Introduction: The Return Statement

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregg Lambert
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Internal Logic ◽  
Clear Statement ◽  
As If

Most books are written with a clear statement in mind, usually in the space of a few years, as if to emulate a thought that unfolds as a continuous and unbroken element. This book is not among them. Rather, it has been patiently assembled from a series of public lectures, articles, essays, and chapters either written or delivered over the first decade of the millennium, falling roughly between the spring of 2002 and fall of 2012, all of which address the internal logic of what I call “the return statement” in contemporary philosophy....

Derrida’s Quasi-Technique

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-389
Author(s):  
Susanna Lindberg
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
The Other ◽  
List Type ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
As If

The article’s aim is to measure the potential of Derrida’s work for a philosophy of technique. It shows why Derrida does not present a positive philosophy of technology but rather describes technique as a quasi-technique, as if a technique. The article inquires into the potential of such a quasi-technique for a contemporary philosophy of technology: it is suggested that it can function as a salutary “deconstruction” of mainstream philosophy of technology (that “knows” the “essence of technology”) because it shows how to think technique in the absence of essence and as the absence of essence. The article begins with a survey of the machines that figure in Derrida’s texts. It then examines three propositions concerning technology in Derrida’s work: Derrida thinks technology as a metaphor of writing and not the other way round. Derrida thinks technique as prosthesis, firstly of memory, then more generally of life. Derrida’s quasi-technique relies on his peculiar conception of the incorporal materiality of technique.

Resistance of the Sensible World

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Alloa ◽  
Renaud Barbaras
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Middle Phase ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Internal Coherence ◽  
Unpublished Manuscripts ◽  
First Time ◽  
As If ◽  
New Look

A philosophy that was prematurely cut short by the death of its author cannot be criticized for being inconclusive. But there has often been too great a tendency to see the suspension of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s oeuvre as the ultimate expression of a mode of thought whose strength would lie entirely in its incompletion. Rather than treating it as a kind of open-air quarry, from which concepts and arguments could be extracted to one’s liking, this book aims at reconstructing the organic trajectory of a living thought. Drawing both on published works and unpublished manuscripts, Emmanuel Alloa suggests a completely novel approach, that accounts for both the evolution and the internal coherence of an ongoing interrogation: what does it mean for a world to be a sensible world? Highlighting the importance of the so far underestimated ‘middle phase’, The Resistance of the Sensible World provides both a refreshing new look at a modern classic as well as a guide for the perplexed. While showing how Merleau-Ponty’s oeuvre foreshadows some of the crucial openings of contemporary philosophy, the book also argues why sense ever only exists for sensible beings, i.e. for embodied, entangled, situated beings. “Emmanuel Alloa reads Merleau-Ponty as if for the first time, as if nothing of what has been repeated again and again could be taken for granted.” (Renaud Barbaras)

The Limits of the Self in Plotinus

Antichthon ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 96-101
Author(s):  
Annick Charles-Saget
Keyword(s):  
Personality Development ◽  
The Self ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Place Of Birth ◽  
Mirror Stage ◽  
Child Personality ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Partial State ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
As If

Psychoanalysis is born of the fact that the notion of the self appears unable to take account of the whole of psychological life. Rejecting the limits of the self is recognizing the fact that it is invaded by forces which are completely other than it; it also involves both an analysis of why these are not understood, and a recognition that it is possible for the self to be obliterated. Plotinus asks: “But we . . . who are we?” (6.4.[22].14, 16). Does it involve flagrant anachronism to establish a link between the contemporary philosophy of the limits of the self and the Plotinian opening up to what is activity beyond the self? That this is not merely an arbitrary comparison may be demonstrated firstly on negative grounds, in that psychoanalysis rejects the cogito, exactly in the manner of Plotinus; the subject is born neither of itself nor of thought. However psychoanalysis, while accepting the partial state of the self, affirms the constitutive value of narcissism. The child’s identification with his image, called the mirror stage by Lacan(Écrto 1.89ff.: 1966 edn.), is the crucial stage in the building of the self. If this identification fails, or the image of the self is rejected, serious personality destructuring results. We are not here in the business of confusing philosophy with psychology, or child personality development with the progress of the spirit, but Plotinus’ reticence about images throughout the Enneads does bear a connection with Porphyry’s anecdotes in theLtfe of Plotinus: “Plotinus was ashamed of being in a body”; Plotinus refused to divulge any details of his family, or his place of birth; Plotinus was opposed to a portrait being made of him (Vita Plotini 1). This concurrence of life and writing cannot be neglected: Plotinus refused to allow Porphyry to write his biography, as if to assert the paradox of such an undertaking: an effort to paint the portrait of one who rejected all portraits.

An Economic Indicator of Socio-Political Unrest

1971 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 293-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. William Zartman ◽  
James A. Paul ◽  
John P. Entelis
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Economic Indicator ◽  
The Other ◽  
Internal Logic ◽  
Empirical Verification ◽  
Political Unrest ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
As If

The relationship between economic phenomena and revolution has intrigued political scientists from Aristotle2 to Zanzibar.3 As usual in political science, however, most studies of the matter have been limited to intuitive hypotheses, without any attempt at comparative empirical verification. As a result, a number of such hypothetical explanations have been proposed, each showing the persuasiveness of its own internal logic (as if convincing observers were the same thing as comprehending – let alone controlling – events) but none with any better claim on reality than the other.

Improvement of an artificial test substrate technique for evaluation of em immunocytochemical labeling

1987 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 762-763
Author(s):  
G. D. Gagne ◽  
M. F. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Bovine Serum Albumin ◽  
Serum Albumin ◽  
Bovine Serum ◽  
Artificial Substrate ◽  
Chemical Fixation ◽  
As If

We recently described an artificial substrate system which could be used to optimize labeling parameters in EM immunocytochemistry (ICC). The system utilizes blocks of glutaraldehyde polymerized bovine serum albumin (BSA) into which an antigen is incorporated by a soaking procedure. The resulting antigen impregnated blocks can then be fixed and embedded as if they are pieces of tissue and the effects of fixation, embedding and other parameters on the ability of incorporated antigen to be immunocyto-chemically labeled can then be assessed. In developing this system further, we discovered that the BSA substrate can also be dried and then sectioned for immunolabeling with or without prior chemical fixation and without exposing the antigen to embedding reagents. The effects of fixation and embedding protocols can thus be evaluated separately.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document