System and/as Contingency: Quentin Meillassoux and the Ethics of Chance

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-93
Author(s):  
Kevin Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
Universal Principle ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Political Model ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Ethical Significance ◽  
Systematic Knowledge ◽  
Quentin Meillassoux

In recent years, the relation between contingency and systematic claims to the absolute has again come to play an important role in Continental philosophy. This essay takes a closer look at how this relation is developed in the works of French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux. It argues that a specific demand for systematic knowledge underlies not only Meillassoux's ontology, but also his ethics, which come into conflict with his own systematic aspirations in certain key areas, most notably in his attempt to derive an ethico-political model of subjectivity from his theory of contingency. The essay furthermore explores whether Meillassoux's monism of chance, by systematizing contingency and declaring it a universal principle, does not in fact deprive the contingent of its contingent character, introducing a reductive stability that condemns the subject to a passive waiting ultimately lacking in ethical significance.

The Speculative Hopper: Toward a Geology of a Toxic Absolute

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (5) ◽  
pp. 117-134
Keyword(s):  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
Vertical Dimension ◽  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Speculative Philosophy ◽  
Insufficient Reason ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Speculative Thought ◽  
Quentin Meillassoux

The paper examines the overall course of the so-called “speculative turn” in contemporary Continental philosophy with regard to the ecology of the Absolute. Following the radical redefinition of the mechanics of speculation that has been proposed by theorists of the speculative turn (especially Quentin Meillassoux) as rejection of the absolute essence of classical metaphysics, the author concentrates on the tension between speculative rejection and the problem of grounds which arises from putting the question this way. By rejecting the Absolute as sufficient reason and therefore undermining the grounds of thought, speculative philosophy expands the field of grounds. The logic of sufficient reason is augmented by insufficient reason, sufficient unreason, and insufficient unreason. This field of grounds encompasses the whole “kinesis” of the speculative turn, including the current attempts to turn away from speculation and move beyond the grounds and absolute relied upon in the “new geophilosophy.” The author notes that the shift from the question of “what?” to the question of “where?” indicates that the new geophilosophy is a “territorial geophilosophy.” Even though it nullifies the problem of grounds, it remains subject to grounds as insufficient reason, and thereby exemplifies the vulgar understanding of speculative thought as mere speculation. At the same time, the speculative turn replaces territorial geophilosophy with a resource-based geophilosophy which is more concerned with the question of “when?”. The author maintains that precisely this kind of questioning forces speculative philosophy both to the edge of the field of the Absolute and to a solution for the problem of rejecting grounds as insufficient unreason, Insufficient unreason unlocks a vertical dimension to strata of the Absolute, through which speculation turns into a trowel that unearths the absolutus and discards the Absolutes.

scholarly journals Hegelian Phenomenology of Spirit and Boxing Fight

2018 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-54
Author(s):  
Jerzy Kosiewicz
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Collective Consciousness ◽  
Phenomenology Of Spirit ◽  
Human Individual ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Low Culture ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Absolute Synthesis

Abstract In the presented text the author points out to anthropological as well as axiological foundations of the boxing fight from the viewpoint of Hegel’s philosophy. In the genial idealist’s views it is possible to perceive the appreciation of the body, which constitutes a necessary basis for the man’s physical activity, for his work oriented towards the self-transformation and the transformation of the external world, as well as for rivalry and the hand-to-hand fight. While focusing our attention on the issue of rivalry and on the situation of the fight - and regarding it from the viewpoint of the master - slave theory (included in the phenomenology of spirit), it is possible to proclaim that even a conventionalised boxing fight - that is, restricted by cultural and sports rules of the game - has features of the fight to the death between two Hegelian forms of selfknowledge striving for self-affirmation and self-realisation. In the boxing fight, similarly as in the above mentioned Hegelian theory, a problem of work and of the development of the human individual (that is, of the subject, self-knowledge, the participant of the fight) appears. There appears also a prospect of death as a possible end of merciless rivalry. The fight revalues the human way in an important way, whereas the prospect for death, the awareness of its proximity, the feeling that its close and possible, saturates the life with additional values. It places the boxer, just like every subject fighting in a similar or a different way, on the path towards absolute abstraction - that is, it brings him closer to his self-fulfilment in the Absolute, to the absolute synthesis. The Hegelian viewpoint enables also to appreciate the boxing fight as a manifestation of low culture (being in contrast with high culture), to turn attention to the relations which - according to Hegel - take place between the Absolute and the man, as well as to show which place is occupied by the subject both in the process of the Absolute’s self-realisation and in the German thinker’s philosophical system. Independently of the dialectical, simultaneously pessimistic and optimistic overtone of considerations connected with the very boxing fight (regarding destruction and spiritualisation on a higher level), it is possible to perceive farreaching appreciation of the human individual in Hegel’s philosophy since the Absolute cannot make its own self-affirmation without the individual, without the human body, without the fight aimed at the destruction of the enemy and without the subjective consciousness and the collective consciousness which appear thanks to this fight. Thus, it is justified to suppose that the foundation of the whole Hegel’s philosophy is constituted by anthropology and that in the framework of this anthropology a special role is played by the fight and by work, which changes the subject and his(her) environment. Admittedly Hegel does not emphasise it explicitly, nevertheless his views (with their centre, which, according to Hegel himself and his interpreters, is constituted by the Absolute) have, as a matter of fact, an anthropocentric character and the main source of the subject’s development is the struggle which, irrespectively of its result, always primarily leads to the destruction or even to the death of one of the sides, just like in the boxing fight. However, it is also a germ of the positive re-orientation of the subject, the beginning and a continuation of that what the phenomenology of the spirit describes as a movement towards absolute abstraction.

scholarly journals Verdighet og selvbestemmelse – En aktørbasert forestilling om menneskeverdet

2019 ◽  
pp. 191-213
Author(s):  
Sven Arntzen
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Rational Agent ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Absolute

Dignity, according to one conception, is the absolute, inherent and inalienable value of every person. There is general agreement that this idea of dignity has a source in Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy. I argue that Kant formulates what I characterize as an agency or agent based conception of dignity. Persons are bearers of dignity in their capacity as moral subjects and subjects of action. Central here is the idea that a rational agent is the subject of “any end whatsoever” and so must be considered the free cause of actions. Accordingly, to be treated merely as a thing, or “as a means”, is to be treated in a manner incompatible with having and acting for the sake of any end of one’s choosing. Also relevant in this connection is Alan Gewirth’s agency based theories of dignity and of human rights. I then consider this conception of dignity in addressing three ethical issues: to let die or keep alive, assisted suicide, and so-called dwarf-tossing. Finally, I consider challenges to the idea of dignity in general and the agency based conception of dignity in particular.

Concepts of Time in Late Modernity

2020 ◽  
pp. 148-174
Author(s):  
Aleida Assmann
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Modern Time ◽  
Late Modernity ◽  
Philosophical Reflection ◽  
Temporal Ontology ◽  
Dead End ◽  
Time Regime ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Inner Contradictions

This chapter demonstrates how the problems of “polar inertia” and its implications have been the subject of intensified philosophical reflection and debate since the 1980s. Polar inertia is the condition in which we have arrived at a temporal limit. However, we have also arrived at the absolute dead end of the modern time regime, in terms of both its compatibility with the rhythms of human life and the logic internal to the dynamics it has unleashed. The positions taken all grapple with the aporias, or inner contradictions, of the modern temporal regime and its possible alternatives or compensations. However, they do not lose sight of the epistemic presuppositions of this temporal ontology in the process.

VII.—On a Collection of Antiquities from the Early Iron Age Cemetery of Hallstatt, presented to the British Museum by Lord Avebury, 1916

Archaeologia ◽  
1916 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 145-162
Author(s):  
C. Hercules Read ◽  
Reginald A. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Absolute Value ◽  
The Arts ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Absolute

The important series of antiquities that forms the subject of this communication was discovered at Hallstatt in the Salzkammergut, Austria, about the year 1869. The exploration was undertaken at the instance of Sir John Lubbock (afterwards Lord Avebury), and it is believed that a journal was kept of the daily results, as appears to have been the case in all instances where authorized digging took place on the site. Unluckily in the interval between 1869 and the present time the journal referring to Lord Avebury's exploration has disappeared, and we thus lack an important part of the information that it should have furnished, viz. the indications as to what objects were associated together, and whether the interments to which they belonged were by cremation or by inhumation. While this loss is much to be regretted, yet the absolute value and importance of the series is still very great, both as typical of the period which stands prominent as the classical example of a cultural turning-point in the history of the arts, and as filling a very serious gap in the evolutionary series in the national collection.

scholarly journals VIII. The Bakerian Lecture.—Experimental of laws of magneto-electric induction in different masses of the same metal, and of Intensity in different metals

1833 ◽  
Vol 123 ◽  
pp. 95-142 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Great Difficulty ◽  
The Other ◽  
Present Purpose ◽  
Electric Induction ◽  
Other Substances ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Experimental Researches

Mr. Faraday's highly interesting papers, entitled “Experimental Researches in Electricity,” having been referred to me, to report on, by the President and Council of this Society, I necessarily entered minutely into all the experiments and conclusions of the author, and the more so that I had had the advantage of witnessing many of the most important of these experiments. It is foreign to my present purpose to descant upon the value of Mr. Faraday’s discovery, or the merits of his communication ; the President and Council have marked their opinion of these by the award of the Copley Medal: but I may be permitted to state, that no one can concur more cordially than I do in the propriety of that award. Agreeing as I did generally with the author, both in the views which he took of the subject, and in the conclusions which he drew from his experiments, there was one, however, which I felt great difficulty in adopting, viz. “That when metals of different kinds are equally subject, in every circumstance, to magneto-electric induction, they exhibit exactly equal powers with respect to the currents which either are formed, or tend to form, in them :" and that “the same is probably the case in all other substances.” Although the experiments might appear to indicate that this was possibly the case, I did not consider them to be conclusive. The most conclusive experiment, that of two spirals, one of copper and the other of iron, transmitting opposite currents, was quite consistent with the absolute equality of the currents excited in copper and iron; but, at the same time, the apparent equality of the currents might be due to their inequality being counteracted by a corresponding inequality in the facility of transmission.

II. On the comparative value of certain geological ages (or groups of formations) considered as items of geological time

1874 ◽  
Vol 22 (148-155) ◽  
pp. 145-148
Keyword(s):  
Absolute Measurement ◽  
Annual Rate ◽  
Geological Time ◽  
Geological Society ◽  
Red Sandstone ◽  
Inland Lakes ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Rate Of Accumulation

The author first reviews briefly several methods by which attempts have been made to estimate the value of minor portions of geological time, such as:—calculations intended to estimate the age of deltas, founded on the annual rate of accumulation of sediments; the astronomical method followed by Mr. Croll, in connexion with the recurrence of glacial epochs; the relative thicknesses of different formations; and the relation of strong unconformity between two sets of formations in connexion with marked disappearance of old genera and species, and the appearance of newer forms. Having shown that none of these methods give any clear help in the absolute measurement of time in years or cycles of years, even when founded on well-established facts, he proceeds to attempt to estimate the comparative value of long portions of geological time, all of which are represented by important series of formations. The author then alludes to the subject of two papers by himself, given to the Geological Society in 1871, on the Red Rocks of England, in which he attempted to show that the Old Red Sandstone, Permian, and New Red series were all deposited in great inland lakes, fresh or salt; and this, taken in connexion with the wide-spreading terrestrial character of much of the Carboniferous series, showed that a great continental age prevailed over much of Europe and in some other regions, from the close of the Silurian epoch to the close of the Trias. He then endeavours to show the value of the time occupied in the deposition of the above-named formations, when compared with the time occupied in the deposition of the Cambrian and Silurian strata, and of the marine and freshwater strata which were deposited between the close of the Triassic epoch and the present day.

A contrastive analysis of absolute constructions in French, German and Norwegian

2010 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 208-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marianne Hobæk Haff
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
General Question ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
The One ◽  
Germanic Languages ◽  
Matrix Subject

This paper is an exploration of similarities and differences concerning absolute constructions in French, German and Norwegian. In the first part, I have examined a more general question raised by these constructions: the connections between these types of absolute constructions and the matrix subject. I have shown that the means by which the absolute constructions are related to the subject can be morphosyntactic, semantic and pragmatic. The second part contains a purely contrastive analysis. Two issues have been examined: on the one hand, the absolute constructions and their congruent and non-congruent correspondences, on the other, the use of determiners. Essentially, French is different from the two Germanic languages, but similarities also exist between French and German, which are the center of a European Sprachbund.

scholarly journals Posthuman, All Too Human

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 197-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosi Braidotti
Keyword(s):  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
Great Contribution ◽  
Process Ontology ◽  
Material Practice ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Firm Commitment

This article looks at Donna Haraway’s work in the light of Continental philosophy, and especially post-structuralism, and examines both the post-humanist and the post-anthropocentric aspects of her thought. The article argues that the great contribution of Haraway’s work is the re-grounding of the subject in material practice. This neo-foundationalist approach is combined, however, with a firm commitment to a process ontology that looks at subjectivity as a complex and open-ended set of relations. The article argues for the centrality of the notion of relationality in Haraway’s thought, and in this respect her work can be compared to Deleuze’s rhizomic thinking. Special emphasis is placed on the analysis of the relation to other species in comparison with Deleuze’s notion of becoming-animal.

scholarly journals How can we know the existence of God: Anselm and Aquinas?

2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chibuikem C. Nnaeme
Keyword(s):  
Ontological Argument ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Ontological Proof ◽  
Epistemological Conception ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Absolute

This article is concerned with how we can know about the existence of God. In attempting to do this, the article will single out two medieval thinkers, Anselm and Aquinas, and will examine their stances on the subject. The former holds, as exemplified in his ontological proof,that human beings can rationally know the existence of God, whilst the latter objects to theformer�s claim by proffering that human beings can know God�s existence through effects of God�s creation. Over the years these positions have appealed to people who defend eitherstr and of the argument. Such a followership makes worthwhile my efforts to contribute to the ongoing debate. It is my intention to show the argument of each of these positions and indicate which is more plausible to human beings. It is vital to note that Anselm and Aquinas both accept the existence of God; therefore, the existence of God is not in question for them.The article will only concentrate on where the two thinkers differ in terms of how human beings can know God�s existence.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article challenges idealists�philosophy that human beings can prove God�s existence from the concept, God, as epitomisedby Anselm�s ontological argument. The critique of the argument through the application of Aquinas�s realism exposes the limitedness of the human beings in epistemological conception of the absolute metaphysical reality.

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