearly, non-monetizable content is growing geometrically as compared against the monetizable content that YouTube really wants and needs to survive. This means less and less of YouTube’s library will be revenue-contributing, while the costs of delivering that library will continue to grow. The article is interesting through and the hat tip goes to Andrew Sullivan.

Beyond national capitalism? from The Memory Bank by keith
Humanity is caught between national and world society. This is both dangerous and an opportunity for us... Money in capitalist societies stands for alienation, detachment, impersonal society, the outside; its origins lie beyond our control (the market). Relations marked by the absence of money are the model of personal integration and free association, of what we take to be familiar, the inside (home). This institutional dualism, forcing individuals to divide themselves every day, asks too much of us. People want to integrate division, to make some meaningful connection between their own subjectivity and society as an object. 8:36 AM

Against Spectacle from Grundlegung by Tom
k-punk on the G20 protest and the response to the economic ‘crisis’. This follows up on similar analyses from Savonarola, Owen Hatherley (and another), and an earlier k-punk post... Secondly, a new economism is needed, returning to the sphere of production as the site of struggle. With a moribund political climate (even in these interesting times), this is where capital can be challenged most effectively. David Harvey is right to call for a ’socialisation of surplus’ — though this ought to be not just at a governmental level (e.g. progressive tax and spending policies) but at the local level. The aspiration would be for workers — both material and immaterial — to have far more control over the products of their labour. But initially it is the conditions of labour which are more readily influenced. Traditionally, of course, this has revolved around matters of pay, hours and especially in cases like industry, safety. However, k-punk correctly centres upon opposition to managerialism as the new great front. I think we should see this as bound up with the demand for worker autonomy — to be free from interfering micro-management and the panoptican-nature of modern working practices.

[Is God also dead in America?
from An und für sich by Adam Kotsko... This second version of religion after the death of God could be called cultural, in the strict literal sense of cultivating or growing human beings — its natural affinity with nationalism should therefore come as no surprise. Sexuality is of course not the only thing on the agenda. In the US, for instance, there is the question of evolution or prayer in schools. But notice how closely both questions are tied to children and the role of education in maintaining the continuity of a certain cultural identity.
This religion is a distinctively secular religion, one aimed firmly and exclusively at shaping our shared world. It is a religion that implicitly recognizes the death of God insofar as God can no longer take care of himself: it is not enough for the faithful remnant to hold fast to God’s laws and let the rest go to hell. What’s more, no “strong” concept of God has any real credibility — for instance, the seemingly interminable battle over predestination has been decisively won by the free will crowd, not through superior argumentation but through simple attrition. Who really cares about predestination anymore? Who can even get themselves into a mental state where the question would arise in any serious, existential way?
In conclusion, then: yes, God is dead in America as well. The resurgence of “religion” is actually the best possible evidence of that.

Thinking the Present– What is Philosophy?
from Larval Subjects by larvalsubjects... I do not know that I share Badiou’s particular characterization of our present, but I think he’s hit upon something fundamental in just what it is that philosophy does or what the vocation of philosophy might be. What Badiou seems to be declaring is that philosophy strives to think that which provokes thought in the present, to reflect on its meaning, and to capture its pulsating essence or what is eternal within it. In doing so, philosophy is not a self-contained discipline, but rather always takes its material, its matter, its “stuff” of thought, from outside and elsewhere. If the identity of philosophy, what philosophy is, is so slippery, if we find that it is so difficult to say just what the questions of philosophy are and what the objects of philosophy are because they are so historically variable, then perhaps this is because philosophy itself has no identity, but is instead always a relation to its outside. Rather, philosophy is the attempt to think that which is new and transformative in its present, or what is unprecedented with regard to its history.

April 10, 2009

I don’t see the connection between science and materialism

What’s Opposed to Materialism? from Now-Times by Alexei
Levi has a new post up in which he seems to be claiming that materialism is the cure to every woe. I’m not sure that that’s the case, but it’s not because I’m against materialism. In fact, I’m just as much a materialist as most of us are. I do happen to think, however, that Levi hasn’t got a very sharp notion of what materialism really is...

In fact, I happen to think that materialism has absolutely nothing to do with our scientific advances. What do change — and this has nothing to do with Idealism, materialism, or realism per se — are our abilities to observe, measure, and idealize phenomena (personally, I think the latter is the most important but that might just be a personal thing). To keep things simple, let’s restrict ourselves to the following, abstract genealogy: Aristotle begets Ptolemy, who begets Copernicus, then Brahe & Kepler, then Galileo, then Newton, etc. Now Aristotle is just as much a materialist as Galileo is, and as Newton. What differentiates them from one another is really the mathematical and observational technology available. It’s not that Aristotle is an empiricist, Ptolemy a Rationalist, Copernicus a materialist, Galileo an even more staunch materialist, etc. What changes, is precisely what we can observe, how we can abstract the essence of phenomena from the flux of sensation, and extrapolate from it. Aristotle had no magnifying glass, although he thought observation was crucial. Ptolemy didn’t have algebra. Copernicus still relies on epicycles. And then we have Galileo, who proposes something entirely new: on top of observation, he invokes abstraction and experiment.

Abstraction and experiment, however, aren’t ‘materialist’ concepts. For although they may be empirical, and may even lead one to some form of empiricism, they have very little to do with ‘a privileging of concrete, material things.’ Simply put, empiricism isn’t necessarily materialism. Berkeley and Hume, for example, are empiricists but not materialists (or at least Hume is not a straightforward materialist — there’s a lot of pychological elements, which one could perhaps interpret materially). Now consider Newton, who ‘finishes’ Galileo’s insights (while also being a theologian and alchemist). How does Newton’s view of Space and Time square with materialism? The simply answer is that it doesn’t — space and time might be absolute, but they remain part of God’s sensorium.

Despite Galileo’s run-in with the church, and his imprisonment (which seems to have been political, or maybe personal, rather than docrtinally motivated, since folks prior to Galileo had openly argued for heliocentric models of the solar system — directly with the Pope no less! — without being charged with heresy or what have you), and Newton’s mathematical genius, his pushing our understanding to pretty much it’s contemporary limits, there’s nothing specifically materialist about anything they do. In fact, the only reason one might be tempted to apply the label ‘materialism’ to science in general is because science deals with things. But ‘having to do with things’ isn’t a necessary or sufficient condition for applying the label ‘materialism.’

The upshot: so far as I understand the development of our understanding of motion, there’s nothing materialist about it. And Levi’s claim is simply misleading. Levi also makes a few claims concerning biology, medicine, neuroscience, etc. But I think the basic point holds. There’s no real connection between materialism and these sciences — other than that their respect objects of study are things (not abstract ideas). However, having things as your object of study doesn’t by definition make you a materialist. The positivists, to pick another example, weren’t materialists either; they simply thought that ontological questions are malformed and senseless.

But that’s not the only weird comment from Levi. he also writes this:
Occasionally the materialist will encounter grumpy old Luddite farts like Adorno and Horkheimer that blame materialism for the holocaust (was there ever a thesis more absurd given how tightly woven National Socialism was with all manner of superstition?), or the Soviet Gulag, or the destruction of the planet.

Now to the extent that Levi simply assumes that science must be materialist (why, I don’t know), he here assumes — completely wrongly — that Horkheimer and Adorno are Idealists. The opposite is true of course. Adorno’s whole criticism is based on the spectacular success of Idealism, of the philosophy of the Hegelian Begriff, to overcome any material opposition (in fact, there’s a section of Negative Dialectics called ‘Idealism as Rage,’ which poses the problem quite elegantly. For Adorno, and for Horkheimer, Nazism and Stalinism — totalitarianism in general — follows a superbly Idealistic logic, which leads to the self-extermination of the particular in favour of the universal, simplified Notion. So again, Levi is just factually incorrect here. The issue if far more complicated than he is willing to acknowledge.

The funny thing, however, is that Materialism is an Idealism. This is Adorno’s (and a few others) insight. According to the very logic of the Begriff, which Adorno seeks to criticize (in fact, the most elegant formulation of Adorno’s whole philosophy would be this: meta-critique of the concept in order to make space for the non-conceptual), the only materialism that is not an Idealism is an inconsistent one, a non theory, one that acknowledges the Kantian Ding an-sich, non-identity and the priority of the individual object, because only this inconsistency refuses to reduce the material thing to its conceptual features. If things are analyzable in their entirety then they have been abstracted and formalized. They are not material objects, but scientific essences. Scientific essences, however are not material, they are concepts. And hence a consistent materialism liquidates precisely the particularity — the materiality — it takes to privilege. A Materialist theory of something is no less ideal than a naively Idealistic one.

But now I’m getting bored with this. Suffice it to say that (1) I don’t see the connection between science and materialism, which Levi thinks is paramount. I actually think he’s imagining it. And (2) materialism isn’t opposed to idealism in the first place (this is one of the reasons Marx is still typically thought of as an Idealist, as is Lukacs). Also (3) Levi is simply factually wrong when it comes to Adorno and Horkheimer — they were neither Idealists nor were they Luddites. moreover (4) Critical Theory’s criticisms of high modernity amount to showing that it operates according to a pre-eminently Hegelian logic, which obliterates actual particularity and materiality in favour of complete conceptual transparency.

These basic errors, however, point to something interesting: materialism isn’t opposed to idealism, nor is it aligned, necessarily with realism. So these categories aren’t contrary. One can be an idealist realist, without being a materialist. one can also be a materialist anti-realist without being an idealist. So, life is complicated.

April 09, 2009

What and how it is ruptured, modified, transformed or substituted

Re: 100 Years of Sri Aurobindo on Evolution: Anticipating Science and Society (part 3 of 6)
by Debashish on Wed 25 Mar 2009 03:49 PM PDT Profile Permanent Link

I have referenced the work of Dipesh Chakrabarty. According to him, cultural history conditions experience. Contingency offers a palimpsest of ontological possibilties which the creative agent evokes and which instrumentalize the creative agent in the negotiations of culture.

In my own work as a cultural historian, I have identified a number of agents in the "field of cultural production" (Bourdieu's phrase). These include the sponsor/patron, the user (if the cultural message is coded into a materially or socially utilitarian medium), agents of cultural tradition, agents of ideology and creative agents. Of these, the agents of cultural tradition and of ideology canonize and transmit forms of taste, perception and ontic possibility which represent continuities. However, none of these are without contestation.

Struggles of power among each of these agents (and within their variants) mark every cultural product. What is of interest is not merely to see what persists but what and how it is ruptured, modified, transformed or substituted. As with the individual, purusha takes up mental-vital-physical prakritis with their characteritsics and expressions but breaks and replaces them from life to life. In each life, one may speak of a development of persistent characteritstics over a certain period of time, but from life to life (or even within a life), to talk of such development may be irrelevant.

I see the ruptures of India, for example the destructions of Islam or of modernity to be as much the life of the nation soul as its iconic persistences. All prakritic development and change continues to co-exist in the ontological possibilties of any time. Purusha's evolution is less visible than these; it voices its specific questions and its movement towards integral answers only sporadically and as works of experiment, always in the making. DB

It does seems to me that one must judge things on an individual basis and be ever so cautious in adopting any systematic strategy of evaluation especially with regard to culture. Re: 100 Years of Sri Aurobindo on Evolution: The Illusion of Human Progress and the Ideal of Human Unity (part 5 of 6) Tony Clifton Science, Culture and Integral Yoga 10:37 AM

The transcendental realist does not deny the functioning of the transitive dimension or the social, but instead argues that the relationship between this transitive dimension and the intransitive dimension of natural powers is one of assemblic relations rather than system based relations. That is, it is not, for example, the Kuhnian paradigm or the Foucaultian episteme that makes Copernicus “right” or Freud “true”. If there is truth in these theories it is a real that operates regardless of whether any humans conceive it or conceptualize it.

Rather, the movement of the planets, gravity, libido, etc., enter into an assemblage with human actors, human history, human concepts, human language, etc., in such a way that the intransitive nonetheless maintains its separation and independence. Such would be the beginnings of a non-naive realist conception of being that was also able to take the best from the social sciences. Roy Bhaskar: Transcendental Realism and the Transitive and the Intransitive from Larval Subjects by larvalsubjects 5:46 PM

The Basic Paradox– A Brief Note from Larval Subjects . by larvalsubjects
It could be argue that the debate between the realists and the anti-realists revolves around a set of basic paradoxes, or perhaps antinomies, arising from our contemporary state of knowledge today. It will be recalled that Husserl claims that Nature cannot be the condition for Consciousness because Consciousness is the condition of Nature. With this claim, Husserl reveals the inner logic of correlationism. If correlationism is to be an internally consistent position, then the transcendental subject upon which it is based must be rigorously separated from the knowledge that it is to ground lest it fall into a paradox or contradiction. Like Russell’s set of all sets that are not members of themselves, this sort of self-membership to the object is grounds must be excluded.
Yet within our current state of knowledge or within the scope of our best working hypotheses, this thesis generates a set of paradoxes or apparent absurdities [...]

I do not know how to resolve these apparent paradoxes but I do not think they can be swept under the rug as so many correlationists would like to do. When Ben, in comments to my “Naturalism” diary describes an encounter between a supporter of Jean-Luc Nancy claiming that science is identical to faith and a Kantian claiming that science is pure speculation and therefore irrelevant, it seems to me that he describes an attitude of willful ignorance endemic in Continental philosophy whereby it is fought that one both maintains a position of superiority with respect to science, knowing a deep and fundamental (grounding) truth not known by scientists, and that therefore they can simply ignore our present or what we have found in these fields. This position of willful ignorance strikes me as being based more on a defensive posture than anything else. At some point, however, lest this entire form of philosophy eventually become entirely irrelevant, those coming from the Continental tradition will have to follow the lead of thinkers like Bergson, Merleau-Ponty, and Deleuze and stop denouncing these sciences as merely dogmatic or outside of philosophy and start taking them seriously as things that demand to be thought and which demand a critique of a certain way of doing philosophy itself.