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Theory At Yale: The Strange Case Of Deconstruction In America [Table Of Contents], Marc Redfield

Literature

This book examines the affinity between “theory” and “deconstruction” that developed in the American academy in the 1970s by way of the “Yale Critics”: Harold Bloom, Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman, and J. Hillis Miller, sometimes joined by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida.

With this semi-fictional collective, theory became a media event, first in the academy and then in the wider print media, in and through its phantasmatic link with deconstruction and with “Yale.” The important role played by aesthetic humanism in American pedagogical discourse provides a context for understanding theory as an aesthetic scandal, and an examination of the …

Editors Note, Michael S. Dauber

Akadimia Filosofia

No abstract provided.

Faculty Research Directory, Akadimia Filosofia Staff

Akadimia Filosofia

No abstract provided.

Harry Potter, Master Of Love, Charles S. Holland

Akadimia Filosofia

Love can be differentiated into two main categories: “action love” and “emotion love.” “Action love” spurs us to act for the betterment of some cause, but it is empty without “emotion love,” which encompasses the feelings we have for those close to us. Likewise, “emotion love” by itself is not true love, either. As Harry Potter shows, the ultimate love combines these two categories.

The Possibility Of The Gift, Bruno Cassara

Akadimia Filosofia

Like many others who work in continental philosophy, Jean-Luc Marion has written on the gift and its possibility. His essay attempts to refute Jacques Derrida’s conclusion that the gift as such is impossible, as its structure is in fact always one of exchange within an economic horizon. Marion first presents the gift as it appears within the horizon of economy and identifies the reasons for the impossibility of the gift. He therefore reasons that the gift must be examined under another, more primordial horizon—givenness, where the gift becomes possible as non-self-identical and unconditioned possibility. This paper provides an alternative solution …

Aristotle’S Category Construction And The Why Behind It, Margaret Rae Titcomb

Akadimia Filosofia

Aristotle’s Categoriae, or the Categories, is a comprehensive classification system for every object of human understanding that can be either a subject or a predicate of a proposition. There are ten categories: Substance, Quantity, Qualification, Relative/Relation, Place, Time, Position, State (Condition), Action, and Affection. The first part of this paper will explain each of the categories in the order in which they are presented in the chapters of Categoriae. The second half of the paper will discuss the question of ambiguity in the approach Aristotle uses to both construct and find meaning in these categories. Fr. Joseph …

Ignorance Is Not Bliss, Tommy Tsang

Akadimia Filosofia

This paper will examine the concept of evil through the lens of Saint Augustine's view of evil in Confessions and Socrates' view of evil in Meno. To do so, this paper will attempt to dissect both philosopher's argument regarding the obtainability of evil and take a logical, step-by-step approach to reach its conclusion. Ultimately, this paper will challenge Augustine's belief that it is possible to desire evil and instead argue for Socrates' belief that evil only exists insofar as we are ignorant of the good. After all, arguing for Socrates' belief on evil over Augustine's seems to be the …

John R. Searle. Seeing Things As They Are, Michael S. Dauber

Akadimia Filosofia

No abstract provided.

A Critique Of Bourdieu And Passeron’S Educational Reform In The Inheritors, Daniel Mccabe

Akadimia Filosofia

Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron’s The Inheritors critically examines the French education system in the 1960s. The Inheritors is a compilation of sociological studies on university students in the Arts which the authors use a premises for their education reform citing issues in the traditional system that allow bourgeois students to have an unfair advantage due to their cultured upbringing. The main systemic problem within French education is identified by Bourdieu and Passeron as the charismatic ideology that awards cultural, theoretical knowledge over merit and effort. To resolve the bias within the traditional French education system, a revolutionary new education …

Our Time: Existentialism In The Age Of Fear, Michael S. Dauber

Akadimia Filosofia

This paper focuses on re-awakening existentialism from its realm of philosophical inactivity over the past few decades. Existentialism is still very much a “committed” philosophy, providing us with an approach to life that gives us courage in the face of tremendous adversity. Indeed, this philosophy enables us to focus on what matters most in our own lives by freeing ourselves from the burdens of fear and unrealistic expectations given to us by those who seek to control our futures. Such a conception of modern existentialism introduces the notion of existential courage: what the modern existentialist must overcome is the fear …

Anxiety, The Most Revelatory Of Moods, John T. Whalen

Akadimia Filosofia

This paper sets out to explore what, for Heidegger, gives anxiety such revelatory power. I would especially like to pay attention to Heidegger’s distinction of anxiety and fear, to further stress anxiety’s unique revelatory power. Furthermore, I will address how Heidegger’s analysis of anxiety and moods generally (an ontological analysis) is distinct from what is understood by moods in the empirical (and ontic) discipline of psychology. Heidegger’s analysis of anxiety in Being and Time bridges the first half of the work with the second half of the work. In short, Heidegger needs a mood to allow for an analysis of …

War, Kyle Pritz

Akadimia Filosofia

This paper is an effective meditation on the morality and justification of war. Moreover, this paper explores the ways in which war is a pointless concept, an endeavor that can never be justified and is certainly not brought on by the everyday person. Rather, war is an exercise of power that only benefits the rich elite and the powerful authority figures of the world. We must strive to reveal the underlying truth in our social reactions, that we always have the power to find peace and resolve differences. Only then can we finally move beyond war.

Contents, Akadimia Filosofia Staff

Akadimia Filosofia

No abstract provided.

What Fanon Said: A Philosophical Introduction To His Life And Thought, Lewis R. Gordon, Sonia Dayan-Herzbrun, Drucilla Cornell

Philosophy & Theory

Challenging the notion of theory as white and experience as black, Lewis Gordon here offers a philosophical portrait of the thought and life of the Martinican-turned-Algerian revolutionary psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon as an example of “living thought” against the legacies of colonialism and racism, and thereby shows the continued relevance and importance of his ideas.

On The Hallelujah Efect: Priming Consumers, Recording Music, And The Spirit Of Tragedy, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

An overview of The Hallelujah Effect concentrating on priming or sonic branding, media, online porn as well as marketing and media programming, with a special excursus on the space of music --and radio in Adorno's Current of Music, and a detailed discussion on Nietzsche and music in antiquity as he explores this with reference ot Beethoven in The Birth of Tragedy.

Nietzsche's Antichrist: The Birth Of Modern Science Out Of The Spirit Of Religion, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

Nietzsche argued that the Greeks were in possessions of every theoretical, mathematical, logical, and technological antecedent for the development of what could be modern science. But if they had all these necessary prerequisites what else could they have needed? Not only had the ancient Greeks no religious world-view antagonistic to scientific inquiry, they also lacked the Judeo-Christian promissory ideal of salvation in a future life (after death). Subsequently, when Greek culture had been irretrievably lost, what Nietzsche regarded as the "decadent" Socratic ideal of reason ultimately and in connection with the preludes of religion and alchemy developed into modern science …

The ‘New’ Heidegger, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

If discussion of “new” approaches to Martin Heidegger contradicts Heidegger’s own indictment of the passion for “novelty” in philosophy, today’s Black Notebooks scandal reminds us of the ontic problem of new news. Indeed the backwards working evidence of the notebooks kept before, during, and after WWII both vindicates and problematizes his notion of temporality temporalizing from the future -- lapsing into the past -- setting up what is now regarded as patent in the present. Simultaneously, we see that if heretofore many philosophers of technology sought to dismiss engagement with Heidegger’s critique of technology, these critical contributions turn out to …

The Uncertainty Relations, Patrick Heelan

Research Resources

Patrick Aidan Heelan, The Observable: Heisenberg’s Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics. With a foreword by Michel Bitbol. Edited and with a foreword by Babette Babich. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015.

The Philosophical Differences Between Heisenberg And Bohr, Patrick Heelan

Research Resources

Chapter from: Patrick Aidan Heelan, The Observable: Heisenberg’s Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics. With a foreword by Michel Bitbol. Edited and with a foreword by Babette Babich. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015.

Calling Science Pseudoscience: Fleck’S Archaeologies Of Fact And Latour’S ‘Biography Of An Investigation’ In Aids Denialism And Homeopathy, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

Fleck’s Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact foregrounds claims traditionally excluded from reception, often regarded as opposed to fact, scientific claims that are increasingly seldom discussed in connection with philosophy of science save as examples of pseudo-science. I am especially concerned with scientists who question the epidemiological link between HIV and AIDS and who are thereby discounted—no matter their credentials, no matter the cogency of their arguments, no matter the sobriety of their statistics—but also with other classic examples of so-called pseudo-science including homeopathy and other sciences, such as cold fusion. The pseudo-science version of the demarcation problem turns …