Anonymus Iamblichi, On Excellence (Peri Aretēs)

2020 ◽  
pp. 262-292
Author(s):  
Phillip Sidney Horky
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Comprehensive Analysis ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Social Emotions ◽  
Instrumental Reasoning ◽  
Law And Justice ◽  
Complete Translation ◽  
The Human Condition

“Anonymus Iamblichi, On Excellence (Peri Aretēs): A Lost Defense of Democracy” presents a comprehensive analysis and complete translation of the fragments of a lost treatise from the late fifth-century BCE, preserved in Iamblichus’ palimpsestic Exhortation to Philosophy. Its author is unknown; hence scholars refer to the work as “Anonymus Iamblichi.” And while Iamblichus included it because he thought its author was a Pythagorean, dialectical attributes and specific claims within the treatise point to someone conversant with Ionian philosophers, especially Democritus. Anonymus Iamblichi is a rara avis: it presents a unique view on excellence (aretē) and its parts; advances a defense of law and justice by appealing to both value and instrumental reasoning; provides an early reflection on social emotions, the weaknesses of the human condition, and the nature of true power; presents the first substantial “Superman” thought experiment; and develops the earliest extant and most philosophically sustained defense of democracy.

scholarly journals ExperiencingForce Majeure

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-298
Author(s):  
Christopher Falzon
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Moral Agent ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Broad Sense ◽  
Moral Self ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Philosophical Text ◽  
Force Majeure ◽  
The Human Condition

This article looks at the 2014 Swedish comedy-drama Force Majeure as a kind of moral thought experiment, but also insofar as it might not fit such a model. The idea of a cinematic ethics, of cinema as providing an avenue for thinking through ethics and exploring ethical questions, finds at least one expression in the idea of film as experimental in this sense. At the same time, simply subsuming film to the philosophical thought experiment risks forgetting what film itself brings to the proceedings; and how the cinematic medium might allow for an experimentation that goes beyond what can be done within the philosophical text. As experimental in a broad sense, Force Majeure evokes an experience, the extraordinary event beyond one's control, capable of putting a moral agent to the test, challenging one's sense of who one is and what one stands for. The film unfolds as a reflection on the results of this encounter with experience, and on the kind of moral self this experiment brings to light; and in the course of this reflection, it suggests some general conclusions about the human condition.

scholarly journals Tragedy, Pluralism, Agonism: Ancient Greek Tragedy as a foundation for pluralist theory, with an application to pluralist agonism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Xavier Lloyd Forde
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Political Rationality ◽  
The One ◽  
Diversity Of Life ◽  
The City ◽  
The Human Condition

<p>In Fifth Century B.C. Athens, the tragic playwrights took upon themselves the traditional mantle of poet-sage and responded to the cultural crisis of their time: the rupture within the Athenian mindset between on the one hand, an emergent Enlightenment-style discourse based on the juridico-political rationality of the democratic polis and on a confident assessment of the human condition, and on the other, the archaic discourse of myth and its “pessimism of strength”.  Their plays held the two in an uneasy yet creative tension, projecting a pluralist ethos grounded in the assertion of the ambiguity and limits of the human condition. The thesis seeks to elaborate on the nature of this pre-philosophical ethos through the exploration of ancient Greek history and thought and the plays themselves. It delineates the expression in this ethos of a dual movement of problematisation and renewal: a critical, problematising, attitude towards both “rational” and “mythic” discourses, and in the space of thought created by this self-questioning, the elaboration of a minimalist platform for claim-making compatible with both the tragic onto-epistemology of limits and moderation and life in the democratic polis.  This reading of the plays recognizes the problematisation of monistic claim-making in terms of truth, identity, values and politics. For instance, the playwrights call into question the archaic code of honour of the hero or the instrumental rationality adopted by some of their contemporary Athenian politicians: both systems of value are deemed too rigid and too simplistic to accord with the ambiguity and diversity of life in the city. It also outlines the values of moderation, reciprocity, and public-interestedness that are put forward by the tragedians as palliatives to the antagonism generated by monistic claim-making. These form a pluralist platform on which the democratic contest can be played out without reifying any singular and substantive account of politics, and with a lesser likelihood of dividing the city into factions that seek power at the expense of the city’s survival.  The thesis then concludes with an application of the pluralist ethos of classical tragedy to a contemporary pluralist theory. By maintaining the tension between rationalist and mythic discourses, classical tragedy presents to Athenians a “constructive deconstruction” of their worldview. Tragedy’s pre-philosophical and pluralist ethos can underpin the democratic theory of “pluralist agonism”, helping it to navigate a course between modern foundationalist and anti-foundationalist philosophical ethos and their expressions in democratic theory: the liberal reification of constitutionalism and the democratic privileging of popular sovereignty.</p>

scholarly journals Tragedy, Pluralism, Agonism: Ancient Greek Tragedy as a foundation for pluralist theory, with an application to pluralist agonism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Xavier Lloyd Forde
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Political Rationality ◽  
The One ◽  
Diversity Of Life ◽  
The City ◽  
The Human Condition

<p>In Fifth Century B.C. Athens, the tragic playwrights took upon themselves the traditional mantle of poet-sage and responded to the cultural crisis of their time: the rupture within the Athenian mindset between on the one hand, an emergent Enlightenment-style discourse based on the juridico-political rationality of the democratic polis and on a confident assessment of the human condition, and on the other, the archaic discourse of myth and its “pessimism of strength”.  Their plays held the two in an uneasy yet creative tension, projecting a pluralist ethos grounded in the assertion of the ambiguity and limits of the human condition. The thesis seeks to elaborate on the nature of this pre-philosophical ethos through the exploration of ancient Greek history and thought and the plays themselves. It delineates the expression in this ethos of a dual movement of problematisation and renewal: a critical, problematising, attitude towards both “rational” and “mythic” discourses, and in the space of thought created by this self-questioning, the elaboration of a minimalist platform for claim-making compatible with both the tragic onto-epistemology of limits and moderation and life in the democratic polis.  This reading of the plays recognizes the problematisation of monistic claim-making in terms of truth, identity, values and politics. For instance, the playwrights call into question the archaic code of honour of the hero or the instrumental rationality adopted by some of their contemporary Athenian politicians: both systems of value are deemed too rigid and too simplistic to accord with the ambiguity and diversity of life in the city. It also outlines the values of moderation, reciprocity, and public-interestedness that are put forward by the tragedians as palliatives to the antagonism generated by monistic claim-making. These form a pluralist platform on which the democratic contest can be played out without reifying any singular and substantive account of politics, and with a lesser likelihood of dividing the city into factions that seek power at the expense of the city’s survival.  The thesis then concludes with an application of the pluralist ethos of classical tragedy to a contemporary pluralist theory. By maintaining the tension between rationalist and mythic discourses, classical tragedy presents to Athenians a “constructive deconstruction” of their worldview. Tragedy’s pre-philosophical and pluralist ethos can underpin the democratic theory of “pluralist agonism”, helping it to navigate a course between modern foundationalist and anti-foundationalist philosophical ethos and their expressions in democratic theory: the liberal reification of constitutionalism and the democratic privileging of popular sovereignty.</p>

scholarly journals Review of Richardson's "Nietzsche's Values"

The Agonist ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 139-154
Author(s):  
Paul Katsafanas
Keyword(s):  
Comprehensive Analysis ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Will To Power ◽  
The Human Condition

This article examines John Richardson’s Nietzsche’s Values.  Richardson’s book is systematic in the very best sense. He patiently works through the apparently contrary claims that Nietzsche makes about each topic pertaining to values. In each chapter, Richardson shows that these apparently contrary claims are not only reconcilable, but are interlocking: they support one another, constituting an impressively unified analysis of the human condition. By the end of the book, Richardson produces a comprehensive analysis of Nietzsche’s thought on values, will to power, life, consciousness, agency, freedom, culture, and religion. While the book is impressive, I critique Richardson’s treatment of four points. Section One argues that the form of internalism that Richardson attributes to Nietzsche is somewhat underspecified. Section Two asks whether Richardson’s version of internalism can account for the immense distance between what we do value and what we should value. There, I also raise some questions Richardson’s interpretation of will to power. Section Three suggests that Richardson’s reading of Nietzsche’s ethics is much closer to constitutivism than he acknowledges, and that fully endorsing constitutivism would resolve some of the problems that Richardson’s account otherwise faces. Section Four argues that Richardson’s distinction between animal drives and socially induced drives is problematic.

Hobbes

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. A. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Political Obligation ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Relational Concept ◽  
The Human Condition

This chapter argues that principal claims of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan are deliverances of a thought experiment in which we imagine away the existence of governmental authority and ask what the human condition would be like without it. It begins by expounding on the state of nature as a relational concept, noting that Hobbes' state of nature is a state of war. It then asks why the state of nature, the state of no governmental authority, is a state of war, and how the fact that the state of nature is a state of war justifies governmental authority. It also considers Hobbes' views on power and discusses three Hobbesian stories about how the state of war is generated based on what Hobbes himself calls “the three principal causes of quarrel”: competition, diffidence, and glory. The chapter concludes by analyzing how Hobbes justifies political obligation.

An Adolescent Girl Experiments with Sexuality: Rain (Christine Jeffs, 2001)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Fox
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Adolescent Girl ◽  
Emotional Problems ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Core ◽  
Parental Neglect ◽  
The Human Condition

The analysis in this chapter focuses on Christine Jeffs’s Rain as evidence of a shift that had occurred in New Zealand society whereby puritan repression is no longer perceived as the source of emotional problems for children in the process of becoming adults, but rather its opposite – neoliberal individualism, hedonism, and the parental neglect and moral lassitude it had promoted. A comparison with Kirsty Gunn’s novel of the same name, upon which the adaptation is based, reveals how Jeffs converted a poetic meditation on the human condition into a cinematic family melodrama with a girl’s discovery of the power of her own sexuality at the core.

Deadly Mirrors: Animal Death in Tommaso Landolfi and Stefano D'Arrigo

Paragraph ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-90
Author(s):  
Damiano Benvegnù
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Killer Whale ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Nonhuman Animal ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Mise En Abyme ◽  
The Human Condition

From Hegel to Heidegger and Agamben, modern Western philosophy has been haunted by how to think the connections between death, humanness and animality. This article explores how these connections have been represented by Italian writers Tommaso Landolfi (1908–79) and Stefano D'Arrigo (1919–92). Specifically, it investigates how the death of a nonhuman animal is portrayed in two works: ‘Mani’, a short story by Landolfi collected in his first book Il dialogo dei massimi sistemi (Dialogue on the Greater Harmonies) (1937), and D'Arrigo's massive novel Horcynus Orca (Horcynus Orca) (1975). Both ‘Mani’ and Horcynus Orca display how the fictional representation of the death of a nonhuman animal challenges any philosophical positions of human superiority and establishes instead animality as the unheimlich mirror of the human condition. In fact, in both stories, the animal — a mouse and a killer whale, respectively — do die and their deaths represent a mise en abyme that both arrests the human narrative and sparks a moment of acute ontological recognition.

Dreams of a Black Commons on Turtle Island

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 454-473
Author(s):  
Rachel Zellars
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Wild Mushrooms ◽  
Black Migration ◽  
Black Freedom ◽  
Indigenous Sovereignty ◽  
Black Land ◽  
The Human Condition

This essay opens with a discussion of the Black commons and the possibility it offers for visioning coherence between Black land relationality and Indigenous sovereignty. Two sites of history – Black slavery and Black migration prior to the twentieth century – present illuminations and challenges to Black and Indigenous relations on Turtle Island, as they expose the “antagonisms history has left us” (Byrd, 2019a, p. 342), and the ways antiblackness is produced as a return to what is deemed impossible, unimaginable, or unforgivable about Black life.While the full histories are well beyond the scope of this paper, I highlight the violent impossibilities and afterlives produced and sustained by both – those that deserve care and attention within a “new relationality,” as Tiffany King has named, between Black and Indigenous peoples. At the end of the essay, I return briefly to Anna Tsing’s spiritual science of foraging wild mushrooms. Her allegory about the human condition offers a bridge, I conclude, between the emancipatory dreams of Black freedom and Indigenous sovereignty.  

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