Rolling Philosophy

Laruelle kind of sounds like a parody of continental philosophy; philosophy reduced entirely to self-reflection.

I thought this was a useful discussion of the ambiguities of the later Foucault's relationship to neoliberal thought and policy: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/12/foucault-interview/

reminds me that I was bemused this past summer when a professor running a seminar I attended casually referred to Foucault as "a man of the Right."

that piece is interesting but strikes me as WRONG idk

i mean im out of my depth or w/e but isnt that just 'why are we letting race/gender/criminality/sexuality take precedence over class' part 109343239234

post colonial studies wd like a word w/ you etc

I had a similar reservation--although I think the discussion of Foucault's intervention as one shifting the focus of his analysis from the proletariat to groups excluded from wage labor makes sense as a descriptive claim, Zamora's claim that after Foucault, "dominations are more and more theorized and thought outside of questions of exploitation" is debatable--most intersectional analyses worth the name will look at the ways immiseration and exploitation interact with other modes of domination. I also think the Birth of Biopolitics lectures have a more ambiguous stance on neoliberalism than Zamora suggests here. At the very least, Foucault's claim that under neoliberalism the market is posited as the arbiter of truth, eclipsing conceptions of politics as a practice related to justice, can be used more polemically than Foucault perhaps intended it to be (as in Wendy Brown's recent lectures on neoliberalism). I'd expect Zamora's reading of the late Foucault to be more nuanced in his actual book, anyway.

not to derail the conversation, but as far as Foucault distancing himself from the existing left, was reading this interview where he dismisses polemic as a form: foucault.info/foucault/interview.html

he almost seems to be trolling in his complete refusal to admit that polemic might have legitimate uses

a polemic against polemic is p brill

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/12/beyond-the-welfare-state/ this response to the zamora interview is quite good

Thanks, Merdeyeux; that's the most useful response I've seen so far.

http://theroughground.blogspot.ca/2014/12/what-is-dissertation.html

This is fun. I never did a PhD, but I can relate. Trying to write about Wittgenstein, when Wittgenstein himself is challenging the form and function of philosophical writing, was weird and hard.

i wish you could tell my search committees that

tremendously niche comparison that came to mind today - wwe nxt's adrian neville and p3te w0lfendale

Does anyone here have recommendations on the topic of civil disobedience (beyond Thoreau or Rawls, which I've read)? Been eyeing Kimberley Brownlee's Conscience and Conviction, for example..,,

http://homevideo.icarusfilms.com/new2005/ist.html

^ Have any of you seen this?

I put up a thread on ILF: Philosophy on Film

I saw The Ister a few years ago, so my memory of it is a little hazy. I recall it as being more staid formally than I'd expected and sort of unremarkable in its take on Heidegger's relation to fascism (I'd love to see what someone like Chris Marker or Agnes Varda could have done with the same material), but it's worth watching if you're interested in Heidegger's reading of Hölderlin. The highlights for me were probably the segments with Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe.

I've enjoyed Holderlin's poetry v much this year and was reminded of Heidegger's lectures in a conversation last night. Love to read those but I don't fancy my chances although I can go with a kind of flow.

Alexander Kluge would've been perfect to make any doc out of this material.

Yeah, you're otm about Kluge, and I've been meaning to read those lectures at some point in my life. Heidegger's comments on Hölderlin in his essays on poetry are definitely seductive, although the underlying narrative of the history of being that Heidegger's reading presupposes is politically repellent in a lot of obvious ways. I'm more receptive to Adorno's attempt at a counter-reading, "Parataxis," although I really haven't spent enough time reading Hölderlin intensively.

i tried to see that but i had just broken up with my girlfriend and she came to the one showing there was in town because she thought i would be there, so i left not long after like the first 20 minutes of river-meandering footage

after that i figured i would just let it be

Philosophy Matters ‏@PhilosophyMttrs Dec 20

JUST WHAT OUR PROFESSION NEEDS : woody allen's new film is about a philosophy professor seducing a student ... http://buff.ly/1sHjm9j

lol srsly

This is what happens when you wish for philosophy on film.

The Ister wasn't that good but worth a watch. The film was filmed sorta boringly - especially when footage from Syberberg was cut into this.

Ha anyone see this? http://letterboxd.com/film/nietzsche-and-the-nazis/

As in the scenes lifted from Syberberg's Hitler.. showed this up as fairly inferior in comparison.

Can anyone recommend any good secondary literature on Holderlin's "On Judgment and Being"?

I'm out of my depth there, but maybe Dieter Heinrich's chapter "Holderlin on Judgment and Being: A Study in the History of the Origins of Idealism" in his essay collection The Course of Remembrance might be one place to start?

thanks for the rec -- that definitely helped quite a bit. I'm curious what else is out there as well -- its a very intriguing piece of work.

what does teh rolling philosophy thread think of carles' 'nothing matters'

feels derivative but ive only just started

An old prof of mine wrote this: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/what-alabamas-roy-moore-gets-right/?_r=0&pagewanted=all

I feel like the ontology of institutions being suggested here is a little simplistic, the idea that marriage_2 is simply a different institution from marriage_1. For one thing, the question "Is this the same institution or a new one?" seems perspective-relative. From our perspective, same-sex marriage may appear to be such a sharp break in the history of marriage that it has to be a new institution. But if a society that had no concept of marriage at all (pretend that they have accordingly different views of gender, family, and other concepts neighbouring on marriage) were to be taught about our institution(s) of marriage, same-sex marriage might not look like a significant change, or at least, not such a significant change as to offset everything that the two forms of marriage have in common.

I'm also not sure that "discarding the old institution," as opposed to modifying it, accurately describes what we want to do in introducing same-sex marriage - but I don't know, maybe we're deceived about what we want, or maybe this is just theoretical talk and doesn't need to impinge on anyone's everyday political consciousness.

hehe I know Brian

he's wrong that we can't change definitions at will though

I think what actually bugs me about this argument is the way it brushes over what might be the significance of our decision to use an old word in a new circumstance:

In our time, the word “marriage” is now undergoing a reference change. This is happening because of us, not the courts: we are making a social decision to apply an old word to a new institution. And why not? After all, it’s a better word than “schmarriage.”

Is he saying that it's basically arbitrary whether society decides to call the new institution marriage? That seems to deny something about the force that this word has for us. The fact that we continue to want to use the old word might be evidence that we haven't in fact transcended the old institution.

yeah it's not the word, but the concept expressed by that word, that matters. we can choose at any time to point the word "marriage" to a different concept. that's a weighty repointing, no doubt, but nothing more than repointing. the dynamics of such repointing are where the action is.

i see that Cambridge has finally published new translations of Hegel, but no Phenomenology yet:

http://www.cambridge.org/US/academic/subjects/philosophy/philosophy-texts/series/cambridge-hegel-translations

I suppose there's no reason i can't start with The Science of Logic anyhow...

"...The Science of Logic is a very provocative and interesting book, inspiring thinking in directions not thought before."
--George Lăzăroiu, PhD, Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, New York, Analysis and Metaphysics

hmm, yes...quite provocative.

who now

i have never heard of that institute before, but it's funny to think of some think-tank type coming across Hegel and thinking "well, this is pretty provocative and interesting!"

i dunno if u know ryan, but a draft of pinkard's new translation of the phenomenology is available online - http://terrypinkard.weebly.com/phenomenology-of-spirit-page.html. it is, however, ~problematic~. iirc he seems to try to simplify things to the serious detriment of what's actually being said, e.g. translating begriffe as 'concepts'.

friend of mine the other day claimed science of logic "could be successfully rebranded as a guide to software engineering" which i confess i found befuddling

I did not know, thanks for the link.

that's disappointing about the ~problematicness~ but I hope it will be immaterial to a dilettante such as myself. not sure what the point of a "simplified" Hegel would even be tbh.

ignorant question but what better could you do than 'concepts'?

'concept' would be fine, 'concepts' is very peculiar because it seems completely at odds with the kind of totality and the unified movement hegel is trying to evoke when he uses the singular term. or something like that. i've successfully erased a lot of hegel from my memory since i knew this point well.

like, 'concept' is a very difficult term in the phenomenology and seems a lot easier if it's rendered as 'concepts', but that's also wrong and so very very misleading

reading some eckart förster so i can go chill w/ a reading groop tmrrw - j. five months ago.

I presume this was "the 25 years of philosophy." what did you think? can someone with only a broad understanding of Kant/Hegel get something out of this book or is it just for specialists?

it's not for specialists - aims at a pretty high-level historical retelling that's meant to be revisionary for many readers - but some parts are a bit rough going, e.g. the fichte chapters

just doing the first hegel chapter tonite for our next meeting

im often overcome by this feeling that i dont know kant/hegel *well enough* and while im all for primary texts i wanted to find a good secondary text to dip my toes in the water.

this one has a very specific purpose, sometimes boringly so

but it is relevant to your german idealist interests?

but will not seem to go too deep at many points, as it's more concerned about lining up the basics in the exactly right way

re kant e.g. i think you will feel that you already know what F is telling you, he's just moving it around

i suppose i could stop being a wimp and dig out my old undergraduate copy of the first critique.

i reread a good chunk of it w/ the first part of F, it was good. he leans heavily on the A/B history, so i tried to read only the A version (which all existing translations make a pain in the ass btw).

yeah my cambridge edition combined them in some complicated scheme.

i search "kant hegel" on amazon and came across this: http://www.amazon.com/Logic-Limits-Philosophy-Kant-Hegel/dp/1137521740/

looks interesting!