How can movement be painted?
In order to answer my question I simply refer Deleuze’s understanding of movement as it appears in his Francis Bacon, Logic of Sensation, to Heraclitus’ flux. In common the two thinkers have the idea that ‘on the surface’ appearances simply undergo a process of destruction.
Heraclitus calls the successive metamorphosis of any figure the flux. Continue reading
After only a glance at Salomon Maimon’s manuscript, Kant deliberated that “Herr Maimon” supersedes all his opponents. He departs from Kant by questioning the validity of synthetic a priori judgments and the conditionality of the possibility of experience.
Maimon’s project is a confluence of a Leibnizian dogmatist strain that grounds transcendental philosophy in a principle of determinability, and a tinge of empirical skepticism that views synthetic propositions to be merely subjective. Continue reading
Even the closest friends are radically separated by a distance between them. This distance creates an interval which is like an empty space or a no man’s land; it is the space where friendship takes place.
Friendship is the movement that creates meaning in the empty space between friends. According to Blanchot, friendship is a Continue reading
This paper discusses a Bergsonian concept of organization in the context of the thermodynamics of living systems. It is argued that the concept of organization represents the most basic synthesis of the two fundamental features of living systems—metabolism and homeostasis—and that it must become the center of the ontology of life for this reason.
The relationship between living and non-living systems is then characterized at this basic level, first by describing the thermodynamic and physico-chemical laws underlying the process of organization (metabolism), and then by describing exactly how life becomes qualitatively distinct from non-life through this same process (homeostasis). Continue reading
The Flemish theologian, Edward Schillebeeckx O.P. (1914-2009), developed a hermeneutical theology based on his reading of philosophical hermeneutics in the twentieth century and with an experientially mediated anthropology that eschews antiquated Neo-Scholastic terminology.
Schillebeeckx based anthropology on the concept of the “limit experience” and the contingency human beings. The experience of contingency is, for Schillebeeckx, an ontological claim to the precondition for the interpretation of being.
In the last paragraph of absolute knowing, recollection (Erinnerung) comes on the stage as a leading actor which plays a significant role in achieving a whole complete system.
The Phenomenology of Spirit, as the science of experience of consciousness, begins its process with the most primitive form of consciousness and gradually penetrates to true knowing or to absolute knowing.
Throughout its self-educating process, consciousness tests the actuality of its knowledge which means that it tests whether its notion corresponds to its object. Continue reading
There is a contemporary scholarly consensus that the Popperian characterization of Hegel’s politics as totalitarian is mistaken.
However, Roger Scruton also rejects the view put forward by many Hegel scholars that Hegel is some form of liberal and or communitarian thinker.
Rather, Scruton argues that Hegel’s vision of the state is best characterized as a form of classical conservative political philosophy. Continue reading
John Brown, Scottish physician, 1791. Brown (1735-1788) proposed the Brunonian system of medicine which had two classes of disease; sthenic (resulting…
This paper aims to explore the reception of the biological concept of ‘excitability’ in early nineteenth century German philosophy, in order to examine Hegel’s mobilisation of this concept in his Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences.
Firstly, this will involve addressing John Brown’s introduction of ‘excitability’ [in his Elementa Medicinae, 1780] as an fundamental characteristic of the animal organism which can be brought into play in a theory of medicine.
Secondly, the paper will address the reception of this concept in early nineteenth century German philosophy, which was important in the work of thinkers such as Roschlaub, Kielmayer, Fichte and Schelling. Continue reading
This paper attempts to elucidate Flusser’s understanding of human history, comparing and contrasting it with that given by Hegel.
It is one of Hegel’s central claims that reason rules reality; hence the task of philosophy is to comprehend that world history is nothing but the execution of God’s plans.
Is this account of history one expects –demands, even – from a philosopher who also admits that world history is a slaughter bench? Continue reading
In Sigmund Freud’s early pre-psychoanalytical monograph, “The Project for a Scientific Psychology,” we find the first formulation of ideas that would become central to his psychoanalytical understanding of mental phenomena.
While interesting from the standpoint of the development of psychoanalytical concepts, this text interests us mainly because of the rather powerful psychophysical account of mental phenomenon that he offers there.
From the beginning, Freud’s main goal in the Project was to offer a compelling account of defense. Continue reading
