‘ “Counting is a bad procedure” ’: Calculation and Economy in Jacques Derrida's Donner le temps

Derrida Today ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-43
Author(s):  
Céline Surprenant

In Jacques Derrida's formalisation of the problem of the gift in Donner le temps (1991), where Derrida offers a joint reading of Marcel Mauss’ The Gift and Baudelaire's La Fausse monnaie, there is an apparent rejection of rational calculation (and of economism) in a narrow sense. This exclusion is only one of the steps in the deconstruction of the metaphysics of the gift, and of other motifs such as, for example, invention, forgiveness, and hospitality. In another step, calculation and economy are the terms of logico-formal paradoxes, and engages us to think of the incompatible demands of calculability and incalculability between which reason is torn, and which Derrida has discussed, for example, in ‘The “World” of the Enlightenment to Come (Exception, Calculation and Sovereignty)’ (2003). In this paper, I argue that in his evaluation of Mauss’ moderate view of economy and exchange, Derrida has limited Mauss’ notions of economy and rationality to reason as calculation. This evaluation jars with Derrida's deconstruction of calculation in his reading of Hegel and Rousseau among others, as I begin to show, Hegel, for whom ‘counting was a bad procedure’.

1999 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 273-304
Author(s):  
Jane Williams-Hogan

In this paper, the author examines the issue of charisma and prophecy in secularized societies. In traditional society the charismatic personality or the prophet brought a universalizing and rationalizing message which simultaneously expanded and penetrated the sphere of external order in the world, giving people the ability to manipulate and control the natural world. The disenchanted world is the end product of this process, when no more mysterious forces come into play, and when one can in principle master all things through rational calculation. The gift of rationality almost randomly bestowed in the ancient world becomes, for Weber, the rightful inheritance of the modern individual. Clarity brought by charisma in a dark and foreboding world loses its brilliance and its ability to beckon when the world is filled with light. In investigating charisma in only traditional societies, Weber saw charisma as one dimensional, solely as the force of rationality. So envisioned, charisma dissipates in the very act of realizing itself through the transformation of the world. Given Weber's analysis, therefore, one would not expect to find genuinely new religions emerging within our transformed and rational modern society. In the examination of the founding something that is best identified by the sociological term charisma, though obviously in modern guise, is clearly evident. This points to the possibility that charisma is not static but has the dynamic capacity to be responsive to the structural characteristics of the society in which it operates.


2003 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacques Derrida

AbstractTaking as its point of departure Edmund Husserl's 1935-36 text The Crisis of European Sciences, this essay attempts to develop a new conception of reason by means of a thoroughgoing critique of some ideas often used to support and define it. Because the notion of "enlightenment" has been tied since the time of Kant to a certain coming of age of reason or rationality, the "enlightenment" to come must at once draw upon the resources of this reason and open reason to some of the aporias it has traditionally rejected. Reducible neither to a simple irrationalism nor to a mere mode of calculative thought, such reason must ultimately challenge, it is argued, not only the sovereignty and identity of the (human) subject but the very concepts of sovereignty and identity. Only such a renewed thinking of reason or of what is reasonable, the essay suggests, can help us diagnose, analyze, and help treat some of the aporias posed by a whole host of contemporary issues, from cloning to the erosion of the nation-state to globalization and terrorism. Only in this way can we at once "save the honor of reason" - to use a phrase that runs throughout the essay - and help reorient the reason of politics, of the sciences, and, indeed, of philosophy along the lines of a more fundamental and urgent ethical imperative.


2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 487-501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Idit Alphandary

In the films For Ever Mozart, In Praise of Love and I Salute You Sarajevo, Go-dard’s images introduce radical hope to the world. I will demonstrate that this hope represents an ethical posture in the world; it is identical to goodness. Radical hope is grounded in the victim’s witnessing, internalizing and remembering catastrophe, while at the same time holding onto the belief that a variation of the self will survive the disaster. In The Gift of Death, Jacques Derrida argues that choosing to belong to the disaster is equivalent to giving the pure gift, or to goodness itself, and that it suggests a new form of responsibility for one’s life, as well as a new form of death. For Derrida, internalizing catastrophe is identical to death—a death that surpasses one’s means of giving. Such death can be reciprocated only by reinstating goodness or the law in the victim’s or the giver’s existence. The relation of survival to the gift of death—also a gift of life—challenges us to rethink our understanding of the act of witnessing. This relation also adds nuance to our appreciation of the intellectual, emotional and mental affects of the survival of the victim and the testimony and silence of the witness, all of which are important in my analysis of radical hope. On the one hand, the (future) testimony of the witness inhabits the victim or the ravaged self (now), on the other hand, testimony is not contemporaneous with the shattered ego. This means that testimony is anterior to the self or that the self that survives the disaster has yet to come into existence through making testimony material. Testimony thus exists before and beyond disaster merely as an ethical posture—a “putting-oneself-to-death or offering-one’s-death, that is, one’s life, in the ethical dimension of sacrifice,” in the words of Derrida. The witness is identical to the victim whose survival will include an unknown, surprising testimony or an event of witnessing. The testimony discloses the birth or revelation of a new self. And yet this new self survives through assuming the position of the witness even while s/he is purely the victim of catastrophe, being put to death owning the “kiss of death.”


Author(s):  
David W. Orr

Environmentalists are often regarded as people wanting to stop one thing or another, and there are surely lots of things that ought to be stopped. The essays in this book, however, have to do with beginnings. How, for example, do we advance a long-delayed solar revolution? Or begin one in forest management? Or materials use? How do we reimagine and remake the human presence on earth in ways that work over the long haul? Such questions are the heart of what theologian Thomas Berry (1999) calls “the Great Work” of our age. This endeavor is nothing less than the effort to harmonize the human enterprise with how the world works as a physical system and how it ought to work as a moral system. In the past two centuries the human footprint on earth has multiplied many times over. Our science and technology are powerful beyond anything imagined by the confident founders of the modern world. But our sense of proportion and depth of purpose have not kept pace with our merely technical abilities. Our institutions and organizations still reflect their origins in another time and in very different conditions. Incoherence, disorder, and violence are the hallmarks of the modern world. If we are to build a better world—one that can be sustained ecologically and one that sustains us spiritually—we must transcend the disorder and fragmentation of the industrial age. We need a perspective that joins the hardwon victories of civilization, such as human rights and democracy, with a larger view of our place in the cosmos—what Berry calls “the universe story.” By whatever name, that philosophy must connect us to life, to each other, and to generations to come. It must help us to rise above sectarianism of all kinds and the puffery that puts human interests at a particular time at the center of all value and meaning. When we get it right, that larger, ecologically informed enlightenment will upset comfortable philosophies that underlie the modern world in the same way that the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century upset medieval hierarchies of church and monarchy.


Author(s):  
David Cook ◽  
Nu'aym b. Hammad al-Marwazi

“The Book of Tribulations by Nu`aym b. Hammad al-Marwazi (d. 844) is the earliest Muslim apocalyptic work to come down to us. Its contents focus upon the cataclysmic events to happen before the end of the world, the wars against the Byzantines, and the Turks, and the Muslim civil wars. There is extensive material about the Mahdi (messianic figure), the Muslim Antichrist and the return of Jesus, as well as descriptions of Gog and Magog. Much of the material in Nu`aym today is utilized by Salafi-jihadi groups fighting in Syria and Iraq.


Author(s):  
Anna Shapoval

Analysis of linguocultural aspect of temporal nominations is impossible without involving the problems of hrononymic lexics. Chrononyms is an important information resource of a certain linguaculture, some distinctive peculiarities of conceptual picture of the world. The aim of the experimental analysis is a complex examination of the linguacultural aspect of temporal nominations that function in Chinese and Turkish languages reflecting the concepts of the world. The research was based on the material of the novels “Imperial woman” by Pearl Buck and “Roxolana” by Pavlo Zagrebelniy. The analysis of recent scientific publications allowed us to come to the conclusion that the investigation of hrononymic lexics can involve different theoretical and practical principles. Being guided by the existing classifications of chrononyms (N. Podolskaya, M. Torchinsky, S. Remmer) the linguocultural features of the following types of temporal chrononymic lexical units were identified and studied in the research: georthonyms, dynastic chrononyms, tumultonyms, parsonyms and mensonyms. The results of the research demonstrate that not all lexical units of temporal denotation chosen from the above mentioned novels refer to the class of chrononyms. The group under investigation includes the following lexemes: nominations of the lunar calendar, nominations of the solar calendar, nominations of mixed calendar and temporal slots denoting day and night. The basic system of chronology in the linguiacultures under analysis is the dominance of the lunar calendar nominations (Chinese picture of the world — 51,0 %, Turkish — 40,4 %). In the analyzed works the nominations of the solar calendar are used less often in the Chinese picture of the world; the usage of this unit reaches 20 %, and this phenomenon is historically conditioned. Mixed calendar nominations (21 % of temporal units) are rather common, solar calendar nominations are refined by the monthly calendar; it can be explained by the fact that the Chinese mind is conservative towards the new temporal system. In the Turkish picture of the world 45 % of temporal vocabulary belongs to the solar calendar since in the sixteenth century only a lunar calendar operated in the Ottoman Empire. It should be mentioned that significant place in the temporal vocabulary of “Roxolana” is conditioned by the influence of the linguistic personality of the author, who was a Ukrainian.


Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 284-284
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen

This wonderfully illustrated book accompanied an exhibition that took place at the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, from June 8 to September 23, 2018, authored by two well established and respected art historian*s, who provide us with a sweeping view of the world of monsters and many other related creatures in medieval fantasy. While previous research mostly focused on monsters in the narrow sense of the word, i.e., grotesque and oversized human-like creatures normally threatening ordinary people in their existence, Lindquist and Mittman pursue a much broader perspective and incorporate also many other features in human imagination, including wonders, aliens, Jews, Muslims, strangers in general, the femme fatale, sirens, undines, mermaids (but there is no reference to the Melusine figure, though she would fit much better into the general framework), devils, and evil spirits. However, I do not understand why ‘gargoyles’ have been left out here. This vast approach allows them also to address the beasts from the Physiologus tradition, then natural wonders, giants, and then, quite surprisingly, religious scenes in psalters (148), depictions of nobles playing chess (150; where are the wild men alleged surrounding the players?), the whore of Babylon (153), figures from the Apocalypse, and anything else that smacks of wonder.


Immuno ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-66
Author(s):  
Niraj Kumar Jha ◽  
Madhan Jeyaraman ◽  
Mahesh Rachamalla ◽  
Shreesh Ojha ◽  
Kamal Dua ◽  
...  

An outbreak of “Pneumonia of Unknown Etiology” occurred in Wuhan, China, in late December 2019. Later, the agent factor was identified and coined as SARS-CoV-2, and the disease was named coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). In a shorter period, this newly emergent infection brought the world to a standstill. On 11 March 2020, the WHO declared COVID-19 as a pandemic. Researchers across the globe have joined their hands to investigate SARS-CoV-2 in terms of pathogenicity, transmissibility, and deduce therapeutics to subjugate this infection. The researchers and scholars practicing different arts of medicine are on an extensive quest to come up with safer ways to curb the pathological implications of this viral infection. A huge number of clinical trials are underway from the branch of allopathy and naturopathy. Besides, a paradigm shift on cellular therapy and nano-medicine protocols has to be optimized for better clinical and functional outcomes of COVID-19-affected individuals. This article unveils a comprehensive review of the pathogenesis mode of spread, and various treatment modalities to combat COVID-19 disease.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 59
Author(s):  
Rachel Wagner

Here I build upon Robert Orsi’s work by arguing that we can see presence—and the longing for it—at work beyond the obvious spaces of religious practice. Presence, I propose, is alive and well in mediated apocalypticism, in the intense imagination of the future that preoccupies those who consume its narratives in film, games, and role plays. Presence is a way of bringing worlds beyond into tangible form, of touching them and letting them touch you. It is, in this sense, that Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward observe the “re-emergence” of religion with a “new visibility” that is much more than “simple re-emergence of something that has been in decline in the past but is now manifesting itself once more.” I propose that the “new awareness of religion” they posit includes the mediated worlds that enchant and empower us via deeply immersive fandoms. Whereas religious institutions today may be suspicious of presence, it lives on in the thick of media fandoms and their material manifestations, especially those forms that make ultimate promises about the world to come.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 692-725
Author(s):  
Peter Krüger Andersen

The revised Markets in Financial Instruments Directive and Regulation (the MiFID II regime)See Directive 2014/65/EU (MiFID II) and Regulation (EU) 600/2014 (MiFIR). is one of the most comprehensive reforms of market structural and investor protection regimes the world has yet seen. The MiFID II regime will affect the European – and likely the global – market structure for years to come. Based on relevant perspectives from the revised best execution regime under MiFID II, this article suggest that it is time to reduce complexity. It is argued that unless a sufficient degree of horizontal and vertical integration of the best execution regulation takes place, the policy objectives cannot be reached. Further, it is argued that the significant data exercise that comes with the new rules only serves end-investors if a sufficient level of data consistency can be achieved. From this outset, the article emphasises the increased importance of data in today’s EU financial regulation. The article includes relevant comparisons to the equivalent US rules on best execution.


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