Pourrait-on convaincre Platon du bien-fondé de la philosophie pour enfants?

Could Plato be Convinced by the Merits of Philosophy for Children? The exclusion of childhood from the realm of philosophy traditionally dates back to the work of Plato. In his dialogues Gorgias and Republic, the founder of the Western philosophical tradition argues against a childish practice of philosophy: the search for truth is too serious and complex an undertaking for young people. This has led to a persistent presupposition that still hinders the implementation of the practice of philosophy with children. Our objective with this paper is to show that there is in fact a continuity between P4C and philosophy according to Plato. We present another reading of these Platonic reasons to show that they leave an opening for a playful and democratic approach to philosophy. Keywords: Plato, P4C, childhood, philosophy, play, care, Republic, Gorgias.

Hannah Arendt and the promises of politics beyond sovereignty

Hannah Arendt expresses several critiques of the Western philosophical tradition in her work due to conceptual misunderstandings that played a crucial role in the course of many events in our history. This article attempts to understand how concepts such as power, freedom, and sovereignty appear in Arendt's thinking and shed light on our understanding of politics. Thinking about the relationship between these elements allows us to understand that there are other possibilities for politics besides representative democracies. It is about seeking the centrality of politics as an exercise of freedom that is only possible when we meet and act in concert.

Covid-19, Philosophy and the Leap Towards the Posthuman

A discursive canon around transhumanism and posthumanism as beliefs in the efficacy and necessity of technology as the beneficial transformer of human life “for the better” is well-established in the Western philosophical tradition. However, none of the theorists and protagonists of this technological reconfiguration of humanity could ever have predicted that what they envisaged would be propelled into manifestation with as dramatic and phenomenal momentum such as has been ushered in by the mainly technology-driven interventions introduced in various measures globally to curb the SARS-CoV2 virus. The effect of these responses to the pandemic, it is here demonstrated, have set humanity into a technogenesis, a transformative ontological process headed towards a machinistic and de-anthropic life idealised by posthumanists. Apropos, a set of three intertwined tasks are here executed. Firstly, I explicate my foregoing claim, namely, how at the helm of the variety of measures to control Covid-19 is a discernible socio-scientific movement that is directed at inaugurating and regularising a posthumanist consciousness and de-anthropic modes of sociality. Secondly, I venture a critical understanding of “the Covid-19 moment” that exposes the quadripartite alliance of a postmodernist Western philosophy, technoscience, commercial interests, and politics as the systemic drivers of this technocratic philosophical anthropology. Thirdly, or rather concurrently, taking the work of Nick Bostrom as the theoretical heuristic advocating human technological transformation, I normatively alert of the ramifications of this emerging human ontology.

Form (Form)

The concept of form today remains as indispensable to philosophical reflection as it was for Plato and Aristotle. In view of its centrality to Goethe’s work, the concept may thus be considered one of the privileged themes for assessing Goethe’s position in the Western philosophical tradition. The following remarks must pursue a more modest aim. Their purpose is to highlight sites of reflection in Goethe’s oeuvre in which the concept of form does irreplaceable intellectual work. It is important to stress the selectivity of such a project, for to examine the peculiar inflection the concept of form undergoes in Goethe’s work is to enter a field of intricately interwoven concepts. Kindred terms include Gestalt, (Um-) Gestaltung, Typus, Urbild; crucial explicating concepts are Organisation, Einheit, and Idee; syntactic and semantic linkages run inter alia to schaffen and Gewalt (in the sense of force, not violence); Morphologie is the science of form; negative concepts such as formlos and Chaos likewise have their place. The entire nexus is central both to Goethe’s aesthetics and to his scientific studies. Finally, nearly all the terms within the nexus are susceptible to poetic intensification, as exemplified in the verses from Pandora recalled at the outset. A brief entry such as this can do no more than carve a slender path through this variegated semantic terrain.

The Relevance of Metaphysics to Behavior Analysis

Behavior analysis takes a natural science approach to human and animal behavior. Some basic tenets are widely agreed in the field but it can be argued that some other assumptions are implicit in our approach and, if unexamined, may impair progress. Since the time of David Hume, there has been a strong Western philosophical tradition of naturalism and realism. Although behavior analysis has from the outset embraced pragmatism, features of naturalism are embedded in the metaphysics of science and thus have been imported into behavior analysis. Many versions of naturalism imply dualism, but this can be avoided without abandoning a naturalist–realist position either by adopting the historicist approach of Rorty, which suggests that apparently a priori truths are often merely conventions of a philosophical tradition, or by accepting Wittgenstein’s view that there are hinge statements that are fundamental to our thinking but are not propositional beliefs and do not entail dualism. As an alternative, we can adopt the metaphysical assumptions of monism, possibly starting from William James’s approach of neutral monism. Revising our metaphysical assumptions while retaining the pragmatism that is central to behavior analysis may enable us to engage more effectively with cognitive psychology, to develop stronger links with ecological psychology and other approaches that reject representationalism, and to move beyond the debate about the status of private events.

On Epigenesis

“On Epigenesis” consists of a series of interrelated short articles examining the philosophical concept of epigenesis, with a particular focus on Catherine Malabou's development of it in contemporary thought. Alexander Miller introduces the topic of epigenesis and considers its significance as a new paradigm. He also presents the reader with an overview of Malabou's work on the topic: Drawing from recent advances in the life sciences as well as the Western philosophical tradition, he claims, Malabou has proposed “an epigenetic paradigm for rationality” for the 21st century. Catherine Malabou explains that when, in 2001, the scientific journal Nature published virtually the entire sequence of three billion bases that make up the human genome, people were surprised: Only five percent of the sequence turned out to actually be genes. Assembled in bunches and clusters, they are separated by vast expanses of so-called gene deserts made up of DNA characterized as “junk” or “repetitive,” which is to say, non-coding. The sequencing of the genome did not offer the revelations that people had expected, marking the end of the “everything is genetic” creed and announcing the rise of the “epigenetic paradigm.” The present article analyzes the implications of this new paradigm in biology, philosophy, and hermeneutics. Emily Apter situates Catherine Malabou's theory of epigenesis within a broader disciplinary context of Continental philosophy, the cognitive turn, and what a brain does or “is” as an object of aesthetic representation. Peter Szendy argues that even if they are not the central focus of her philosophical work, media and medial metaphors play a key role in Catherine Malabou's understanding of epigenetics. Indeed, her views on the epigenetic paradigm shift could lead to a rethinking of mediality. A medium, according to such an epigenetic approach, would be neither simply a storage space nor a carrier: It would be what happens along with the events (whether they involve works or data) that it hosts or transports. Emanuela Bianchi asks whether the epigenesis of “pure reason” can in any sense be “pure,” since epigenesis necessarily involves empirical processes. Foregrounding the topological involvement of the developing organism in its environment in both biological and psychoanalytic registers, she suggests a way forward can be found in thinking of the genesis of reason as both empirical and rational. Alexander R. Galloway traces an etymological path from “epigenetic” back to the Greek verb “gignomai,” meaning “to be born” or “to become.” But what is becoming? And why is becoming better than (mere) being? One answer is that becoming helps one to escape the confines of identity and rote determination. But what happens when the epigenetic paradigm becomes dominant, when contingency, evolution, and becoming prevail over essence, stasis, and determinism?

«I Will Eat You and Spit You Out»: A Reading of the ‘Lesbian Machine’ in Dacia Maraini’s Lettere a Marina

This article analyzes the «lesbian-machines» (Grosz 1995, 184) at work in Dacia Maraini’s novel Lettere a Marina (1981) and collection of poems Mangiami pure (1978). To this purpose, I engage with two conceptions of desire within the western philosophical tradition. Firstly, examining the development of the metaphor of cannibalism or ‘eros fagico’, I argue that Maraini avoids the ontologization of the notion of desire considered as a lack and thus disengages it from its historical association with the denigration of the female other. Secondly, conceiving desire as a force of production, relational and creative, I explore a particular use of metaphors in the novel which leads to bodily transformations or metamorphosis, without, however, reaching the subject’s imperceptibility through progressive identification. The co-presence and re-elaboration of two, apparently incompatible, theories of desire underline female same-sex desire’s potential to be thought and actualized as a lack and a production, its tendency to annihilate and being annihilated as well as its creative impulses. As a result, Dacia Maraini’s Lettere a Marina and Mangiami pure complicate and destabilize the fixity of representational categories, expanding discourses on lesbianism and lesbian desire. Indeed, the convolution of negative and positive dilates the domain of desire and multiplies its possibilities, carving out a «narrative space in which women might desire differently» (Ross 2015, 16), beyond the heterosexual norm and in diverse ways, who and how they please.

Synthesis of Cultures of the East and West in the Philosophy of B.D. Dandaron

The article deals with the phenomenon of synthesis of East and West cultures in the religious philosophy of B.D. Dandaron - one of the most famous representatives of Russian Buddhism in the XX century. The beginning of the spread of Buddhist teachings in Russian society is also connected with his extraordinary personality. Dandaron was engaged in active yoga, tantric practice, and also gave instructions to those who were interested in Buddhism. As a result, a small circle of people began to form around him who tried to study and practice Buddhism. Dandaron was also engaged in Buddhist activities, studied Tibetan history and historiography, and described the Tibetan collection of manuscripts. It is indicated that Dandaron not only made an attempt to consider Buddhism from the perspective of Western philosophy, but also created his own teaching, which was called neobuddism. As a result, he was able to conduct a creative synthesis of Buddhist philosophy with the Western philosophical tradition. In fact, he developed a philosophical system that claims to be universal and synthesized Buddhist and Western spiritual achievements. Trying to synthesize the Eastern and Western traditions of philosophical thought, Dandaron turned to the well-known comparative works of the Indian thinker S. Radhakrishnan and the Russian buddhologist F.I. Shcherbatsky. The author also notes the influence on the philosophy of neobuddism of the ideas of V.E. Sesemann, a neo-Kantian philosopher with whom Dandaron was personally acquainted. The idea of non-Buddhism had not only a philosophical and theoretical, but also a practical aspect, since the consideration of Buddhism from the perspective of Western philosophy helped to attract people of Western culture to this religion. In General, Dandarons desire to create a universal synthetic philosophical system was in line with the philosophical and spiritual search of Russian philosophy, and was partly related to the traditional problem of East-West, which has always been relevant for Russia.

A Critical Recuperation of Watsuji’s Rinrigaku

Watsuji is recognised as one Japan’s foremost philosophers. His work on ethics, Rinrigaku, is cosmopolitan in engaging the Western philosophical tradition, and in presupposing an international audience. Yet Watsuji’s ethical thought is largely of niche interest outside Japan, and it is critiqued on the ground that it ratifies totalitarianism, demanding individuals’ unquestioning subordination to communal demands. We offer a reading of Rinrigaku that, in attempting to trace the text’s intention, disputes these arguments. We argue that Rinrigaku makes individual autonomy central to ethical action, despite the fact that its treatment of coercion may lead one to think otherwise; that it does not reduce ethical obligations to whatever demands any given society imposes on its members; that it draws a distinction between socio-ethical orders that are genuinely ethical and those that are not; and that, in insisting on the grounding of individuals in the Absolute, it makes adequate room for individuals’ resistance to unjustifiable socio-ethical demands.

Blindsight

In situating the author’s retrospective visual field “defect” revelation, this chapter begins with the neurological condition of anosognosia—being unaware of a disease—exploring its manifestations and philosophical implications. In addition, another means of understanding the author’s visual field “defect” emerges in the figure of “blindsight,” or unconscious vision. Tracing the relationship between vision and thought in the Western philosophical tradition as well as the philosophical role of blindsight, the chapter then proposes that blindsight models a particular epistemic stance encompassing the known and unknown, one which will prove useful in addressing the phenomenon of metagnosis and beyond.