L’orologio e il calendario

This article aims at reflecting on the political significance of distinct conceptions of temporality and their symbolic representation in the work of Walter Benjamin. In particular, the “clock” and the “calendar” will be addressed as symbols of, respectively, a linear and homogeneous conception of time and of a cyclical, uneven – and potentially revolutionary – temporality. The conception of time symbolized by clocks is criticized by Benjamin as a bourgeois understanding of progress, which inhibits revolutionary tensions in society by shifting the political focus on future, on the inevitability of progress and growth; on the other hand, calendars’ and ancient cyclical festivals’ temporality constantly looks at the past, celebrating and re-actualizing the memory of previous revolutionary attempts. In the last section, the article will consider the role of symbols and allegories in Benjamin’s philosophical writing, casting new light on the previous discussion.

«Lemma»: Jay Wright’s Idiorrhythmic American Theater

This essay presents Jay Wright’s play Lemma as a historiographical challenge and also as a piece of idiorrhythmic American theater. Consonant with his life’s work of poetry, dramatic literature, and philosophical writing, Lemma showcases Wright’s expansive intellectual framework with which he constructs vivid, dynamic, and complex visions of American life. The “America” conjured here is steeped in many traditions, traditions typically kept distinct by academic discourse, such as West African cosmology, Enlightenment philosophy, jazz music theory, Ancient Greek theater, neo-Baroque modifications of Christian theology, pre-Columbian indigenous ways of knowing, etymological connections between Spanish and Gaelic, the materiality of John Donne’s poetry, and the lives of enslaved Africans in the New World. What is the purpose of Wright’s theatrical conjuration? How do we approach a text with such a diverse body of intellectual and literary sources? The author answers these questions and ends with a call to treat Lemma as a much needed point of view that opens lines of sight into Black and American theater far outside the well-worn territory of the Black Arts Movement.

Dostoevsky: The Philosophy of the Hideout

This article reads Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground with regard to the idea of the people from hideouts, formulated in Józef Tischner’s philosophical writing and inspired by Antoni Kępiński’s Psychopatie. It fi rst discusses Dostoevsky’s book in the context of Lev Shestov’s philosophy of tragedy so as to juxtapose this approach with Kępiński’s psychiatric and Tischner’s philosophical theses. In particular, Tischner’s concept of hope is interpreted in opposition to the pessimism that informs Shestov’s ideas, the difference exemplifi ed by references to the behaviour of Dostoevsky’s protagonist.

A Reading of Community

The thinking about the idea, forms and practices of communitas has developed a specific discourse in political philosophical writing since the 1980s. This paper retraces the ways in which Jean-Luc Nancy established a “community of writing [and] the writing of community,” how in his view community compears with philosophical writing. Taking Nancy’s discussion as a ground line, the author modulates the perspective on writing—as both text and practice—and focuses on the confrontation with community in reading. By poetologically tackling Nancy’s essay “The Confronted Community” (2001), she investigates into the text’s performing of community and the affective interaction between text and corporeality. Her reading of Nancy’s writing thus activates not only its ecstatic valences leading towards the proposed community of those who have no community; it also uncovers the aesthetic, social and political implications that emanate from Nancy’s writing in this situated reading. Therefore, this paper analytically retraces the textual micro-performances of community in writing as a performative confrontation entailed in reading.

Nietzsche and the Aesthetics of Philosophy

The review discusses four recent books and collections that approach in different ways the role of aesthetics in Nietzsche’s work, both as a question of poetic expression and as the shaping of sensibility. They testify to a deepening interest in the processes through which he forged his unique style. This involves micro-analyses of the composition of Nietzsche’s writings from the raw material of his notebooks. It also involves biographical and material contexts, as in Tobias Brucker’s monograph on the composition of The Wanderer and His Shadow. Instead of accepting the dichotomy between a Dichterphilosoph and a philosopher for whom style was merely an instrument for formulating truths, these books display in different ways how in the case of Nietzsche this dichotomy breaks down and gives way to a widened concept of philosophical writing that includes many different genres. Other works by Nietzsche discussed are Zarathustra and The Gay Science, and also Ecce Homo. Nietzsche seduced with his art, but he also saw through the art of seduction as practiced by the artist, opting for a position beyond the conventional split between poetics and philosophy.

Reflection

Elizabeth Bishop’s celebrated poem relates a story in which six-year-old Elizabeth is confronted, in the mundane surroundings of a dentist’s waiting room, with her self as an entity in the public world. Her discovery—that she is “one of them”—is met first with disbelief, then horror. This reflection argues that the poem provides a unique expression of a profound philosophical discovery—one not communicable in standard philosophical writing.

Nietzsche and the Aesthetics of Philosophy

The review discusses four recent books and collections that approach in different ways the role of aesthetics in Nietzsche’s work, both as a question of poetic expression and as the shaping of sensibility. They testify to a deepening interest in the processes through which he forged his unique style. This involves micro-analyses of the composition of Nietzsche’s writings from the raw material of his notebooks. It also involves biographical and material contexts, as in Tobias Brücker’s monograph on the composition of The Wanderer and His Shadow. Instead of accepting the dichotomy between a Dichterphilosoph and a philosopher for whom style was merely an instrument for formulating truths, these books display in different ways how in the case of Nietzsche this dichotomy breaks down and gives way to a widened concept of philosophical writing that includes many different genres. Other works by Nietzsche discussed are Zarathustra and The Gay Science, and also Ecce Homo. Nietzsche seduced with his art, but he also saw through the art of seduction as practiced by the artist, opting for a position beyond the conventional split between poetics and philosophy.

Dying

Chapter 4 studies the connection between the emotion of dying and the cognitive positionality of Sanskrit logicians when they think philosophically about how the city of Banaras confers spiritual liberation upon death. It discusses the specific causal processes, according to Sanskrit logicians, through which spiritual liberation is conferred by dying in the city and the role of true knowledge (tattva-jñāna) in this process. After exploring how dying is defined by Sanskrit logicians, it concludes with larger reflections on how Banaras is produced as a place by nyāya philosophical writing.

The Use and Meaning of the Past in Plato

This essay is based on two premises. The first concerns the vision of writing proposed by Plato in Phaedrus and especially the conception of philosophical writing as a maieutic game. The structurally polyvalent way in which Plato approaches philosophical issues also emerges in the dialogues. The second concerns the birth and the development of historical analysis in parallel with the birth of philosophy. On this basis the text investigates a series of data about the relationship between Plato and "the facts". 1) If we compare the Apology of Socrates with other sources, we discover a series of important “games” that Plato performs to achieve the results he proposes. 2) The famous passage of Phaedo 96A-102A, which concludes with the Ideas and with a reference to the Principles, expresses definite judgments on the Presocratics. 3) In his works Plato attributes to the sophists some merits, even if the outcome of their contri-bution is overall negative. 4) However, in the fourth complicated diairesis of the Sophist, there is a "sophist of noble stock", an educator who can only be Socrates. 5) Plato in the Sophist shows the weakness of the Gigantomachy, and proposes an adequate definition of the beings: the power of undergoing or acting. This reveals, before the Philebus and the Timaeus, the dynamic and dialectical nature of his philosophy In summary, a multifocal vision emerges, adapted to an intrinsically complex reality.