The Dialectic of Formalization

This article discusses the philosophy of Alain Badiou from the perspective of a formulation that we believe represents it succinctly: the dialectic of formalization. The main thesis of the article is that Badiou’s doctrine of the four truth procedures (politics, science, love, and art) can be understood as a doctrine of a dialectical realization of new and universal forms in the world. The dialectic of formalization announces a double procedure – an autonomous and creative procedure for the production of a new true form in the world and a process of the formation of continuity in discontinuity. Moreover, the dialectic of formalization represents a connection between Badiou’s mature work and his early writings from the late 1960s. Even though in the 1960s and 1970s Badiou had not yet introduced the concepts of subject and truth in the sense that he understands them today, it is possible to support the thesis that there is an indisputable connection between Badiou’s early concept of formalization and his later concept of generic truth procedure. We will try to show that the dialectic of formalization (Badiou’s own formulation) designates the continuity between Badiou’s early and mature work.

The Ethical Value of the Inhumanity in Art A Levinasian Reading

Reality and its Shadow, a brief yet powerful essay written in 1948, is the only text where Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) deals solely with the ontology of art. Already in this early text, we can see how his understanding that ethics is the ground of philosophy drives his discussion. The nature of art is therefore treated in relation to what it does, ethically, to the subject, the maker, and the viewer. Art is the “inhumanity” and “inversion” of ethics. Only philosophical criticism reintegrates its “inhumanity” in the ethical relation. The strength of Levinas’s philosophy issues from a pre-cognitive commitment to the “other”, epitomised in the “face to face” relation. Any philosophy emphasising the primacy of the subject over and above the “other” crumbles under his reading. Yet this same strength implies that those domains where the “face to face” relation is obscured lead to irresponsibility. One such domain is art. In this essay I argue that by applying his mature work to the criticism he advances in Reality and its Shadow we can find ethical value in art in virtue of its “inhumanity” and “inversion”. That is, we can agree with Levinas that art leads to irresponsibility, and yet ascribe to it positive ethical value in Levinas's own terms. This can help concretise the tension between the ethical and unethical aspects of art within a Levinasian framework.

Razón y experiencia: contribuciones para una ampliación de la diversidad epistemológica

The philosophical transformation carried out Xavier Zubiri, especially in his mature work: Sentient intelligence allows to rethink the bases of rationality in structural unity with the senses, allowing a plurality of ways of accessing reality on its foundation (experience), and surpass, in that way, the monological rationality promoted by positivism and pragmatism. To this end, we move through the different landmarks of Zubiri’s work: first, the primordial apprehension of reality from its multiple sentient openings; then, we stop at the constitution of meaning by logos emphasizing how culture prioritize one type of sense (view, hear, touch, etc.) over the rest, forging a type of openness to reality and determining a horizon of meaning for it; later, we inquire into how reason accesses the foundation of the real, this allows us to show how the different rationalities settle their options for meaning. From here we contrast with religious rationality founded on historical-scientific criterion, and a strictly religious one, which, ultimately, allow us to finish systematizing and giving a unity of meaning to the previews proposals that were made. Finally, all this enables us to explore the consequences for a sociology of knowledge (Epistemologies of the South), and to think about the conditions of intercultural dialogue, and, subsequently, the scenarios of and interlogical construction.

Spaces of History and Memory: The Works on the Anti-Rightist Campaign

This chapter approaches history as a central concern in Wang Bing’s filmmaking. It deals with spaces of history and memory, in particular in relation to the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957–59. It highlights Wang’s interest in unveiling the gaps and the contradictions imbued in state narratives at different epochs. A close reading of Wang’s only full-length feature film so far The Ditch (2010) and a comparative reading of it with Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò (1975) are given in the first section of the chapter. The second section focuses on Wang’s mature work Dead Souls (2018) as a visual archive of witnesses on the campaign and as a way to testify to historical injustice, also recalling Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985).

Young Milton’s Pauline Temper

This chapter attempts to look at young Milton’s formative negotiation of Pauline theology, idiom, and authorial self-representation in his early poetry and anti-prelatical political writings. Specifically, the chapter argues that the classical-Christian tension so often commented on in Milton’s early poetry and prose is not an abstract productive tension between classical humanism and Protestant theology but instead a specific authorial tension between Milton’s competing admiration above all for his two favourite writers—Ovid and Paul. In channelling and synthesizing the erotic creativity of the former with the spiritual teachings on sin and redemption of the latter, Milton slowly developed a unique poetic-spiritual stance that in time formed the basis of his future mature work, as an exploration of ‘peculiar grace’ always struggling in the world for poetically creative inward liberty.

THE ISSUE OF HISTORICAL WORKS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE

This article discusses the issue of literary perception of historical reality and the creation of a mature work as one of the constant problems of literature, it is about paying special attention to comparative-typological analysis of the unity of form and content, composition and plot, system of characters, historical truth and to the fiction in the study of historical works in today's globalization.The article provides an analysis of advanced examples of American literature, information on folk art thinking and cultural development. The poetics of the work of art, in particular, the approach of how the composition of historical works is solved, the typology of characters, the scientific study of the problem of the genre together form the basis of the article.

La Alteridad en el Pensamiento Descolonial de Enrique Dussel.

Latin American decolonialism has a prominent place in current criticism of Eurocentrism in the social sciences and humanities. This paper raises the problem of alterity in the decolonial thinking of Enrique Dussel through the hermeneutical exegesis of three main categories: exteriority, living work and victim. The purpose of this research is to determine the continuities and discontinuities of this problem in the theoretical work of the ArgentineMexican philosopher. As our theoreticalmethodological framework, we consider the notions of the de-colonial attitude and the Latin American hermeneuticphilosophical approach to liberation. In the conclusions, we show that the concept of alterity appears in Dussel’s early work associated with Levinasian ethical language. Later, a shift towards an economic-material reflection is evidenced in his mature work as a means to historically understand the oppression and exclusion of peripheral countries.

Newman, Marcel, and Personal Knowledge

This article suggests that the religious epistemology of John Henry Newman can be enhanced if read through the philosophical lens of Gabriel Marcel. After briefly describing Newman’s epistemology as it appears in his most philosophically mature work, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, and with particular attention paid to the illative sense, the charge of relativism will be considered. The answer to this concern of relativism is found in embryo in the pages of the Grammar itself, when it highlights not only the personal nature of assent but also suggests a communal dimension. To make this point explicit, I suggest reading Newman’s epistemology through the lens of Marcel’s philosophy. While being akin to Newman in terms of what constitutes genuine knowledge and one’s attainment of it, Marcel provides a richer philosophical story as to why our knowing is both personal and communal. To this end, the Marcelian understanding of situated existence and testimony will be explored. In sum, a Marcelian optic helps to supplement Newman’s epistemology while not detracting from it.

Aristotle on the Soul as Harmony

A topic common to both Plato’s and Aristotle’s discussions of theories of the soul is the doctrine of the soul as a harmony of the parts of the body. Plato’s Phaedo as well as Aristotle’s De anima and Eudemus present this theory and argue against the identification of the soul as a harmony. This paper has two focuses, one philosophical and one historical. First, I will focus on the argumentation used by Aristotle in his dialogue Eudemus, which is often associated with Aristotle’s early attachment to Plato. On the basis of the argumentation against the harmonia theory, I will try to show that the Eudemus is not a dialogue that depicts Aristotle’s Platonic phase. Instead, by comparing the arguments of the Eudemus with both Plato and Aristotle’s mature thought, I will argue that the argumentation of the Eudemus seems to be an indirect attack on Plato’s view on the Forms and on the nature of the soul, and that it seems to be consistent with Aristotle’s mature work On the Soul. Second, given that Aristotle discusses this topic twice, I will try, also on the basis of conclusions about the Eudemus and on later reception of Aristotle’s arguments, to show why this is the case.

Lamb, Coleridge, and the Poetics of Publication

This essay explores the poetics of Lamb's early letters to Coleridge. I argue for a sharp awareness, on Lamb's part, of the potentially negative effect publication can have on literary writing. Lamb resists this at the level of epistolary form, by entwining his sonnets with the letters into which he writes them. Where Lamb's poems, taken in themselves, remain modest performances, the letter-poem hybrid texts in which they participate are of significant critical interest. Among other things they establish a critique of Coleridge and his paying court to the literary marketplace. These insights, I go on to suggest, can also help us to understand both writers’ more mature work, notably the complex lyric-epistolary compound that is Coleridge's ‘This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison’.