DOCSLIB.ORG

KANT on LOGICAL FORM by Alexandra Mary Newton

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
KANT on LOGICAL FORM by Alexandra Mary Newton KANT ON LOGICAL FORM by Alexandra Mary Newton M.A. in Philosophy and German Literature, Universität Tübingen, 2003 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2010 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Alexandra Mary Newton It was defended on September 30th, 2010 and approved by Robert Brandom, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh Nicholas Rescher, University Professor, Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh Sebastian Rödl, Professor, Philosophy, University of Basel Karl Schafer, Assistant Professor, Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh Dissertation Co-Director: Stephen Engstrom, Professor, Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh Dissertation Co-Director: John McDowell, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh ii Copyright © by Alexandra M. Newton 2010 iii KANT ON LOGICAL FORM Alexandra M. Newton, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2010 Most philosophers today assume what Kant might have called a ‘material’ conception of logic. According to the material conception, the laws of logic obtain independently of our consciousness of them, because they are either objective ‘laws of truth’, laws governing linguistic practices, or laws innate to our cognitive capacities. But it is often overlooked that this view of logic faces intractable difficulties in providing an adequate explanation of how these laws govern the mind. (Both rationalist and empiricist attempts to offer an explanation have been made.) The material conception immunizes logic from these problems, since it assumes that they do not concern logic, but merely concern epistemological views about what it is to have knowledge of logic. In this dissertation I argue that Kant avoids the epistemological difficulties because he has a ‘formal’ conception of general logic, according to which logical operations and rules articulate self-consciousness in any exercise of the understanding. That is, they are not rules or procedures for generating intellectual acts (such as judgments), nor are they products of intellectual acts. Instead, they bring to (self-) consciousness the necessity (or ‘necessary synthetic unity’) in the activity of the understanding itself. Logical cognition thus is not material cognition of that which is distinct from our cognition of it, but instead is formal cognition, or cognition that iv any act of cognition has of itself. I argue that we cannot fully appreciate these points if we assume an ‘analytic approach’ to Kant’s logic, according to which logical operations consist in mere acts of comparison (or analysis) of representations. General logic must primarily concern itself with the understanding’s acts of synthesis in cognition, acts that are directed at an inner telos or purpose (namely, systematic unity in the whole of cognitions). Kant’s conception of logical form thus invokes an organic notion of ‘form’ that is linked to the teleological structure of our cognitive capacities. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ................................................................................................................................. VIII NOTES ON SOURCES AND ABBREVIATIONS .................................................................. XI 1.0 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................. 1 1.1 OVERVIEW ................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 WHAT IS LOGIC? ........................................................................................................ 2 1.3 LOGIC AS A SCIENCE .............................................................................................. 11 2.0 CONCEPTS ........................................................................................................................... 17 2.1 WHAT IS A CONCEPT? ............................................................................................ 18 2.2 CONCEPTS AND APPERCEPTION: CONCEPT-FORMATION AND THE FORM OF A CONCEPT ................................................................................................... 34 2.2.1 Interpretive Difficulties Surrounding the Notion of Logical Reflection ...... 34 2.2.2 Logical Reflection and the Clarity of Concepts .............................................. 42 2.2.3 Objection 1: Reflection in the Brutes .............................................................. 48 2.2.4 Objection 2: Reflection in Concept-Formation .............................................. 51 2.2.5 Generality of the ‘I think’ and the Extension of a Concept .......................... 58 3.0 JUDGMENT .......................................................................................................................... 63 3.1 THE ANALYTIC APPROACH .................................................................................. 65 vi 3.2 REICH’S SYNTHETIC APPROACH ....................................................................... 72 3.3 THE MERE SYNTHETIC APPROACH .................................................................. 78 3.3.1 Analytic and Synthetic Unity of Apperception ............................................... 78 3.3.2 Analytic and Synthetic Unity of Apperception in a Judgment ..................... 81 3.3.3 Two Senses of “Logical Form” ........................................................................ 85 3.3.4 The Organic Unity of Judgment ...................................................................... 96 4.0 INFERENCE ....................................................................................................................... 103 4.1 INFERENCES OF THE UNDERSTANDING ........................................................ 104 4.2 INFERENCES OF REASON .................................................................................... 114 4.2.1 The Analytic Approach................................................................................... 116 4.2.2 The Synthetic Approach ................................................................................. 126 4.3 LOGICAL VALIDITY .............................................................................................. 144 5.0 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................... 151 5.1 LOGIC AND SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS ................................................................. 151 5.2 AGAINST EMPTY FORMALISM: KANT’S ORGANIC CONCEPTION OF LOGICAL FORM ............................................................................................................ 159 APPENDIX: PROFILING KANT’S POSITION ON THE FORM OF DISCURSIVE CONCEPTS IN RELATION TO HIS PREDECESSORS ................................................... 165 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 175 vii PREFACE In working on this dissertation, I have spent almost as much time trying to understand Kant as I have spent trying to understand my advisors, Stephen Engstrom and John McDowell. If I have succeeded in understanding any one of them, it has only been in virtue of understanding the others. And if I have understood anything in philosophy at all, I think it has been because I have understood at least one of these philosophers. I am immensely grateful to them for giving me a sense of what it is important to understand. The initial project was inspired by John McDowell’s non-hybrid account of knowledge in “Knowledge and the Internal”, a paper to which I have returned on several occasions while writing this dissertation. I am very grateful to John for listening to my fumbling attempts to articulate a thought in the beginning phases of writing my dissertation, and for sometimes formulating the thought for me. I never left his office without something new and important to think about. My greatest intellectual debt is to Stephen Engstrom, whose seminar on judgment and papers on Kant’s theoretical philosophy (especially “Understanding and Sensibility”) set me on my present course of research. Steve has helped me over the past few years in more ways that I can hope to express here. My debt to him is blatant on every page of this dissertation. I am grateful to him for his kind support and encouragement, his patience, and for the countless hours he spent discussing my work. Steve’s refusal to skip any steps in the progress of a thought, even viii under duress, has taught me a great deal about intellectual integrity. Most of all, I am grateful to Steve for getting me to appreciate the fundamental principles of his philosophical system, since I believe that these principles will have a lasting influence on my pursuits in philosophy. Sebastian Rödl’s seminar on self-consciousness was one of those events in Pittsburgh that changed my entire way of thinking about philosophy. His written works have had a huge influence on what I think. I thank Robert Brandom for his comments on my project, which have always been encouraging, even when critical. I hope that, at some later stage of this project, I will be able to meet his challenges. I am thankful also to Nicholas Rescher and Karl Schafer for their comments in the final stages of my dissertation. I will always have fond memories of the incredible community of graduate students in Pittsburgh.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Ontology of Consciousness
    Ontology of Consciousness Percipient Action edited by Helmut Wautischer A Bradford Book The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England ( 2008 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or me- chanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] or write to Special Sales Depart- ment, The MIT Press, 55 Hayward Street, Cambridge, MA 02142. This book was set in Stone Serif and Stone Sans on 3B2 by Asco Typesetters, Hong Kong, and was printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ontology of consciousness : percipient action / edited by Helmut Wautischer. p. cm. ‘‘A Bradford book.’’ Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-262-23259-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-262-73184-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Consciousness. 2. Philosophical anthropology. 3. Culture—Philosophy. 4. Neuropsychology— Philosophy. 5. Mind and body. I. Wautischer, Helmut. B105.C477O58 2008 126—dc22 2006033823 10987654321 Index Abaluya culture (Kenya), 519 as limitation of Turing machines, 362 Abba Macarius of Egypt, 166 as opportunity, 365, 371 Abhidharma in dualism, person as extension of matter, as guides to Buddhist thought and practice, 167, 454 10–13, 58 in focus of attention, 336 basic content, 58 in measurement of intervals, 315 in Asanga’s ‘‘Compendium of Abhidharma’’ in regrouping of elements, 335, 344 (Abhidharma-samuccaya), 67 in technical causality, 169, 177 in Maudgalyayana’s ‘‘On the Origin of shamanic separation from body, 145 Designations’’ Prajnapti–sastra,73 Action, 252–268.
    [Show full text]
  • Issue 11 2011 Parrhesia Number 11 • 2011 • 1-34
    PARRHESIA WWW.PARRHESIAJOURNAL.ORG ISSUE 11 2011 PARRHESIA NUMBER 11 • 2011 • 1-34 THE WORK AND THE IDEA Miguel de Beistegui Editorial Note. The text presented here is the first chapter of an upcoming book by the author. The editorial board would like to thank Professor de Beistegui for allowing us to publish it here; our thanks also go to Robert Sinnerbrink for facilitating its publication. INTRODUCTION This book attempts to show that it is through the recognition of what I call the hypersensible, and the work of metaphor, that art comes into its own, and is able to twist free of metaphysical aesthetics, rooted in the ontology of identity and governed by the laws of imitation. By “hypersensible” I mean a dimension that escapes the classical distinction and the space that stretches between the sensible and the supersensible, matter and form, or the image and the original. In a nutshell, the hypersensible designates the excess of the sensible within the sensible, and the genuine matter of art. As such, it escapes any straightforward materialism, as well as any form of idealism, or spiritualism. It could be characterised as hyletics. For reasons that I will clarify later on, I prefer to refer to it as an aesthetics of metaphor, or a metaphoric. Why metaphor? Simply because, twisting free of its own, deeply entrenched metaphysical interpretation, metaphor can be seen as the image or trope, applicable to art in general, which reveals the excess of the sensible in the sensible, or the way in which any given image is virtually more than it actually is.
    [Show full text]
  • The Problem of Relativism.Indb
    Richard Schantz, Markus Seidel The Problem of Relativism in the Sociology of (Scientific) Knowledge P h i l o s o p h i s c h e A n a l y s e P h i l o s o p h i c a l A n a l y s i s Herausgegeben von / Edited by Herbert Hochberg • Rafael Hüntelmann • Christian Kanzian Richard Schantz • Erwin Tegtmeier Band 43 / Volume 43 Richard Schantz, Markus Seidel The Problem of Relativism in the Sociology of (Scientific) Knowledge Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. North and South America by Transaction Books Rutgers University Piscataway, NJ 08854-8042 [email protected] United Kingdom, Ireland, Iceland, Turkey, Malta, Portugal by Gazelle Books Services Limited White Cross Mills Hightown LANCASTER, LA1 4XS [email protected] Livraison pour la France et la Belgique: Librairie Philosophique J.Vrin 6, place de la Sorbonne; F-75005 PARIS Tel. +33 (0)1 43 54 03 47; Fax +33 (0)1 43 54 48 18 www.vrin.fr 2011 ontos verlag P.O. Box 15 41, D-63133 Heusenstamm www.ontosverlag.com ISBN 978-3-86838-126-9 2011 No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed
    [Show full text]
  • Article JOURNAL of CATALAN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY, Issues 7&8, 2014 | Print ISSN 2014-1572 / Online ISSN 2014-1564 DOI: 10.2436/20.3001.02.85 | P
    article JOURNAL OF CATALAN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY, Issues 7&8, 2014 | Print ISSN 2014-1572 / Online ISSN 2014-1564 DOI: 10.2436/20.3001.02.85 | P. 11-30 Reception date: 8/11/2013 / Admission date: 12/12/2013 http://revistes.iec.cat/index.php/JOCIH Three theses on the historiography and ontology of Ferrater Mora Pompeu Casanovas Institute of Law and Technology Autonomous University of Barcelona [email protected] abstract This paper advances three theses on the link between ontology and history in Ferrater Mora’s works: (i) his intellectual history is a second-order semantic history, (ii) his ontology may be defined as a second-order hermeneutics, and (iii) his philosophy (which he called integrationism) consists of a second-order dialogue that, despite its limitations, comes to make sense within the latest generation of the Web. The paper also considers the role of computational ontologies in the management and organisation of philosophical contents. key words Ferrater Mora, ontology, ontologies, intellectual history, philosophy of history, integrationism. 1. Three theses on Ferrater Let me begin directly by spelling out the three theses that I would like to defend1: 1. Ferrater’s brand of intellectual history — I am referring to the history con- structed in his Dictionary2 and related articles — constitutes a second-order semantic history. 1 This paper is a revised version of a text presented at a conference devoted to the philosopher and essayist Josep Ferrater Mora (Barcelona 1912-1991) in commemoration of the cente- nary of his birth, organised jointly by the IEC and the Ferrater Mora Chair in Barcelona and Girona, respectively, on 7 and 8 November 2012.
    [Show full text]
  • Valences of the Dialectic
    VALENCES OF THE DIALECTIC VALENCES OF THE DIALECTIC N FREDRIC JAMESON First published by Verso 2009 Copyright © Fredric Jameson 2009 All rights reserved The moral right of the author have been asserted 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Verso UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG USA: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201 www.versobooks.com Verso is the imprint of New Left Books ISBN-13: 978-1-84467-877-7 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Typeset in Garamond by WestKey Ltd, Falmouth, Cornwall Printed in the United States by Maple Vail for Roberto Schwarz and Grecia de la Sobera and for Perry Anderson O Wechsel der Zeiten! Du Hoffnung des Volkes! Contents I. THE THREE NAMES OF THE DIALECTIC 1 The Three Names of The Dialectic 3 II. HEGEL WITHOUT AUFHEBUNG 2 Hegel and Reification 75 3 Hegel’s Contemporary Critics 102 III. COMMENTARIES 4 Marx’s Purloined Letter 127 5 Deleuze and Dualism 181 6 “History and Class Consciousness” as an Unfinished Project 201 7 Sartre’s Critique, Volume One: An Introduction 223 8 Sartre’s Critique, Volume Two: An Introduction 241 IV. ENTRIES 9 Commodification 257 10 Cultural Revolution 267 11 Persistencies of the Dialectic: Three Sites 279 12 Lenin as Political Thinker 291 13 Rousseau and Contradiction 303 14 Ideological Analysis: A Handbook 315 V. POLITICS 15 Actually Existing Marxism 367 16 Utopia as Replication 410 17 Globalization as a Philosophical Issue 435 18 Globalization as Political Strategy 456 VI.
    [Show full text]
  • Edited by Jeff Malpas from Kant to Davidson
    From Kant to Davidson Recent philosophy has seen the idea of the transcendental, first introduced in its modern form in the work of Kant, take on a new prominence. Bringing together an international range of younger philosophers and estab- lished thinkers, this volume opens up the idea of the transcendental, examining it not merely as a mode of argument but as naming a particular problematic and a philosophical style. From contemporary rethinkings of the Kantian project through to the holistic, externalist inquiries of Donald Davidson, transcendental styles of reasoning and the broader framework of transcendental inquiry have come to play an important role in the work of a number of philosophers. Beginning with Kant, the contributions in this volume explore the idea of the transcendental in its original historical context, as well as its more recent appearance in relation to Heidegger, Husserl, Apel, Derrida, Chomsky, McDowell and Davidson. As well as providing insight into the idea of the transcendental, the book also offers new approaches to the work of many of these thinkers. With contributions engaging in both analytic and continental approaches, this book will be of essential interest to philosophers and philosophy students inter- ested in the idea of the transcendental and the part that it plays in modern and contemporary philosophy. Jeff Malpas is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tasmania, where he is also Head of the School of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Ethics. He has been a visiting scholar at universities in the United States and Sweden as well as a Humboldt Research Fellow at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.
    [Show full text]
  • Athens and Jerusalem Foreword by Lev Shestov 49 Wisdom and Revelation
    Athens & Jerusalem Contents Introduction to the Second Edition by Ramona Fotiade 1 Lev Shestov—The Thought from Outside Prefatory Note by Bernard Martin 21 Introduction by Bernard Martin 23 The Life and Thought of Lev Shestov Athens and Jerusalem Foreword by Lev Shestov 49 Wisdom and Revelation I. Parmenides in Chains 69 On the Sources of the Metaphysical Truths II. In the Bull of Phalaris 127 Knowledge and Freedom III. On the Philosophy of the Middle Ages 207 Concupiscentia Irresistibilis IV. On the Second Dimension of Thought 281 Struggle and Reflection Lev Shestov—Biographical Timeline 331 Notes 345 Bibliography: Lev Shestov’s Main Works and Translations into English, French, and German 357 Index 361 vii Introduction to the Second Edition Lev Shestov—The Thought from Outside Ramona Fotiade An influential forerunner of French Existentialism, best known for his unique blend of Russian religious philosophy and Nietzschean aphoristic thought, Lev Shestov (1866–1938) elaborated a radical critique of rational knowledge from the point of view of individual existence. His view of philosophy as “the most worthy” (τὸ τιμιώτατον) was inspired by Plotinus’s flight “beyond reason and knowledge” in order to grasp the meaning of life, free from the constraints of logical and ethi- cal thinking, which pose death as the ultimate limit of temporal existence. One of the precursors of the generation of Absurdist playwrights and essay- ists (most notably acknowledged in the works of Camus and Ionesco), Shestov fought against the disparagement of real, individual beings and personal ex- perience in a world rendered absurd by the drive toward absolute knowledge and scientific objectivity.
    [Show full text]
  • Karl Mannheim, Relativism and Knowledge in the Natural Sciences – a Deviant Interpretation
    Karl Mannheim, Relativism and Knowledge in the Natural Sciences – A Deviant Interpretation markus seidel If the title of a paper advertises that the author aims to provide a devi- ant interpretation of one aspect of the position of an important figure in a discipline – here Karl Mannheim – the first question of the reader is, or should be: “What, then, is the standard interpretation?”. In prepar- ing this paper, I noticed that it is far from easy to give a comprehensive answer to this first question without discussing some of the historical background of the discussion of relativism in the sociology of knowl- edge. It is only from this background that it is possible to notice why Mannheim’s contribution was unique and led to the first vigorous attacks on the epistemological and especially relativistic implications of the soci- ology of knowledge. Furthermore, it is only with a rough understanding of Mannheim’s position in the history of sociology of knowledge that it is possible to see why the idea of my paper – to understand Mannheim’s attitude towards the sociological investigation of the natural sciences – is interesting in any case. Therefore, I will start with a very short histori- cal sketch of the discussion at the beginning of the last century and of the expansion of it since that time. Setting Mannheim’s contribution in context, we can then have a look on the interpretation of his stance on relativism. I will not concentrate on Mannheim’s attempt to reject the reproach to hold a form of self-defeating relativism and to establish an acceptable form of – what he calls – relationism.
    [Show full text]
  • 15 Marcos Sgarbi
    KANT’S ETHICS AS A PART OF METAPHYSICS: THE ROLE OF SPONTANEITY 1 MARCO SGARBI Università di Verona [email protected] Abstract : In his article, Kant’s Ethics as a part of Metaphysics: a possible Newtonian Suggestion? With Some Comments on Kant’s “Dream of a Seer” , Giorgio Tonelli suggests a possible relation between Isaac Newton’s conception of attraction and the metaphysical foundation of morals in the light of some considerations on Träume eines Geistersehers erläutert durch Träume der Metaphysik (Tonelli 1974). In this paper, I argue that Immanuel Kant’s notion of Ethics as a part of metaphysics does not simply derive from Newton and his followers, it is also a philosophical necessity triggered by the development of Kant’s system and his thought on spontaneity 2. I focus the attention especially on Kant’s early writings of ethics, in which it is evident the breach with the tradition and the formation of the system. The fist part of the paper sketches the placement of ethics in Kant’s pre-critical works and its status as science. The second part develops the systematic justification of Kant’s insertion of ethics within metaphysics. The third part deals with the historical debate on soul-body’s relationship. The fourth and fifth parts account for the history of spontaneity and its reception in Kant’s early writings. The last two, finally, deal with Kant’s notion of ethics as part of metaphysics from 1770 to critical period. 3 Keywords : Ethics; Metaphysics; Spontaneity; Causality; System. ETHICS IN KANT’S PRE-CRITICAL WRITINGS It was undoubtedly another Copernican revolution when Kant, for the first time in the history of philosophy, declared ethics to be a part of metaphysics.
    [Show full text]
  • Facultative Logic
    1 ᇻᇺᇹ FACULTATIVE LOGIC THE OPERATIONS OF THE MIND acultative logic has been defined as the science of “the principles Fof the habituated regulation of the mind in the apprehension of truth and the acquisition of knowledge and properly grounded opinion.”1 Although divided on the question of identifying its origin, scholars generally agree that it is a new early-modern conception of logic. Its rise, for James Buickerood, may be traced to the publication of John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), in which the ideas were the result, the product of the operations of the human cognitive faculties of perception, imagination, memory, and judgment in their relation to the world.2 This opinion is supported also by Paul Schuurman, who nevertheless stresses the importance of Malebranche as the first philosopher to build a new logic around human cognitive faculties,3 and René Descartes, who provided the basis and first principles, but left it to his followers to apply his new insights in the field of facultative logic.4 Instead, Sylvain Auroux and Frederick S. Michael trace the birth of facultative logic back to the Logique de Port-Royal (1662).5 Logic, according to Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, consists in the “reflections of men on the four operations of mind, conceiving, judging, reasoning and ordering.”6 Facultative logic thus concerns the operations of mind, serving to rightly conduct human reason to the knowledge of things. A closer 19 © 2016 State University of New York Press, Albany 20 KANT AND ARISTOTLE view, however, shows that this conception comes from Bartholomeus Keckermann’s Systema Logicae (1601), where logic is defined as the “art of directing mind in the cognition of things,” in particular, in “understanding, knowing, and thinking,”7 which in turn is derived from Renaissance Aristotelians, in particular from Jacopo Zabarella’s logical writings.
    [Show full text]
  • The Immanent Body: a Thematic Study of the Logic of Immanence in Christology, Philosophy and Aesthetics
    Syracuse University SURFACE Religion - Dissertations College of Arts and Sciences 6-2012 The Immanent Body: A Thematic Study of the Logic of Immanence in Christology, Philosophy and Aesthetics Francis J. Sanzaro III Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/rel_etd Part of the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Sanzaro, Francis J. III, "The Immanent Body: A Thematic Study of the Logic of Immanence in Christology, Philosophy and Aesthetics" (2012). Religion - Dissertations. 85. https://surface.syr.edu/rel_etd/85 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts and Sciences at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Religion - Dissertations by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract This dissertation is comprised of two sections: 1) “The Immanent Body in Late Antiquity”: an analysis of late ancient christology, Stoicism and philosophy; 2) “The Extended Body: Aesthetics”: depictions of monastic bodies in late medieval, Renaissance and contemporary art. I. The thesis of this dissertation can be stated as follows: the conditions under which immanence is thinkable in relation to bodies are found in conceptual personae. Contemporary philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s concept of conceptual personae, developed in conjunction with French theorist Felix Guattari, helps navigate the complex relationship between bodies and ontology developed by these three ancient thinkers. In order to understand the formation of the conceptual persona of Christ in late antiquity, it was necessary to return to the work of Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Athanasius. II. The second part of the project begins with the Antony Series, which is a cluster of Renaissance works of art designated by a common theme.
    [Show full text]
  • Alien Theory Why Materialism?
    2 CONTENTS SYNOPSIS ..........................................................................................................................5 INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................5 MATERIALISM, SCIENCE, PHENOMENOLOGY.........................................................5 PHILOSOPHY AND NON-PHILOSOPHY........................................................................................................................ 5 ALIEN THEORY WHY MATERIALISM? ............................................................................................................................................. 10 The Decline of Materialism in the Name of 1.The empirical contingency of materialism's philosophical necessity.......................................................... 10 Matter 2.The transcendental necessity of materialism's non-philosophical transformation...................................... 22 MAN AS NON-MATERIALIST IDENTITY OF PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE.................................................................... 27 PART I...............................................................................................................................28 THE DECLINE OF MATERIALISM AS SUCH.............................................................28 Ray Brassier CHAPTER 1......................................................................................................................29 MATTER: COMME TELLE OR TELLE QUELLE? ........................................................29
    [Show full text]