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The Technology Of Biopower: A Response To Todd May's "Foucault Now?", Ladelle Mcwhorter
The Technology Of Biopower: A Response To Todd May's "Foucault Now?", Ladelle Mcwhorter
Philosophy Faculty Publications
Because the occasion for his essay was the inaugural conference of the newly formed Foucault Society in New York City in the spring of 2005, Todd May takes as his point of departure the question of whether Foucault’s work is valuable to the sort of people who have come together to form that society: philosophers, artists, political activists, and in general to concerned citizens today, twenty years after Michel Foucault’s death. As might be expected given the Society’s raison d’être, May answers this question in the affirmative. But exactly how is Foucault’s work still relevant? It is his answer …
Cartesian Certainty And The Infinity Of The Will, Joseph K. Cosgrove
Cartesian Certainty And The Infinity Of The Will, Joseph K. Cosgrove
Philosophy Faculty Publications
This paper interprets Descartes' conception of "certainty" as most fundamentally a function of the human will, controlling the cognitive encounter with the world.
Practicing Practicing, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Practicing Practicing, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Philosophy Faculty Publications
"There is something ludicrous in philosophical discourse," Michel Foucault writes, "when it tries, from the outside, to dictate to others, to tell them where their truth is and how to find it... " (Foucault 1985, 9). In our age of moral relativism and multiculturalism, it is easy to hear in this sentence a simple condemnation of intellectuals who pose as authorities on questions of belief, and it is all too easy to agree; yes, of course, we ought not tell other people what to think. But given the issues, directions, and investments of Foucault's work, especially in The Use of …
Subjecting Dasein, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Subjecting Dasein, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Philosophy Faculty Publications
"Das 'Subjekt' ist eine Fiktion," Nietzsche declares in aphorism 370 of Der Wille zur Macht. There is no such thing as an ego, a unitary center of personhood that can be appraised and approved for its virtue and wisdom or blamed for its premeditated transgressions and irresponsible beliefs. Subjectivity does not exist. Despite Nietzsche's pervasive influence, however, the question of subjectivity - the ontological nature, the ethical status, and the epistemological significance of the human subject - has been a preeminent theme in Continental philosophy for the entirety of the twentieth century. Virtually all Continental philosophers have found it …
Foucault's Political Spirituality, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Foucault's Political Spirituality, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Philosophy Faculty Publications
Recently, while rereading some material in The Essential Works of Foucault, I came upon a passage that pulled me up short and then sent me flying from my English translation to the French original. The passage, from an interview in May, 1978, contains one of Foucault’s infamous attempts to sum up his life’s work. It starts with the assertion that “since the beginning,” Foucault has been asking himself a certain question: “What is history, given that there is continually being produced within it a separation of true and false?” He elaborates, then, expanding that question into four sub-questions: (1) …
The 'Most Important And Fundamental' Distinction In Logic, G. C. Goddu
The 'Most Important And Fundamental' Distinction In Logic, G. C. Goddu
Philosophy Faculty Publications
In this paper I argue that the debate over the purported distinction between deductive and inductive arguments can be bypassed because making the distinction is unnecessary for successfully evaluating arguments. I provide a foundation for doing logic that makes no appeal to the distinction and still performs all the relevant tasks required of an analysis of arguments. I also reply to objections to the view that we can dispense with the distinction. Finally, I conclude that the distinction between inductive and deductive arguments is not one of the most important and fundamental ideas in logic, but rather is unnecessary.
The Self-Growth Of Vision And The Self-Repose Of Color: A Heideggerian Meditation On The Studio Paintings Of Jean Koeller, Charles Taylor
The Self-Growth Of Vision And The Self-Repose Of Color: A Heideggerian Meditation On The Studio Paintings Of Jean Koeller, Charles Taylor
Philosophy Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Contract, Trust, And Resistance In The `Second Treatise', Rory J. Conces
Contract, Trust, And Resistance In The `Second Treatise', Rory J. Conces
Philosophy Faculty Publications
If there is a single problem that has dominated political thought for the past four hundred years, it is the tension within the body politic between the will of the collective, as it is expressed by those vested with authority and power, and the will of the individual. Among political theorists who have examined this problem, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke viewed this potentially ruinous tension in radically different ways. In his Leviathan, Hobbes presents the problem of how we are to conduct ourselves as a society, an apparent dilemma whose horns are anarchy and servile absolutism. Either we …
The Semblance Of Ideologies And Scientific Theories And The Constitution Of Facts, Rory J. Conces
The Semblance Of Ideologies And Scientific Theories And The Constitution Of Facts, Rory J. Conces
Philosophy Faculty Publications
Responding to those who want to consign ideologies to the dustbin of history, I make what is perhaps an unexpected connection between ideologies and scientific theories to ward off what may amount to be an assault on the former's cognitive value. Although there are significant differences between ideologies and scientific theories, particularly in terms of objectivity and openness to innovation, I find that they are similar insofar as each is a cognitive fund which allows us to make sense of the world that we live in. Part of the sense-making quality of scientific theories is that they allow us to …
Scientific Discipline And The Origins Of Race: A Foucaultian Reading Of The History Of Biology, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Scientific Discipline And The Origins Of Race: A Foucaultian Reading Of The History Of Biology, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Philosophy Faculty Publications
Foucault's "power-knowledge" is a controversial concept. Brought into English-speaking theoretical circles less than two decades ago, its meaning and range of applicability are still in dispute. While no one denies that some fields of social scientific knowledge (such as criminology) intersect institutionally with mechanisms of power, these intersections do not seem, to many, to constitute any essential relation of "mutual reinforcement" between knowledge and power. If, in rare cases, politics and scientific research are admitted to be mutually constitutive, the results of their mingling are typically dismissed as propaganda or pseudo-science. A few thinkers are willing to allow the entirety …
The New Fuzziness: Richard Rorty On Education, Phillip E. Devine
The New Fuzziness: Richard Rorty On Education, Phillip E. Devine
Philosophy Faculty Publications
The New Fuzziness: Richard Rorty and Education is an examination of the works of Richard Rorty, focusing on his impact on education. Richard Rorty is "one of the most provocative and influential of contemporary thinkers writing in English." This unpublished manuscript is written by Dr. Philip E. Devine, Professor of Philosophy at Providence College.
Self-Overcoming In Foucault's Discipline And Punish, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Self-Overcoming In Foucault's Discipline And Punish, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Philosophy Faculty Publications
Prisons are veritable universities of crime. Within them young offenders learn both the values and the techniques of hardened criminals. In addition to these lessons in professional ethics and theory, aspiring criminals also get hands-on experience within prison walls, for prisons are also centers of criminal activity: drug and arms trafficking, rape, gang warfare, and murder. And, like all good universities, prisons help their proteges make the contacts they need to further their budding careers.
Asceticism/Askēsis: Foucault's Thinking Historical Subjectivity, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Asceticism/Askēsis: Foucault's Thinking Historical Subjectivity, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Philosophy Faculty Publications
In the Introduction to The Use of Pleasure Foucault calls his work an askēsis, "an exercise of oneself in the activity of thought." The "living substance of philosophy," Foucault writes, is the essay, "which should be understood as the assay or test by which, in the game of truth, one undergoes changes, and not as the simplistic appropriation of others for the purpose of communication." Foucault's work, then, does not simply report to us his conclusions or theories. Foucault is not primarily interested in imparting information. What he offers instead is a kind of exercise book.
Guilt As Management Technology: A Call To Heideggerian Reflection, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Guilt As Management Technology: A Call To Heideggerian Reflection, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Philosophy Faculty Publications
Martin Heidegger was born in 1889 in Messkirch, Germany, a small town in the Black Forest. He died in 1976. As these dates indicate, Heidegger lived through a time when Western civilization was undergoing a series of upheavals probably now only dimly imaginable to those of us who are the products of them. His life spanned a technological revolution that changed even the most basic patterns of human (and certainly not only human) life in the industrialized world.
Paradigms And Paraphernalia: On The Relationship Of Theory And Technology In Science, Daniel R. Denicola
Paradigms And Paraphernalia: On The Relationship Of Theory And Technology In Science, Daniel R. Denicola
Philosophy Faculty Publications
What is the connection between theory and technology in science? What is the relationship between the various activities of "doing" science and the instruments that enable these activities? My interest here is to explore these questions in a very broad and elementary way, occasionally citing examples plucked from the history of science. [excerpt]
To Philosophize Is To Learn To Die, Gary Shapiro
To Philosophize Is To Learn To Die, Gary Shapiro
Philosophy Faculty Publications
As the quintessential man of letters, Roland Barthes had the genial gift of being able to sympathize with an endless variety of discourses, texts, myths, and semiotic systems. The profusion of apparent subjects-Japan, Brecht, Balzac, photography, "mythologies," classical writing, the theater-is perhaps calculated to provoke the purist who insists on the values of thoroughness and well-grounded inquiry. At the same time, one would have to be obtuse to fail to recognize the critical projects that animate the many books, essays, and studies; these are explorations that put into question the often closed and crabbed commitment of the scholar or critic …
Foucault's Move Beyond The Theoretical, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Foucault's Move Beyond The Theoretical, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Philosophy Faculty Publications
Theory plays an important role in virtually every academic discipline currently vital. The specific functions of theory may differ from discipline to discipline, but it is difficult to think of any serious discipline that is able to dispense with it entirely; for theory, we usually assume, is quite simply the name of all instances of systematic speculation, all attempts at rational explication. Ordered mentation, most of us unwaveringly believe, is and must be theoretical. All that is not theoretical is either confused thinking – or, more positively, perhaps it is poetic – or it is not thinking at all, but …
Some Genres Of Post-Hegelian Philosophy, Gary Shapiro
Some Genres Of Post-Hegelian Philosophy, Gary Shapiro
Philosophy Faculty Publications
There are a number of important texts, sometimes treated as philosophical and sometimes as literary works, which do not usually find an appropriate audience. Paradigms of what I have in mind are: Kierkegaard's pseudonymous writings, almost all of Nietzsche, Marx's narratives of capital and class-struggle, Sartre's complex series of fictions, plays, treatises, critical performances and autobiography, and Heidegger's hypnotic meditations and textual exegeses. Responses by philosophers, especially Anglo-American ones, seldom take account of the specific literary forms of these works or of their authors’ very self-conscious concern with the problems and strategies of writing. It is true that the texts …
Styling Nietzsche: A Review Essay Of Jacques Derrida Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles, Gary Shapiro
Styling Nietzsche: A Review Essay Of Jacques Derrida Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles, Gary Shapiro
Philosophy Faculty Publications
Any examination of a text by Derrida challenges us to begin with an inquiry into its style. ''The Question of Style" was in fact the originally announced title of this essay which Derrida has since changed to Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles (Èperons: Les Styles de Nietzsche). Style is often regarded as a somewhat extraneous aspect of the philosophical enterprise; it is thought to be a variable form or container which may obstruct our comprehension of the matter or spirit of philosophical communication. Now it is well known that Derrida's whole enterprise involves a challenge to the "logocentric" tradition of philosophy according …
The Philosopher, The Teacher, And The Quest For Clarity, Daniel R. Denicola
The Philosopher, The Teacher, And The Quest For Clarity, Daniel R. Denicola
Philosophy Faculty Publications
As the weeks have come and gone, my inflated expectations for this address have been punctured. I once hoped to take the presidential torch into some unexplored recess of the philosophical cave, there to illuminate an unsuspected cavern that would sparkle with truth. Cut and polished crystals of new truth would be the yield from my address. But then I remembered Whitehead's dictum that "It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true." Thinking this to be particularly sound advice for one whose role is to close a long day of philosophizing, I decided to …
Habit And Meaning In Peirce's Pragmatism, Gary Shapiro
Habit And Meaning In Peirce's Pragmatism, Gary Shapiro
Philosophy Faculty Publications
The pragmatic movement has often been misunderstood; the most frequent misconceptions, which assimilated the philosophies of Peirce and James in particular to forms of positivism, reductionism, or crude voluntarism seem to be on the wane. Peirce's scholastic realism, his doctrine of signs, and his conception of truth as the unique and destined goal of inquiry now tend to receive the attention that was formerly reserved for his empiricism and pragmatism. A similar change in the estimation of James seems to be taking place insofar as his theory of truth is seen as much less simplistic than was formerly supposed; and …
The Origin Of Living Things, By Julius Seiler, Translated By Gerard Farley, Gerard Farley
The Origin Of Living Things, By Julius Seiler, Translated By Gerard Farley, Gerard Farley
Philosophy Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.