The Parliament of Things and the Anthropocene

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimiliano Simons ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Michel Serres ◽  
The World ◽  
Thing In Itself ◽  
Isabelle Stengers ◽  
Own Name ◽  
Common Understanding ◽  
The Way

Among the contemporary philosophers using the concept of the Anthropocene, Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers are prominent examples. The way they use this concept, however, diverts from the most common understanding of the Anthropocene. In fact, their use of this notion is a continuation of their earlier work around the concept of a ‘parliament of things.’ Although mainly seen as a sociology or philosophy of science, their work can be read as philosophy of technology as well. Similar to Latour’s claim that science is Janus-headed, technology has two faces. Faced with the Anthropocene, we need to shift from technologies of control to technologies of negotiations, i.e., a parliament of things. What, however, does a ‘parliament of things’ mean? This paper wants to clarify what is conceptually at stake by framing Latour’s work within the philosophy of Michel Serres and Isabelle Stengers. Their philosophy implies a ‘postlinguistic turn,’ where one can ‘let things speak in their own name,’ without claiming knowledge of the thing in itself. The distinction between object and subject is abolished to go back to the world of ‘quasi-objects’ (Serres). Based on the philosophy of science of Latour and Stengers the possibility for a politics of quasi-objects or a ‘cosmopolitics’ (Stengers) is opened. It is in this framework that their use of the notion of the Anthropocene must be understood and a different view of technology can be conceptualized.

If Art is Knowledge, Then …

1979 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 284-294
Author(s):  
John H. Chambers
Keyword(s):  
Visual Art ◽  
Art Criticism ◽  
Verbal Communication ◽  
The World ◽  
Thing In Itself ◽  
The Way

It is argued that visual art makes statements analogous to the statements of science, morals, etc. Such art statements are provided by entities like Guernica, The Fighting Temeraire, and pictures on the walls of the local gallery, and concern themselves with things-in-themselves. The whole point of art criticism is to make clearer this thing-in-itself. In the way that other sorts of statement shape the world, so art statements shape the world. We do not know the world and then superimpose art statements upon it; we know the world through the art statements. This thesis has curriculum implications. It indicates the need for art encounters and techniques of various sorts, since the knowledge of art statements can only be apprehended through engaging in art and from intense verbal communication with teachers about art and its qualities.

scholarly journals Some Approaches Regarding the Philosophy of Technology

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 28-34
Author(s):  
Loredana Terec-Vlad
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
The World ◽  
The Way

The concept of technology can be understood in many ways, especially nowadays, when we are practically connected to a multitude of increasingly complex artifacts. Talking about the philosophy of technology means bringing to the fore a multitude of related fields, as technology has changed the way we behave in the world, the way we relate to others and also the way we think and act. In this paper we will make an analysis of the concepts of technique and technology starting from the philosophies of Antiquity and continue on the way we currently understand man's relationship with artifacts.

scholarly journals ‘Post-Critiquiness’ as Nonviolent Thing-Centredness

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Oliverio
Keyword(s):  
Critical Pedagogy ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Michel Serres ◽  
Isabelle Stengers

After situating the proposal of a post-critical pedagogy (PCP) within the coordinates of the contemporary interdisciplinary debate on the ‘end of the critique’ and ‘post-critique,’ the paper focuses on a specific – but pivotal – facet of PCP, namely the appeal to a thing-centred pedagogy. This theme is addressed by approaching it through the lens of some ideas of Michel Serres as well as of Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers. Thing-centredness is construed as what contains violence and, thus, the focus is sharpened on the question of non-violence, which is arguably key to PCP and, indeed, to any genuinely educational endeavour.

scholarly journals Towards a Practical Form of Epistemology: The Case of Green Chemistry

2013 ◽  
pp. 36-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Pierre Llored
Keyword(s):  
Green Chemistry ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
The World

This paper explores how chemists are transforming their own current background in order to act upon the world without jeopardizing life. In this respect, I will envisage science as both a system of propositions and a set of engaged practices. The scrutiny of chemical innovations will allow me to query the concepts of paradigm and that of scientific community. In doing so, I will connect the philosophy of science with the philosophy of technology so as to think about our relation with the world.

Schopenhauer and the Diamond-Sūtra

2020 ◽  
pp. 361-379
Author(s):  
Christopher Ryan
Keyword(s):  
The World ◽  
Thing In Itself ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Way

Commentators on Schopenhauer’s philosophy have been at odds with one another concerning the signification of the “nothing” with which he closed the first volume of The World as Will and Representation in 1818, and how this relates to Schopenhauer’s proposition that the will is Kant’s thing-in-itself. This chapter contends that Schopenhauer’s works contain two conceptions of soteriological nothing: an early conception that is ontological and contrasted with the vanity of phenomenal life, and a later conception in which nothing is employed as an apophatic denial of our epistemological categories. Schopenhauer sought to conceal the way in which his use and understanding of these concepts had changed by 1860 by appending a handwritten note to the close of the first volume that cited Isaak Jacob Schmidt’s translation of the Diamond-Sūtra, an explanation of the Buddhist concept of prajñāpāramitā. Examination of Schmidt’s treatise throws some light on the development of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics and soteriology between 1818 and 1860.

Bruno Latour: Translating the Human

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Watkin
Keyword(s):  
Single Mode ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Modal Approach ◽  
Multiple Modes ◽  
Rudolf Bultmann ◽  
The World ◽  
Doctoral Work ◽  
Modes Of Existence ◽  
The Way

Chapter 6 considers the figure of the human that emerges in Bruno Latour’s An Inquiry into Modes of Existence and his ‘Facing Gaia’ lectures. Latour neither repeats nor discards previous notions of humanity but translates them in a gesture that can be traced all the way back to his doctoral work on the theologian of demythologisation Rudolf Bultmann. In his attempts to elaborate a figure of the human that follows neither the emancipation narrative nor the structure of modernity, Latour (like Serres) develops a multi-modal approach. The human is an amalgam of multiple modes of existence and cannot be isolated within any single mode. Latour also avoids the problems inherent in a host capacity approach by distributing both capacities and substance across human and nonhuman actors in unatomisable collectivities. Whereas the host capacity and host substance approaches seek to understand the human by looking within, Latour insists that the human only becomes comprehensible when we look outside and around. His 2013 Gifford Lectures both develop and challenge themes from the Modes of Existence project, reasserting the centrality of the human now in terms of a non-modern anthropos defined by its limits and its multiple attachments to the world.

The Thing Called Environment: What It Is and How to Be Concerned With It

2010 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gert Goeminne ◽  
Karen François
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Political Space ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
The World ◽  
Science And Politics ◽  
Independent Entity ◽  
Matters Of Concern ◽  
Sustainability Challenges ◽  
The Way

This paper wants to think beyond the science-politics divide that is omnipresent in sustainability discourse. With Bruno Latour, we investigate if and how decomposing matters of fact and recomposing them back as matters of concern can open up a scientific-political space in which sustainability challenges can be addressed in an adequate manner. By connecting Latour's constructivist account of science in action with Rudolf Boehm's concept of topical truth, we aim to lighten up the normative-political entanglement between science and politics, facts and values. Rather than conceiving of knowledge in terms of representations of the world, a constructivist topical perspective emphasises the socio-material practices from and within which these representations arise. Such a view then also changes the way we think about ourselves and our place in the world in fundamental ways: the world now becomes something that we are embedded in and part of rather than something we are detached from and merely observers of, as representationalism suggests. In this way, decomposing environmental matters of fact such as climate change, which have never been a human-independent entity out there to begin with, allows to adequately recompose them as societal matters of concern, which they have been from the very beginning.

scholarly journals Bruno Latour and the Secularization of Science

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (6) ◽  
pp. 925-954
Author(s):  
Massimiliano Simons
Keyword(s):  
Spiritual Experience ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Michel Serres ◽  
Isabelle Stengers

Many young dreamers who want to be modern up to the tips of their toes, and who think they have gotten rid of these barely imaginable old-fashioned ideas, are, without realizing it, mystics in search of a spiritual experience. (Gauchet 2003 , p. 311) Several sociologists of science have mobilized secularization metaphors to describe developments in the study of science. Similar to how secularization refers to a decreasing status of religion and God as a transcendent factor in society, the secularization of science refers to an abandonment of Science as something “sacred” and Nature as transcendent. This article aims to explore these secularization metaphors, by arguing for a parallel between how sociologists and philosophers of religion differ and how similar disagreements between sociologists of science and the work of Bruno Latour exist, whose work should rather be linked with that of other philosophers, such as Michel Serres and Isabelle Stengers.

Becoming Politicized

2017 ◽  
Vol 225 (4) ◽  
pp. 324-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitrios Barkas ◽  
Xenia Chryssochoou
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Political Socialization ◽  
Greek Society ◽  
Economic Vulnerability ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Identity Model ◽  
Beliefs About The Future ◽  
Of Greece ◽  
The Way

Abstract. This research took place just after the end of the protests following the killing of a 16-year-old boy by a policeman in Greece in December 2008. Participants (N = 224) were 16-year-olds in different schools in Attiki. Informed by the Politicized Collective Identity Model ( Simon & Klandermans, 2001 ), a questionnaire measuring grievances, adversarial attributions, emotions, vulnerability, identifications with students and activists, and questions about justice and Greek society in the future, as well as about youngsters’ participation in different actions, was completed. Four profiles of the participants emerged from a cluster analysis using representations of the conflict, emotions, and identifications with activists and students. These profiles differed on beliefs about the future of Greece, participants’ economic vulnerability, and forms of participation. Importantly, the clusters corresponded to students from schools of different socioeconomic areas. The results indicate that the way young people interpret the events and the context, their levels of identification, and the way they represent society are important factors of their political socialization that impacts on their forms of participation. Political socialization seems to be related to youngsters’ position in society which probably constitutes an important anchoring point of their interpretation of the world.

Restrained Airs: The Diegetic Surface and Nondiegetic Depth of British Film Music

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 429-443
Author(s):  
Paul Mazey
Keyword(s):  
Film Music ◽  
The World ◽  
British Cinema ◽  
Film Making ◽  
The Way

This article considers how pre-existing music has been employed in British cinema, paying particular attention to the diegetic/nondiegetic boundary and notions of restraint. It explores the significance of the distinction between diegetic music, which exists in the world of the narrative, and nondiegetic music, which does not. It analyses the use of pre-existing operatic music in two British films of the same era and genre: Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), and demonstrates how seemingly subtle variations in the way music is used in these films produce markedly different effects. Specifically, it investigates the meaning of the music in its original context and finds that only when this bears a narrative relevance to the film does it cross from the diegetic to the nondiegetic plane. This reveals that whereas music restricted to the diegetic plane may express the outward projection of the characters' emotions, music also heard on the nondiegetic track may reveal a deeper truth about their feelings. In this way, the meaning of the music varies depending upon how it is used. While these two films may differ in whether or not their pre-existing music occupies a nondiegetic or diegetic position in relation to the narrative, both are characteristic of this era of British film-making in using music in an understated manner which expresses a sense of emotional restraint and which marks the films with a particularly British inflection.

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