DOCSLIB.ORG

Gilles Deleuze and the Apolitical Production of Being

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Gilles Deleuze and the Apolitical Production of Being Gilles Deleuze And the Apolitical Production of Being by Tim Paugh B.A., St. Francis Xavier University, 2005 A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of Political Science © Tim Paugh, 2008 University of Victoria All rights reserved. This thesis may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author. ii Gilles Deleuze and the Apolitical Production of Being By Tim Paugh, B.A., St. Francis Xavier University, 2005 Supervisory Committee Warren Magnusson (Department of Political Science) Supervisor Rob Walker (Department of Political Science) Departmental Member Luke Carson (Department of English) Outside Member iii Supervisory Committee Warren Magnusson (Department of Political Science) Supervisor Rob Walker (Department of Political Science) Departmental Member Luke Carson (Department of English) Outside Member Abstract Gilles Deleuze’s ontology is often understood to ground a kind of radical pluralism, the political defense of which is thought to be articulated most strongly in the Capitalism and Schizophrenia books. It is clear, however, that this “politics” is defined in a wholly negative way, and that the revolutionary dimension of these books is animated by a strictly ethical logic. In my view, if there is a politics in Deleuze it must be understood in relation to the central problem of his ontology: namely, the problem of understanding how being is produced. To grasp politics as a singularity, as a mode of ontological production, has a number of radical consequences – consequences, however, that Deleuze himself did not embrace. Ultimately, Deleuze’s conception of ontological production appears marked by an apolitics, in that any effective mobilization Being’s transformative potential requires that we stand posed to sacrifice anything of the integrity and organizational capacity of political existence that limits the expression of Being itself. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE………………………………………………………….ii ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………….........iii TABLE OF CONTENTS…………………………………………………………………iv INRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………….………..1 Overview of Deleuze’s Work and “Move into Politics”…………………………...8-13 Apolitics and the Thought and the One…………………………………………...13-17 Note on Deleuzian Terminology………………………………………………….17-19 CHAPTER 1: THE POLITICS OF CAPITALISM AND SCHIZOPHRENIA……..….…..20 A Micropolitics of Desire…………………………………………………………21-28 Non-Fascist Living: an Ethics………………………………………………….....29-44 A Political Logic?....................................................................................................44-47 CHAPTER 2: WHAT IS A POLITICAL SINGULARITY?………………………………..48 A Return to the Question of Being and Politics………………………………………49 I. Politics as a Singularity: A Prerogative of Collective Struggle……………..50-62 II. Multiplicity as the ‘Ground’ of Singular Instances of Politics……………..62-65 Subjectivity: or How to Think the Singularity of a Politics……………………….66-73 A Counter-Actualization……...…………………..……………………………….73-75 CHAPTER 3: THE HAZARDS OF APOLITICS……………………………………......…..76 Deleuze as Metaphysician of the One………………………………………….…78-89 The Subsumption of Politics……………………………………………………...90-97 What Remains of Politics…………………………………………………………98-99 CONCLUSION: A SINGULAR APOLITICS……………………..………………….100-104 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………105-109 INTRODUCTION We are well acquainted with the characteristics that have come to define Gilles Deleuze’s thought: a refusal to give heed to calls of “the end of philosophy”, as made evident by the near endless array of conceptual creations that populate his work; an approach that can only be called perverse given the success with which he was able to render canonical philosophers like Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant – along with many other writers, painters, filmmakers, and scientists – into the accomplices of the most contemporary experiments in art, science, and philosophy; and finally, a kind of desperate but utterly sober determination to prove that it was still possible in our world, as banal and over-determined as it had become, to engender something absolutely new. If these characteristics give us an appropriate portrait of Deleuzian thought, then it is little wonder that most readers have found him completely mystifying. What are we to make, after all, of a thinker whose erratic style and idiosyncratic references to experimental forms of thought seemed resolutely “anti-philosophical” but whose work, it must be acknowledged, is barely intelligible outside of the conceptual history of Continental philosophy? Faced with this disjunction, most readers in the Anglo-American context have tended to find in Deleuze’s writings a rigorous defense against all that is unifying in contemporary existence, a kind of “nomad thought”. Despite his insistence on the strictly philosophical nature of his work, Deleuze’s own intentions were thought to be aimed at nothing less than turning philosophy against itself, of making all that is sedentary in classical thought dissolve before the flux of contemporary being, of rendering all the instability of our “post-modern” world into something positive, and even 2 joyous.1 We need only consider the primacy granted by such readers to the figure of the rhizome: a figure that subverts all stable unity, identity and representation, endlessly connecting and reconnecting with other rhizomes, happy to abandon any and all existing relations to the world and immerse itself in the flux of life. The relevance of this figure seems obvious enough: our world has become, after all, utterly “flat” given both the ubiquity of the mediums of communication and the ease with which we move between territories. Perhaps the only real sin today is failing to connect. Insofar as we become rhizomatic we have learned how to turn the post-modern blurring of identities, and the angst surrounding the status of social and political representations, into virtues. Despite their attentiveness to the subtleties of his conceptual creations, this “anti- philosophical” reading of Deleuze has been abetted by many of the authors in the first wave of Deleuze studies in the Anglo-American academy. For most of these commentators, Deleuze’s work seemed to call less for philosophical evaluation and more for fidelity to the spirit of Deleuzianism, which, given the extent to which this fidelity consisted in a detailed mapping of his terms and concepts, tended also to be true to the letter. In as much as commentators were able to render him compatible with existing forms of cultural and political theory, particularly Anglo-American “post-structuralism”, Deleuze appeared increasingly as a kind of radical pluralist, for whom philosophy was simply a means of allowing us to liberate the plurality of social being from any and every encroachment by the aborescent, totalizing figures of old. For most, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, a two-volume series of books that Deleuze wrote with the psychoanalyst Felix Guattari, represented the most radical formulation of a politics of plurality and flux, 1 See Alain Badiou, Deleuze: The Clamor of Being, trans. Louise Burchill (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 8.9-9.0 for a good overview of this still common image of Deleuze. 3 a “micropolitics” that sought out the residue of all the old macropolitical unities so as to dispel (as Michel Foucault once wrote) “the slightest traces of fascism in the body”.2 Even a summary examination of this wave of commentary reveals, for all its diversity, a remarkable convergence on at least two fronts. First, that Deleuzianism is animated by the continual demonstration, in the face of all rigid and sedentary phenomena, that Being is grounded in an irreducible heterogeneity of fluctuating differences, becomings, desires, etc., a heterogeneity which, when subjected to the telos of dialectical representation and identity, is liable to be crushed in the gross machinery of negativity, opposition, and ressentiment. Second, that what at first appears strictly as a quarrel with the aborescent figures of the philosophical tradition (Platonism, Hegelianism, Kantianism, etc.) finds its ultimate fulfillment only in a politics, or a micropolitics, capable of exposing all the ways in which the old macropolitical figures (opposition, negativity, hierarchical forms of organization, and so on) are aligned with the mechanisms that repress Being more generally. We end up with a politics that wages the power of Being’s fundamental heterogeneity by means of a continuous experimentation with the transformative potential of existence, in recognition of the fact that the only liberatory project possible today must, in light of the failure of the old revolutionary models, hold rigorously to the defense of pluralism and embrace our contemporary, rhizomatic sociability. Thus, Paul Patton, who has probably written more than anyone on the relation between Deleuze’s philosophy and politics, acknowledges that “the function of mutation, metamorphosis and the creation of the new is ontologically primary” in Deleuze and 2 Michel Foucault, “Preface”, in Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert Hurley (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), xiii. 4 Guattari’s work.3 On this basis, he surmises that Deleuzian politics amounts to an effort to precipitate new micropolitical becomings, freeing social particularities (sex, race, or class-based differences)
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Pluralisms About Truth and Logic Nathan Kellen University of Connecticut - Storrs, [email protected]
    University of Connecticut OpenCommons@UConn Doctoral Dissertations University of Connecticut Graduate School 8-9-2019 Pluralisms about Truth and Logic Nathan Kellen University of Connecticut - Storrs, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations Recommended Citation Kellen, Nathan, "Pluralisms about Truth and Logic" (2019). Doctoral Dissertations. 2263. https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations/2263 Pluralisms about Truth and Logic Nathan Kellen, PhD University of Connecticut, 2019 Abstract: In this dissertation I analyze two theories, truth pluralism and logical pluralism, as well as the theoretical connections between them, including whether they can be combined into a single, coherent framework. I begin by arguing that truth pluralism is a combination of realist and anti-realist intuitions, and that we should recognize these motivations when categorizing and formulating truth pluralist views. I then introduce logical functionalism, which analyzes logical consequence as a functional concept. I show how one can both build theories from the ground up and analyze existing views within the functionalist framework. One upshot of logical functionalism is a unified account of logical monism, pluralism and nihilism. I conclude with two negative arguments. First, I argue that the most prominent form of logical pluralism faces a serious dilemma: it either must give up on one of the core principles of logical consequence, and thus fail to be a theory of logic at all, or it must give up on pluralism itself. I call this \The Normative Problem for Logical Pluralism", and argue that it is unsolvable for the most prominent form of logical pluralism. Second, I examine an argument given by multiple truth pluralists that purports to show that truth pluralists must also be logical pluralists.
    [Show full text]
  • Becoming-Other: Foucault, Deleuze, and the Political Nature of Thought Vernon W
    Philosophy Faculty Publications Philosophy 4-2014 Becoming-Other: Foucault, Deleuze, and the Political Nature of Thought Vernon W. Cisney Gettysburg College Follow this and additional works at: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/philfac Part of the Philosophy of Mind Commons Share feedback about the accessibility of this item. Cisney, Vernon W. "Becoming-Other: Foucault, Deleuze, and the Nature of Thought." Foucault Studies 17 Special Issue: Foucault and Deleuze (April 2014). This is the publisher's version of the work. This publication appears in Gettysburg College's institutional repository by permission of the copyright owner for personal use, not for redistribution. Cupola permanent link: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/philfac/37 This open access article is brought to you by The uC pola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College. It has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of The uC pola. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Becoming-Other: Foucault, Deleuze, and the Political Nature of Thought Abstract In this paper I employ the notion of the ‘thought of the outside’ as developed by Michel Foucault, in order to defend the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze against the criticisms of ‘elitism,’ ‘aristocratism,’ and ‘political indifference’—famously leveled by Alain Badiou and Peter Hallward. First, I argue that their charges of a theophanic conception of Being, which ground the broader political claims, derive from a misunderstanding of Deleuze’s notion of univocity, as well as a failure to recognize the significance of the concept of multiplicity in Deleuze’s thinking. From here, I go on to discuss Deleuze’s articulation of the ‘dogmatic image of thought,’ which, insofar as it takes ‘recognition’ as its model, can only ever think what is already solidified and sedimented as true, in light of existing structures and institutions of power.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction Part I Deleuze and Systematic Philosophy
    Notes Introduction 1. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (New York: Viking, 1977), p. 240. 2. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), p. 3. 3. Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations, trans. Martin Joughin. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), pp. 88–89. 4. Gilles Deleuze, Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay on Hume’s Theory of Human Nature, trans. Constantine Boundas (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), p. 107. 5. Ibid., p. 106. 6. Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind, trans. Mabelle L. Andison (New York: Philosophical Library, 1946), pp. 21–28. 7. Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 8. Part I Deleuze and Systematic Philosophy 1. Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations (1972–1990), trans. Martin Joughin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 31. 2. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), p. 18. 3. Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press), pp. 170–6. 4. Gilles Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, trans. Martin Joughin (New York: Zone Books, 1992). This logic of expression is developed in chapters 1–2 and 6–8. 5. Spinoza brings together the notion of substance and expression in Part 1 of the Ethics: definitions 4 and 6, Proposition 10, and the Scholium following Proposition 10. The treatment of modifications and individuals first appears in Part 2, Proposition 7 along with its Corollary and Scholium.
    [Show full text]
  • Spinoza: the Velocities of Thought SEMINAR at the UNIVERSITY of PARIS, VINCENNES-ST
    GILLES DELEUZE Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought SEMINAR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS, VINCENNES-ST. DENIS, 1980-1981 _____________________________________________________________________________________ LECTURE 1 25 NOVEMBER 1980 TRANSLATED BY TIMOTHY S. MURPHY FOR WEB DELEUZE AUGMENTED TRANSCRIPTION AND TRANSLATION REVIEW BY CHARLES J. STIVALE It's quite curious the extent to which philosophy, up to the end of the 17th century, ultimately speaks to us, all the time, of God. And after all, Spinoza, excommunicated Jew, is not the last to speak to us of God. And the first book of his great work The Ethics is called “Of God.” And from all of them, whether it's Descartes, Malebranche, Leibniz, we get the impression that the boundary between philosophy and theology is extremely vague. Why is philosophy so compromised with God, and right up to the revolutionary coup of the 18th century philosophers? Is it a dishonest compromise [compromission] or something a little purer? We could say that thought, until the end of the 17th century, must take considerable account of the demands of the Church, thus it's clearly forced to take many religious themes into account. But one feels quite strongly that this is much too easy; we could just as well say that, until this era, thought's lot is somewhat linked to that of a religious feeling. I'm going back to an analogy with painting because it's true that painting is replete with images of God. My question is: is it sufficient to say that this is an inevitable constraint in this era? There are two possible answers.
    [Show full text]
  • The Being of Analogy Noah Roderick Noah Roderick the Being of Analogy
    Noah Roderick The Being of Analogy Noah Roderick Noah Roderick The Being of Analogy The Being of Modern physics replaced the dualism of matter and form with a new distinction between matter and force. In this way form was marginalized, and with it the related notion of the object. Noah Roderick’s book is a refreshing effort to reverse the consequences of this now banal mainstream materialism. Ranging from physics through literature to linguistics, spanning philosophy from East to West, and weaving it all together in remarkably lucid prose, Roderick intro- duces a new concept of analogy that sheds unfamiliar light on such thinkers as Marx, Deleuze, Goodman, Sellars, and Foucault. More than a literary device, analogy teaches us something about being itself. OPEN HUMANITIES PRESS Cover design by Katherine Gillieson · Illustration by Tammy Lu The Being of Analogy New Metaphysics Series Editors: Graham Harman and Bruno Latour The world is due for a resurgence of original speculative metaphysics. The New Metaphys- ics series aims to provide a safe house for such thinking amidst the demoralizing caution and prudence of professional academic philosophy. We do not aim to bridge the analytic- continental divide, since we are equally impatient with nail-filing analytic critique and the continental reverence for dusty textual monuments. We favor instead the spirit of the intel- lectual gambler, and wish to discover and promote authors who meet this description. Like an emergent recording company, what we seek are traces of a new metaphysical ‘sound’ from any nation of the world. The editors are open to translations of neglected metaphysical classics, and will consider secondary works of especial force and daring.
    [Show full text]
  • Some Unnoticed Implications of Churchland's Pragmatic Pluralism
    Contemporary Pragmatism Editions Rodopi Vol. 8, No. 1 (June 2011), 173–189 © 2011 Beyond Eliminative Materialism: Some Unnoticed Implications of Churchland’s Pragmatic Pluralism Teed Rockwell Paul Churchland’s epistemology contains a tension between two positions, which I will call pragmatic pluralism and eliminative materialism. Pragmatic pluralism became predominant as his episte- mology became more neurocomputationally inspired, which saved him from the skepticism implicit in certain passages of the theory of reduction he outlined in Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind. However, once he replaces eliminativism with a neurologically inspired pragmatic pluralism, Churchland (1) cannot claim that folk psychology might be a false theory, in any significant sense; (2) cannot claim that the concepts of Folk psychology might be empty of extension and lack reference; (3) cannot sustain Churchland’s critic- ism of Dennett’s “intentional stance”; (4) cannot claim to be a form of scientific realism, in the sense of believing that what science describes is somehow realer that what other conceptual systems describe. One of the worst aspects of specialization in Philosophy and the Sciences is that it often inhibits people from asking the questions that could dissolve long standing controversies. This paper will deal with one of these controversies: Churchland’s proposal that folk psychology is a theory that might be false. Even though one of Churchland’s greatest contributions to philosophy of mind was demonstrating that the issues in philosophy of mind were a subspecies of scientific reduction, still philosophers of psychology have usually defended or critiqued folk psychology without attempting to carefully analyze Churchland’s theory of reduction.
    [Show full text]
  • Deleuze and the Logic of Creation
    ‘A Part’ of the World: Deleuze and the Logic of Creation Christopher Satoor York University Abstract Is there a particular danger in following Deleuze’s philosophy to its end result? According to Peter Hallward, Deleuze’s philosophy has some rather severe conclusions. Deleuze has been portrayed by him as a theological and spiritual thinker of life. Hallward seeks to challenge the accepted view of Deleuze, showing that these accepted norms in Deleuzian scholarship should be challenged and that, initially, Deleuze calls for the evacuation of political action in order to remain firm in the realm of pure contemplation. This article intends to investigate and defend Deleuze’s philosophy against the critical and theological accounts portrayed by Hallward, arguing that Deleuze’s philosophy is not only creative and vital but also highly revolutionary and ‘a part’ of the given world. It then goes on to examine Hallward’s distortion of the actual/virtual distinction in Deleuze because Hallward is not able to come to grips with the concept of life in Deleuze’s philosophy. We live in an intensive and dynamic world and the main points of Deleuze’s philosophy concern the transformation of the world. Deleuze is not seeking to escape the world, but rather to deal with inventive and creative methods to transform society. Keywords: Deleuze, Hallward, virtual-actual, singularities, differentiation, divergence, creation, dynamism, intensities Deleuze Studies 11.1 (2017): 25–47 DOI: 10.3366/dls.2017.0250 © Edinburgh University Press www.euppublishing.com/dls 26 Christopher Satoor I. Introduction: The Context of the Turn and the Debate In the last ten years, many texts have been released about the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze.
    [Show full text]
  • The Univocity of Substance and the Formal Distinction of Attributes: the Role of Duns Scotus in Deleuze's Reading of Spinoza Nathan Widder
    parrhesia 33 · 2020 · 150-176 the univocity of substance and the formal distinction of attributes: the role of duns scotus in deleuze's reading of spinoza nathan widder This paper examines the role played by medieval theologian John Duns Scotus in Gilles Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza’s philosophy of expressive substance; more generally, it elaborates a crucial moment in the development of Deleuze’s philosophy of sense and difference. Deleuze contends that Spinoza adapts and extends Duns Scotus’s two most influential theses, the univocity of being and formal distinction, despite neither appearing explicitly in Spinoza’s writings. “It takes nothing away from Spinoza’s originality,” Deleuze declares, “to place him in a perspective that may already be found in Duns Scotus” (Deleuze, 1992, 49).1 Nevertheless, the historiographic evidence is clearly lacking, leaving Deleuze to admit that “it is hardly likely that” Spinoza had even read Duns Scotus (359n28). Indeed, the only support he musters for his speculation is Spinoza’s obvious in- terests in scholastic metaphysical and logical treatises, the “probable influence” of the Scotist-informed Franciscan priest Juan de Prado on his thought, and the fact that the problems Duns Scotus addresses need not be confined to Christian thought (359–360n28). The paucity of evidence supporting this “use and abuse” of history, however, does not necessarily defeat the thesis. Like other lineages Deleuze proposes, the one he traces from Duns Scotus to Spinoza, and subsequently to Nietzsche, turns not on establishing intentional references by one thinker to his predecessor, but instead on showing how the borrowings and adaptations asserted to create the connec- tion make sense of the way the second philosopher surmounts blockages he faces while responding to issues left unaddressed by the first.
    [Show full text]
  • Watching Avatar Through Deleuzian 3D, Desire, Deterritorialization, And
    West Chester University Digital Commons @ West Chester University Philosophy College of Arts & Humanities 9-2011 Watching Avatar through Deleuzian 3D, Desire, Deterritorialization, and Doubling: A Postcolonial Eco-Theological Review Jea Sophia Oh West Chester University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wcupa.edu/phil_facpub Recommended Citation Oh, J. S. (2011). Watching Avatar through Deleuzian 3D, Desire, Deterritorialization, and Doubling: A Postcolonial Eco-Theological Review. The Journal of Postcolonial Networks, 1(1), 1-27. Retrieved from http://digitalcommons.wcupa.edu/phil_facpub/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts & Humanities at Digital Commons @ West Chester University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Philosophy by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ West Chester University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1 of 27 Watching Avatar through Deleuzian 3D, Desire, Deterritorialization, and Doubling: A Postcolonial Eco-Theological Review Jea Sophia Oh [email protected] By employing Deleuzian conceptualizations of “desire,” “deterritorialization,” and “doubling,”1 this study examines Avatar (James Cameron’s 2009 film) as a hybridity of becoming the Other. I will sketch the contours of an oppositional politics within the figure of Empire (or the American capitalist empire which is almost always transcendental). The binary structure of the movie oscillates between two utterly opposing modalities (deploying high-tech military force against eco-friendly indigenous culture, weapons against trees, killing to healing, earth to space, human to nonhuman-nature, white skin against blue skin, etc.) This dualistic tension seems to create a Neo-Platonic Augustinian confrontation between Good and Evil.
    [Show full text]
  • Politics and Aesthetics an Interview Jacques Rancie`Re Available Online: 03 Jun 2010
    This article was downloaded by: [UNISA University South Africa] On: 21 May 2012, At: 05:18 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cang20 Politics and aesthetics an interview Jacques Rancie`re Available online: 03 Jun 2010 To cite this article: Jacques Rancie`re (2003): Politics and aesthetics an interview, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 8:2, 191-211 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725032000162657 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. ANGELAKI journal of the theoretical humanities volume 8 number 2 august 2003 introduction peter hallward Jacques Rancière retired from teaching philoso- phy at the University of Paris VIII (Saint-Denis) in 2002.
    [Show full text]
  • Recent Work on Ontological Pluralism
    Recent Work on Ontological Pluralism Jason Turner November 15, 2018 Ontological Pluralism is said in many ways, at least if two counts as ‘many’. On one disambiguation, to be an ‘ontological pluralist’ is to be accommodating about theories with different ontologies. This is the pluralism of Carnap (1950) and Putnam (1987) who grant that there are competing ontological visions of reality but deny that any has an objectively better claim to correctness. We are free to accept an ontology of numbers or not, and there’s no good philosoph- ical debate to be had about whether there really are any numbers. This is the pluralism of the pluralistic society, where opposing ontological visions need to learn to just get along. We will discuss the other disambiguation of ‘Ontological Pluralism’ here. According to it, there are different ways of being. In The Problems of Philosophy, for instance, Betrand Russell (1912: 90, 98) tells us that, while there are relations as well as people, relations exist in a deeply different way than people do.1 The way in which the world grants being to relations is radically different, on this picture, then the way in which it grants it to people. Despite its pedigree, during the 20th century analytic philosophers grew suspicious of the notion. Presumably, when the logical positivists tried to kill metaphysics, the idea things could exist in different ways was supposed to die with it. Quine’s resurrection of metaphysics linked ontology with quantifiers, making it hard to see what ‘things exist in different ways’ could mean. Zoltán Szabó puts it this way: The standard view nowadays is that we can adequately capture the meaning of sentences like ‘There are Fs’, ‘Some things are F’, or ‘F’s exist’ through existential quantification.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction to the Philosophy of Cognitive Science by Dr
    Introduction to the Philosophy of Cognitive Science By Dr. Charles Wallis Last revision: 1/23/2013 Chapter 2 Greek Metaphysical Speculation: Philosophical Materialisms and Dualisms 2.1 Introduction It may seem odd to the contemporary thinker to suppose that people did not always have a clear conception of the mind and of mental phenomena. Nevertheless, like most contemporary western concepts the development of the notion of the mind and of mental phenomena actually occurs over the course of centuries. Indeed, the development of the notion of “the mind” arguably traces back to the development of the Greek notion of the soul. For most of Greek history the conception of the soul bears little resemblance to its contemporary western counterpart. In fact, the Greeks develop their notion of the soul as part of the development of general ontological frameworks for scientific and metaphysical speculation. Three features of the development of the Greek notion of the soul figure prominently in this rather superficial history. First, the development of the Greek notion of the soul represents a slow accretion of properties and processes associated with three different contemporary distinctions into a single ontological entity; living vs non-living, animate vs inanimate, and mental vs non-mental. Second, as the soul becomes more distinct both in its nature and in its functions, the Greeks begin to more actively debate whether the soul constitutes a fundamental kind of stuff (a distinct substance) or merely one of many permutations of more fundamental kinds of stuff (substances). For instance, early Greek thinkers often supposed that the universe consists of various permutations of one or more fundamental elements.
    [Show full text]