With the advent of digital technologies, questions concerning the ontology of cinema and issues of realism have returned in a renewed fashion. Everything seems to change with the loss of the indexical bond between the film image and physical reality, sometimes reaching apocalyptic conclusions regarding the end of cinema, if not of reality as such. In this paper, we engage with the indexical loss as a positive force, considering realism and reality in two seemingly opposing ways, both of which however can renew our understanding of cinema as well as our relationship with the world. We consider various moments in the past labelled as death(s) of cinema before exploring the importance of indexical accounts and looking at the crisis of this paradigm by revisiting the notion of realism through Gilles Deleuze. Towards the end of the paper, we investigate the practical results of such a theoretical stance in the works of filmmakers who have tested and experimented with the fabrics and facets of digital audio-vision.

This article offers three supplements to Badiou¡¯s claim that Hegel would have regarded cinema as the absolute art, had he lived to see it. First, I argue that we can understand Badiou¡¯s proposed sublation of theatre by cinema on analogy to Hegel¡¯s account of the sublation of sculpture by painting, both of which entail a transition from three-dimensionality to two-dimensionality. Second, I argue that we can understand Badiou¡¯s proposed sublation of comic negativity by cinema on analogy to Hegel¡¯s account of the sublation of comedy by the Revealed Religion, thereby demonstrating cinema to be the revealed art. Third, I argue that Hegel¡¯s philosophy contains the necessary resources for recognizing the novelty of the aesthetic event of cinema, in the precise Badiousian sense, after the so-called ¡°end of art.¡± Yet I suggest that this ultimately proves to bring Hegel much closer to Badiou than Badiou himself supposes.

In this time of the so-called psychedelic renaissance, it is ¡°mind-revealing¡± to rediscover the body of work on LSD therapy by Stanislav Grof. As researcher of the transformative potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness, his observations from over fifty years of LSD research offer a holistic and deeply philosophical approach towards the realms of the human unconscious. Reading his work, one cannot help but make connections to (certain genres in) cinema. While in the mid-twentieth century film theory developed from and in relation to psychoanalytic conceptions of the unconscious, this article proposes to look at the lessons from research in psychedelics, to propose a psychedelic re-orientation of the cinematographic unconsciousness. Rather than a conscious or unconscious and ideological representation of the world, this article argues that our media culture itself belongs to the vast realm of the unconscious where we have strange encounters that lead to profound questions about what it means to be human in a transforming world in crisis.

In this article I argue that Greta Gerwig¡¯s 2023 film, Barbie achieves a number of things. First, and most profoundly, it offers a series of reflections on what it means to be a human subject, especially by way of a distinction between being a doll and being human. Secondly, at stake in the notion of being human is the question of gender, so Barbie¡¯s themes of human subjectivity are ones that include a critique of gender norms and the continuing oppression of women. Thirdly, the film offers reflections on the manner in which activities like playing with dolls or watching movies can provide us with imaginative ways of negotiating with reality. Finally, Barbie reverses the traditional trajectory of films in the musical genre for, instead of taking characters on a journey which sees them venture out of the real world and into a realm where utopian feelings are experienced and expressed, Gerwig¡¯s film begins in the utopia of Barbie Land and then takes its main characters on a journey into the real world.

The outputs of generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) are often called ¡°synthetic¡± to imply that they are not natural but artificial. Against that use of the term, this article focuses on a different denotation of synthesis, stressing the unifying and compositional aspects of anything synthetic. The case of large language models (LLMs) is used as an example to address synthesis philosophically alongside notions of representation in contemporary computational systems. It is argued that synthesis in generative AI should be understood as a search for unity that is fundamental to the making of a representational reality. This representational reality, internal to computation, is a stable (if imperfect) whole, a togetherness of distributed representations. The article thus demonstrates that developing the philosophical concept of synthesis to investigate today¡¯s generative AI involves examining how structuring occurs in LLMs and studying the kinds of forms that structuring results in.

Most approaches to artificial moral agents (AMAs) apparently take it for granted that a machine could be moral. However, to think that the categories of morality or immorality apply to machines seems like a category mistake. This paper inquires into the conditions necessary for a machine to be moral. In order to do this, it first addresses the question what is a machine? It then argues that a form of agency is characteristic of machines in contradistinction of other technical objects and that given their particular characteristics as machines artificial agents fail to satisfy one of the basic pre-conditions of moral agents. In conclusion, I ask what would be necessary for an artificial agent to be a moral agent.

This paper will study the Hanian critique of technology and dataism, as well as its implications. For this purpose, we will investigate the Heideggerian bases on which his thought is based, which show the modern essence of technology as a current stage of the metaphysics of presence. It will then be shown how the Hanian thesis accepts these premises in order to present dataism as an intervening agent in our horizons of understanding, as well as an element of contemporary systems of control. Despite the value of this contribution, which challenges the alleged neutrality of technology, its adherence to the Heideggerian thesis prevents us from conceiving of other modes of uncovering and unfolding the poietic facet of technique.

In this paper I take a philosophy of technology approach to so-called ¡°creative AI.¡± In light of the disruptions promised by generative AI systems, I explore the way AI may give cause to develop a philosophical concept of creativity for the new technological milieu, beyond those often found in AI models, based on human psychology alone. Largely framed by the process thought of Alfred Whitehead, the paper first engages in a critique of human-centric accounts of creativity that are dominant in the AI field, and then explores the way a process philosophy of technology can describe emerging creativity-technology relationships. The conclusion of the paper is twofold: the first is that creative AI systems should embrace a more contingent and complex concept of creativity in order to produce ¡°new, surprising, and valuable¡± objects in the world. The second is that one of the key roles of contemporary philosophy of technology is to rethink creativity as artificial in light of the potential of AI.

Classical liberalism stipulates that individuals may only reliably escape a state of war by joining a body politic whose unity is consolidated and preserved by the formation of a sovereign government. Frederick Douglass, through his own experience of slavery and then as a radical abolitionist critiquing the racialized laws and society of the United States, shows that there is an inherent scandal, a schism in the very idea of a body politic. This scandal cannot be overcome, but Douglass enacts a treatment for it through a polemical ethic that endeavors to reconstruct political community, expansively and inclusively understood, by ever again bringing the ideal, as a regulative idea, into confrontation with the real. By putting Douglass and the historical situation of his time into dialogue with the natural law tradition of Aquinas, Locke, and the American Founding, this essay argues that Douglass¡¯s thought and example provide a fresh way to address the crisis of liberal democracy in our time. This requires understanding the instability of the body politic as a source of strength rather than weakness, if properly confronted in a polemical ethics.

Fritz Mauthner¡¯s essay Die Philosophie und der Krieg, published in October 1914, is among the nationalist writings of Mauthner written during the First World War. The essay explores the question of returning to philosophy after the war. Asking this question, Mauthner examines the relationship between war and philosophy and argues that the two concepts do not share any substantial points of contact. During his discussion, an unspoken premise of the question about the return to philosophy is revealed: as the science of reason, philosophy cannot understand war. The profession of philosophy can neither contribute to a military victory nor end the people¡¯s suffering. Hence, philosophers should remain silent in times of war. Mauthner himself did not adhere to his demand. In 1914, he believed that Germany would be victorious, and emphasised in his essay that war reveals a new meaning of life by giving a meaning to death.

Hegel sees war as contributing positively to the experience of social and political life. Of course, his support for war is qualified in that the overall aim is to maintain peace and to mitigate the violence and destruc?tion of warfare. Nonetheless Hegel takes individual citizens to appreciate the achievement of social and political life in the light of war, and how the patriotism evidenced in war reinforces their recognition of the freedom and unity of public life. Hegel¡¯s support for war arises in part out of a real?ism that he shares with Hobbes. But he also considers the significance of war on more general philosophical grounds. War, like the life and death struggle between individuals that is set out in the Phenomenology, plays a role in the development of recognition. If the life and death struggle brings out the sociality of recognition, war is a graphic reminder of the social and public operation of freedom. While Hegel¡¯s philosophical justification of war and death make sense in the context of his wider philosophy, his dramatic depiction of death and war tends to supersede the systematic style of his philosophy. It is excessive in a way that is similar to how the figurative language of Hobbes¡¯s Leviathan supersedes Hobbes¡¯s own sense of the limits of language.

Detailing the logic of Clausewitz¡¯s depiction of war as the violent pursuit of the politics of submission, I read the recent protests in Iran as a feminist revolt against Iran¡¯s fundamentalist Islamic war on women. This war is institutionalized in the war-like violence of veiling, gender apartheid, and marriage and family law. Rebelling under the slogan ¡°Woman, Life, Freedom¡± the people of Iran tie the destiny of women to the destiny of all. The government has crushed the uprising. It has not quelled the protestors¡¯ demands. Signs of resistance continue as the rebellion inhales the hope of a time to come of freedom.

Nothing is more definitive of war than its relationship with peace. But what is peace? This paper investigates the problematic nature of peace in the philosophical discourse on war, by investigating two key strands of thinking. Firstly, Hobbes and Foucault see peace as the place where the impulses that give rise to war can be re-directed and even satisfied, often in disguise. Another strand, in Kant and Levinas, different but not fully separable from the first, sees peace as what lies beyond war, though war must be endured in order to reach it. These different accounts present war and peace not as binary opposites, nor even as fully distinguishable from one another. Instead, they are shown to be mutually dependant and entangled with one another. The paper ends with a brief analysis of the January 6, 2021 insurrection in the United States, in order to illustrate this complex entanglement between war and peace and reveal the obscure, even hallucinatory nature of the concept of peace.

This paper proposes a reading of Walter Benjamin¡¯s ¡°The Storyteller¡± in connection to what Nelly Richard, in her diagnosis of trau?matic forms of violence, has called ¡°catastrophes of meaning.¡± Written, like Freud¡¯s theory of trauma, in the wake of the first World War, I argue that Benjamin sees in storytelling the experience of an imparting or com?munication (Mitteilung) capable of conveying trauma without betraying its paradox¡ªand thus, without either interpreting its excesses as meaningless or reducing its absences to mere silences. Storytelling and the community of listeners it both depends on and institutes with its imparting, develops the possibility of a grammar of listening that would attend to what Richard diagnoses as the silences in traumatic testimony, the moments of rupture and breakdown that communicate the truth of its experience. Reading Benjamin along with Richard, the paper argues that Benjamin¡¯s theory of storytelling is an attempt to search out new ways of truly listening to the fractures and shattering of language resulting from traumatic forms of vi?olence, rather than merely filling the gaps left by their discontinuities and absences of ¡°meaning.¡±

Addressing the place of the Austrian poet, Georg Trakl, in the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, this article turns in particular to Trakl¡¯s poem ¡°A Winter Evening¡± in order to unfold a sense of language in dialogue with the poet. This engagement equally becomes the occasion for Gadamer to confront Heidegger, whose own reading of Trakl becomes both an inspiration and a challenge.

This essay offers a close reading of a poem written by Paul Celan in 1962: Ars Poetica 62. I choose this neglected text since it offers genu?ine insight into Celan¡¯s torturous relationship with German culture in the early 1960s especially against the background of the German unwilling?ness to confront the horrors of the war and camps. Celan situates this poem not only against German silence and forgetfulness, but against the way it defines them in terms of literary history¡ªespecially as concerns the German-Jewish (non-)conversation about identity, belongingness, and in?tegration. In terms of this tradition, Celan integrates two principal figures (H?lderlin & Kafka) to explore the contradictions, paradoxes, and caesu?rae of the recent German past. I also look at the role that Heidegger plays within the Rezeptionsgeschichte H?lderlins as it affects both Celan and the German philosophical tradition.

In this article, Pierre Hadot examines the late philosophy of Lud?wig Wittgenstein and the so-called ¡°linguistic turn¡± in philosophy and the social sciences. Although certain interpreters of Wittgenstein have thought that Philosophical Investigations shows philosophy to be predicated on a series of confusions based on the misuse of language, Hadot argues con?trarily that an understanding of Wittgenstein¡¯s idea of ¡°language games¡± ¡ªfar from ending philosophy¡ªallows us to see it anew and to discern the source of some of its deepest perplexities. Of particular concern is the notion of the ancient idea of philosophical discourse as intrinsically con?nected to various forms of apprenticeship or spiritual formation. It is in this context that the supposed inconsistencies and unusual repetitions of ancient philosophy can be understood. Only from the Middle Ages do philosophical language games begin slowly to become detached from certain kinds of training, of pedagogies connected to forms of life, and be?come texts¡ªand ¡°systems¡±¡ªin the sense of being written for the purposes of merely conventional reading.

The guiding suggestion of this article is intimated in the title: ¡°Platonism,¡± that set of ¡°philosophical positions¡± supposedly present in the Platonic dialogues (pre-eminently the ¡°theory of forms,¡± but also ¡°Pla?to¡¯s metaphysics,¡± his ¡°epistemology,¡± his ¡°moral theory,¡± his ¡°political theory¡± etc.) are not so much discovered in the dialogues as they are in?vented out of a very specific (mis) reading of those dialogues. And the first great ¡°mis-reader¡± was Aristotle, who, I argue, first made possible the set of assumptions about philosophy and about philosophic writing that, in turn, made anything like ¡°Platonism¡± possible.

What is the relationship between language and experience? This question was a central concern of the eminent Kyoto School philosopher and lay Zen master Ueda Shizuteru (1926¨C2019). In fact, this question has long been a focal issue of the Zen tradition. Famously, if also paradox?ically, the Zen tradition has claimed to ¡°not to rely on words and letters¡± even while producing volumes of texts: poetry and didactic discourses as well as encounter dialogues (mond¨­) and k¨­an collections. Critics have accused Zen of being self-contradictory in this regard, yet Ueda demonstrates that Zen¡¯s paradoxical ambivalence toward language is not a problem, but rather the point. Moreover, he explains how Zen teach?ings and practices can help us radically rethink the relationship between language and experience after the ¡°linguistic turn¡± in philosophy. In this article, I examine Ueda¡¯s contributions to the philosophy of language by bringing his thought into critical dialogue with Continental philosophers such as Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Gadamer as well as with some scholars of Zen. In short, Ueda rejects both the view that we are trapped within the bounds of language and the view that we could meaningfully dwell in a world outside of language. Rather, he argues, in everyday life as well as¡ªin an intensified manner¡ªin Zen practice and poetic expression, we are called on to engage in a ceaseless movement of ¡°exiting language and exiting into language.¡±

Hans-Georg Gadamer reads Georg Trakl¡¯s ¡°Ein Winterabend¡± (¡°A Winter Evening¡±) almost in the way Martin Heidegger does, but he alters Heidegger¡¯s interpretation of a single image in the poem. Whereas Heidegger sees the image ¡°Golden blooms the tree of grace¡± in terms of candlelight on a church altar, Gadamer sees it as the glow of a kerosene lantern, perhaps in a country inn. That one alteration, this essay argues, brings Gadamer closer to the Trakl-world than Heidegger ever manages to be.

¡°Irrealis¡± grammatical moods, such as the subjunctive, provoke linguistic, literary, and phenomenological questions. What is the ontolog?ical status of the domain revealed by irrealis moods? How does it solicit signification? Is it a mere illusion or a distraction from the real? I propose not only that our ventures into the irreal are indispensable ways of making sense of things, but that the irreal is necessary to the being of language and to our own being.

This essay takes as its point of departure Jacques Derrida¡¯s anal?ysis of the phantasm of a mother tongue in his recently published seminar from 1995¨C1996 on hospitality (Hospitalit¨¦ I, ?ditions du Seuil, 2021). The essay begins by showing that Derrida¡¯s analysis of this phantasm is per?fectly consistent with several of his most important works of the 1960s (from Of Grammatology to Voice and Phenomenon) on the auto-affection of speech and the phantasm of self-presence to which it gives rise. But the essay then demonstrates how those earlier analyses of language and voice are supplemented in Hospitalit¨¦ by important reflections on what were then very new teletechnologies¡ªincluding the cell or mobile phone¡ªthat do not, as we might have thought, deflate the phantasm of self-presence and of a natural mother tongue but actually lend themselves to it. What these teletechnologies thus end up underscoring, according to Derrida, is the original exappropriation at the heart of all language, including the so-called mother tongue.

By Aristotle¡¯s own admission, homonymy and amphiboly, or syntactic homonymy, are unlikely to be accidental features of the Greek language (nor of any language, nor of language as such), but rather a radical evil that can at best be subdued, through recourse to categories, for example. Or we could choose to follow the sophists and exploit it by aiming at an essentially sonorous consensus. But then such texts would constitute a radical evil for translation.

Didi-Huberman conceptualizes images as unstable and incongruent events in disagreement with the art historiographic discourses that reduce visuality to the contents of representation. I analyze the link between Freud¡¯s dream-theory and Didi-Huberman¡¯s philosophy of images, focusing on the notion of dreams and images as instance of (up)rising against repression and erasure. Didi-Huberman does not simply ¡°apply¡± psychoanalysis to disrupt the dominant art historiography; his interpretation of the dream book speaks to his originality as a reader of Freud who brings to the fore the importance of visual categories in psychoanalysis. Viewing images as disunified and ¡°rent¡± has also political implications. The name of this power in Didi-Huberman¡¯s project is anadyomene (¡°she that rises¡±); the imaginal rhythm of pendular dialectical movement between appearance and disappearance. I discuss Didi-Huberman¡¯s analyses of photographs of camps and ghettos, and of uprisings, which highlight the link between the imaginal unconscious and aesthetics of anadyomene, and political subjectivization and resistance.

In this 1996 interview, published here in English translation for the first time, Ren¨¦ Girard retraces some of the main aspects of his mimetic theory, such as the mimetic nature of desire and sacrificial scapegoating. In particular, Girard focuses on the similarities and differences between the role of sacrifice in primitive societies and in our contemporary Western society. Girard argues that fashion is essentially mimetic and that nowadays fashions incline towards forms of negative escalation, and finds evidence of such ¡°minimalism¡± both in art and literature. In Girard¡¯s view, all forms of scapegoating are founded on the crisis of differences, and the victimage mechanism is a fundamental structure of society. Girard concludes by advocating for a renunciation of rivalry, which he argues is one of the fundamental messages of the Christian Gospels.

Simone de Beauvoir¡¯s discussion of the place of aging and menopause in The Second Sex offers only brief glimmers of older women¡¯s agency tucked in among descriptions of the female elderly frantically, but futilely, searching for meaningful roles. Aging is particularly difficult to think through from an existentialist perspective that emphasizes agency and control over one¡¯s world. Beauvoir¡¯s later work in The Coming of Age offers more carefully detailed perspective for considering aging and the meaning of the sacrifice of life¡¯s projects. The difficulty of maintaining a sense of identity and meaning increases as agency becomes limited and the weight of one¡¯s past life and decisions becomes greater. Moving from The Second Sex to The Coming of Age in dialogue with Beauvoir clarifies when loss of control and agency destroys life¡¯s value, but also when a deliberate choice to sacrifice agency may be meaningful and value-laden.

In this review, Hegel responds to criticisms leveled against his philosophy by the anonymous author of Ueber die Hegelsche Lehre, oder: absolutes Wissen und moderner Pantheismus (1829). Frustrated by his interlocutor¡¯s apparent inability to coherently interpret his work, Hegel scathingly attempts to discredit the character of the text in focus and its author¡¯s critical capacity. He does so by showcasing examples of misrepresentation and misunderstanding in the author¡¯s writing. Hegel contests the increasingly common charge of ¡°pantheism¡± being leveled against him at that time, wielded here by the anonymous author in a fairly unoriginal comparison between Hegel¡¯s ¡°doctrine¡± and Spinoza¡¯s system. This review gives insight into the character of early theological responses to Hegel, and highlights Hegel¡¯s polemical tendencies.

In this 2017 conversation, Gianni Vattimo discusses with Paolo Diego Bubbio the core themes of his own philosophical journey. Vattimo first comments on the legacy of his mentor Luigi Pareyson and on the differences between Pareyson¡¯s conception of the relation between truth and interpretation and his own. Vattimo and Bubbio then elaborate on the return to Hegel and the possibility of a ¡°hermeneuticized¡± Hegelianism. The participants also discuss Vattimo¡¯s view of religion and the role that the Christian notion of caritas plays in his ¡°weak hermeneutics.¡± Finally, Vattimo comments on his recent political writings and on his view of a ¡°hermeneutic communism,¡± arguing that revolution is possible only as a collective inner transformation. Vattimo concludes by mentioning his recent essays, collected under the title Being and Its Surroundings, in which he presents the radical thesis of Heidegger¡¯s philosophy as a new form of theology.

In 1972, Ren¨¦ Girard¡¯s La Violence et le Sacr¨¦ was published, bringing widespread attention to his insights correlating religion, violence, and social and cultural formation. In 1992, the British philosopher Gillian Rose published an acerbic critique of Girard, taking issue with his demonization of the language and concept of sacrifice. For Rose, this placed Girard in the company of ¡°postmodern¡± philosophers whose distrust of modern rationality and embrace of messianic alternatives amounted to an ¡°exodus¡± from the imperium of reason. This article will revisit the dispute thirty years on: is it true that Girard has ¡°left the city,¡± as Rose maintains? The charge is countered by a demonstration of the connection between Girardian theory and two areas of philosophical investigation: theodicy and the problem of evil; and political theory in the light of the ¡±return of the theo-political.¡± In the light of these, an overall re-assessment of Rose¡¯s critique will be offered. Throughout, the persistence of ¡±sacrifice¡± as a philosophical and theological category will be noted.

In this text, Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Solger (1780¨C1819), an influential but often overlooked figure in German Idealism and German Romanticism, offers an account on the relationship between revelation and philosophical thought. For Solger, the being of the eternal reveals itself in and to existence as a ¡°creation out of nothing.¡± Similarly, existence seen from the position of the being of the eternal is the ¡°nothing of being.¡± For the being of the eternal to enter into existence requires the sacrifice of existence, that is, the annihilation of the nothing of being. For Solger, the task of philosophy is to think these oppositions of the eternal and existence as a complete ¡°passing over¡± movement, one which is comprised of creation and annihilation. Ultimately, ¡°true philosophy¡± should attempt to think the ¡°absolute fact¡± of revelation, namely, revelation as both thought in consciousness and experienced in its actuality in existence.

Edith Stein and Simone Weil both trained as Red Cross nurses for wartime service. For both philosophers, the activity of a nurse demands an empathic attention to the afflicted. Stein envisions herself as an attendant nurse in her memoirs; Weil similarly casts herself in a nurse¡¯s role in her proposal for an elite, sacrificial nurses¡¯ corps. This essay examines the practice of wartime nursing as a school for, and an expression of, their complimentary philosophies of human beings seen in their physical, epistemological, and spiritual interrelatedness.

In this article, Ferraris examines the notion of sacrifice in the philosophy of Heidegger. Focusing specifically¡ªbut not exclusively¡ªon Heidegger¡¯s Beitr?ge zur Philosophie, Ferraris shows that sacrifice is a fundamental aspect of Heidegger¡¯s thematization of human finitude. More specifically, Ferraris shows the central role played by sacrifice in highlighting the radical level of truth and authenticity that the event of death carries within itself. Hence, Ferraris argues that it is through sacrifice¡ªand mourning¡ªthat we understand what death is, as the self-transcendence of Dasein makes the transcendence of Being possible.

Following decades of neglect, the work of the German Jewish philosopher, literary author, cultural critic, and poet G¨¹nther Anders (1902¨C1992) is gaining increasing recognition in the English-speaking world. This translation of ¡°R¨¦sistance heute¡± (Resistance Today) makes one of Anders¡¯s most programmatic and polemical short texts available. Published at the height of his anti-nuclear activism, ¡°Resistance Today¡± is the written version of a speech Anders delivered in November 1962 upon acceptance of the northwest Italian city of Omegna¡¯s Resistance Prize (other notable recipients included Jean-Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon). It first appeared in print in the West German left-wing journal Das Argument in November 1963. Clearly written for the occasion, the text condenses (and often further radicalizes) key premises about the end of history, the amoral character of work, and the continuity between Nazi totalitarianism, the nuclear age and the world of consumerism that are developed in great nuance across a range of books that Anders had recently published. Key co-ordinates include: Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen 1 (The Obsolescence of Human Beings 1, 1956), his groundbreaking critique of technology; Der Mann auf der Br¨¹cke (The Man on the Bridge, 1959), a philosophical travel diary occasioned by Anders¡¯s 1958 visit to Japan and his participation at the World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs in Tokyo; Burning Conscience (1961), a correspondence with the American reconnaissance pilot Claude Eatherly, who scouted the target area before the Enola Gay went on to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima. It seems likely that Burning Conscience, which turned into an international bestseller, occasioned the award of the prize.

The brilliant Aspasia owes her fame to two men. She was the beloved and revered companion of Pericles, the most powerful and prestigious Athenian of the city¡¯s golden age (460¨C430 BCE), and the privileged and respected interlocutor of Socrates. Her position as a valued companion and recognised intellectual¡ªexceptional in a city where custom dictated that silence and invisibility represented a woman¡¯s greatest glory¡ªwas no doubt connected with her status as a metic (resident alien). This status, while denying her the right to become the legal spouse of the man whose life she shared, allowed her¡ªat the risk of a somewhat sulphurous reputation¡ªthe freedom to be seen, to think, and to express herself. While the beautiful woman from Miletus has remained silent, if we assume that the insults she was showered with were essentially aimed at her lover, the leader of the democrats, the sources we have at our disposal allow us to study her relationships with Socrates and Pericles.

In this essay, Cavarero thematically highlights the main issues of feminist thought, by criticizing the patriarchal system and its theoretical products¡ªsuch as the concepts of complementarity of the sexes and of equality¡ªthrough the lens of sexual difference. In doing so, she radically criticizes the so-called binary economy, namely the interpretative model on which the patriarchal system is based, in which the sole male sex is self-represented, establishing at the same time a representation of the female sex that is functional to men. Accordingly, by criticizing both the traditional and the postmodern approach, she aims to rethink from a feminist point of view the question of the subject, of the identity, and of the self. In this respect, she advances an account of the self as relational, namely a self that is given only through its relationship with others, hence rejecting the abstract universality of the male subject of traditional metaphysics. Subsequently, Cavarero presents a notion of identity as an interplay of relations that makes it fluid and dynamic, and not as fixed and permanent, as per the metaphysical tradition that understands it as universal substance. In conclusion, she argues that the unicity of the self¡ªand of each human being¡ªcan be grasped only through a narrative discourse that counterposes the philosophical investigations on the essence of an absolute and universal principle of reality, and emphasizes the singular and unrepeatable nature of the self.

G¨¹nther Anders¡¯s poem Du kleiner Fischerman is read here as a text contribution to the irruption that is violence and its enduring (omnipresent) aftermath. The essay includes a discussion of transmedial expression, including dramatization, or television and social media, text and subtext, as well as the inspiration of Anders¡¯s poem as a work of art continuing in our times: the ongoing exclusion(s) of certain names and certain thinkers as of certain musical modes, including electronic musical works, as of voices and of collective memory, or oblivion. Reading Raymond Williams along with Anders and Adorno on television updated in today¡¯s era of screen-being, this essay reads the challenges of on-line music magazines, Leonard Cohen and k.d.lang, between modes of memorialization, including a reading of Anders¡¯s poetic memorial on the violence of Walter Benjamin¡¯s death to conclude with Ivan Illich on the ongoing expropriation of death (and health) today.

In this essay from 1933, Simone Weil¡ªonly 24 at the time¡ªoffers her analysis of war, particularly as it appears in leftist discourse and revolutionary movements, and set in the context of a brewing war with Germany. In Marxism, and in leftist theory more generally, Weil finds no consistent attitude towards armed conflict, and certainly no principled opposition to it. Through certain historical falsifications and philosophical feints, leftists¡ªof which Weil counted herself¡ªend up propagating the very forms of oppression to which they declare themselves opposed. For Weil, ¡°la guerre r¨¦volutionnaire est la tombe de la revolution¡± [revolutionary war is the tomb of the revolution], as long as workers are denied the means of waging it without a state machine controlling them, without military courts, and without execution for desertion. The conventional attitude towards (and the means of) revolutionary war threatens, in the words of Marx, to perfect the state apparatus rather than to overthrow it.

This paper addresses the question of what discourse ethics might have to contribute to increasingly urgent issues in intergenerational justice. Discourse ethics and deliberative democracy are often accused of neglecting the issue, or, even worse, of an inherently presentist bias that disregards future generations. The few forays into the topic mostly seek to extend to future people the ¡°all affected principle¡± according to which only those norms are just to which all affected can rationally consent. However, this strategy conflicts with core commitments of discursive ethics, as it renders agreement hypothetical and discursive participation virtual. I will attempt a supplementary route toward a connection between discourse ethics and intergenerational justice. Discourse ethics must be concerned, in what Habermas calls the symbolic reproduction of the lifeworld, with the emergence of rational minds capable of assessing reasons for proposed norms and policies, and such emergence is an intrinsically intergenerational affair. Symbolic reproduction links overlapping and non-overlapping generations in what has been elaborated as a chain-of-concern model, which I show to be linked to forms of indirect reciprocity among more than two parties. I conclude by discussing some consequences of this model for the all affected principle when viewed as specifically applied to future generations.

Act Three of Gabriel Marcel¡¯s play, The Emissary, is presented here in English for the first time. The introductory essay introduces Marcel and several of his best known themes, especially the distinctions between problem and mystery, and primary and secondary reflection. Focusing on the relationship between experience and conceptual knowledge, it discusses Marcel¡¯s attempt to argue philosophically for a return to ordinary experience. The role of drama and art in the recovery of the realm of mystery is also highlighted. The play illustrates these themes at the concrete level as it raises many of the challenging situations and moral dilemmas that emerged from the occupation of France by a brutal enemy during World War II. The realities of deceit, betrayal and blackmail are all in the air, as are real worries about reprisals, violence, and irreparable loss. In a moving, gripping drama, Marcel portrays the occupation as an occasion for deep soul-searching among the characters, in the midst of great suffering and loss, and, rather than passing easy judgment, he suggests a journey toward healing, one inspired by compassion, honesty, courage, and faith.

The text presented here is an edited transcription of a thirteen-page unpublished typescript titled ¡°Heidegger and the Mystical Tradition¡± by Reiner Sch¨¹rmann. It dates back to the time following the completion of Sch¨¹rmann¡¯s book on Meister Eckhart and exhibits the preliminary conception of the former¡¯s famous ¡®practical a priori.¡¯ Focusing on the relation between Heidegger¡¯s meditative thinking and a mystical tradition inaugurated by Meister Eckhart, the text retrieves the steps of the latter¡¯s path to Releasement as a practical transformation of existence (Part I). In so doing, it provides a detailed account of Releasement as the condition for a peculiar experience of thinking ¡°in which one fundamental attitude manifests itself throughout an itinerary of human existence and which tends to make this itinerary the very condition for the understanding of truth.¡± By hinging on Heidegger¡¯s different acceptations of ¡®letting-be¡¯¡ªas well as on his verbal understanding of Being as Anwesen (presencing) and Ereignis (appropriation-event)¡ªthe text indicates Releasement as the coincidence of Being¡¯s and man¡¯s ways to be and shows how it is in the very ¡°urgency of a new existence and thought¡± that the proximity between Heidegger and Meister Eckahrt¡¯s mystical tradition comes to the fore.

In this text Cassin and Narcy begin their reassessment of the mode of thought that is sophistry, which has historically functioned as the (negative) ¡°other¡± of classical philosophy. To this end, the authors first present a close reading of Book Gamma of Aristotle¡¯s Metaphysics, understood as a concerted ¡°strategy against sophism¡± that, in establishing a logical basis for metaphysics, seeks to relegate the former to the sidelines once and for all. What proves ineliminable in this operation, however, and which ¡°resurfaces beyond metaphysics,¡± is discourse itself. Cassin and Narcy then set about exploring the contemporary resurgences of sophistry, first through the discourse of (novelistic) fiction, then, more rigorously, in the work of Jacques Lacan, whose own thought poses radical challenges to the relation of language to meaning

This essay is a meditation on the relevance of the concept of Zeitgeist for thinking about the ills of our contemporary globalized world. Exploring the heritage of the term from Roman times through to Herder, Hegel, and others, Malpas argues that Zeitgeist (literally: spirit of the time) nevertheless includes a notion of place such that time always unfolds in and through place. It is Heidegger who, for Malpas, most illuminatingly thinks this belonging-together of place and time. Malpas explores the disorientation and anxiety created by the spatialization of the modern world, which imagines that horizons of time and place can be dissolved into unbounded, undifferentiated space.

Philosophy has been a subversive practice since the time of Socrates. Recognizing no authority other than the persuasiveness of dialectics, philosophy designated a thinking beyond the boundaries of the city: an estranging conception, an elsewhere of thought. It is from this critical distance that philosophy derived its political vocation. In the era of global capitalism, however, philosophy has become institutionalized and lost its subversive potential. To this end, philosophy has accepted that it should no longer pose too many questions, especially the ones which are most fundamental, resulting in a dearth of in-depth public questioning, and the slumber of critical reasoning. Hence, philosophy needs to rediscover its political vocation in order to reawaken consciences and to once again embrace that theoretical and practical commitment which never accepts anything without critical reflection. By doing so, it will be possible to restore philosophy to its original role as a guiding light for the community.

The ancient Ephesian thinker Heraclitus, in his aphoristic writings, described the dynamic coming-to-be of things according to a number of obscure metaphors. In this essay, Hyland ponders whether there is a paradigmatic experience according to which a number of these metaphors can best be understood. Gathering together and thoughtfully retranslating a number of Greek terms including polemos (often translated as ¡°war¡±), eris (¡°strife¡±), agon (¡°contest¡±), and paidia (¡°play¡±), Hyland argues that Heraclitus¡¯s metaphors can be understood as referring to an experience of athletic play. Hyland explores the significance of athletic play, with its stance of responsive openness, as a paradigm for thinking and living.

The controversies unleashed by psychoanalysis never seem to stop repeating themselves. If what psychoanalysis has to say is true, then, by its own lights, it has to be controversial. Controversies are thus a privileged place to see this truth and this resistance in violent and lurid action. Take infant experience and bastardry. Every kid is a bit of a bastard, and the establishment of this infantile bastardry conditions subsequent repetitions of the organism: that breast is persecuting me, these are not my real parents, I did not borrow your kettle. Just how much of a bastard is this baby? The answers psychoanalysis comes up with depend on how it formulates the vicissitudes of differential repetitions, formations of the unconscious. Yet there remains something puzzling about repetition: if eros is constantly getting itself into nasty situations as a matter of course, are there still other factors (perhaps even more sinister) at work? Because of his refusal to dismiss his own puzzlement, Jacques Lacan persistently returned to the relation between desire and drive, reformulating his own theory as he went. At one moment, as we shall see, he comes to discriminate between a surprising number of (at least 3!) kinds of death.

In this paper Abbagnano outlines his conception of ¡°positive existentialism¡± as a philosophy of freedom and of responsible choice, in opposition to any form of dogmatism. In our everyday existence, we constantly face possibilities, meaning we are always required to make choices between the different alternatives we are presented with. Abbagnano thus argues that philosophy must provide a criterion for our existential choices, which he identifies in the possible itself. Existentialism is then understood as that philosophy which establishes valid criteria according to which human beings can choose, and that can reduce the possibility of error and constitute norms and rules of conduct. Abbagnano maintains that choosing wisely and freely means that the choice one makes in a specific moment can and should be renewed and repeated under any circumstance. Accordingly, our task is to establish criteria that will not lead us to irreparable error, but will allow us to implement a practice of always renewable choices.

The real invariably functions today as a means of intimidation and constraint. That we consistently fail to overcome this static conception stems from the fact that we do not know what the real actually is, nor do we know how to access it. To address this shortcoming, Badiou looks first to the well-known story of the death of Moli¨¨re to show how all access to the real necessarily entails division¡ªnot only a division of the real from semblance, but also a division of the real itself. Staying with theatre, Badiou then turns his attention to Pirandello to pursue the idea that, since the real is always manifested within semblance, its exposure demands not simply that its ¡°mask must be torn off as semblance,¡± but moreover that ¡°the mask itself demands that it be taken as real.¡± Applying these principles to our present situation, Badiou proceeds to isolate the contemporary semblance of real capitalism¡ªthe crucial mask that needs to be torn off today¡ªas nothing other than democracy itself, noting that, as with all access to the real, its division will necessarily entail a measure of violence.

In this article de Beauvoir defends a conception of literature as a kind of unveiling of something that exists outside itself, a mode of action which reveals certain truths about the world. What we call ¡°literature¡± is eminently capable of grasping the world¡ªa world which de Beauvoir, following Jean-Paul Sartre, conceives of as a ¡°detotalized totality¡±; one that is real and independent of us, which exists for all, but is only graspable through our own projects and our perspectives. Yet far from keeping us stranded within our unique subjectivities, literature restores to subjective experience its generality; it allows other to ¡°taste¡± the world as it exists for others. We can communicate through literature because in it our world, our languages, and our projects overlap. Ultimately, for de Beauvoir, literature is what allows us to see the world as others see it¡ªall the while remaining, irreducibly, ourselves.

In this 1966 interview, published here in English translation for the first time, Michel Foucault positions himself as a representative of a ¡®generation¡¯ of French thinkers who turned towards the analysis of ¡®structures¡¯ and away from the phenomenological approaches that had previously dominated French philosophy. In this, Foucault claims inspiration not only from older French scholars¡ªnamely Georges Dum¨¦zil, Jacques Lacan, and Claude L¨¦vi-Strauss¡ªbut also from the science of genetics.

In this paper, Pareyson provides an analysis of the existential features of the philosophies of Jaspers and Heidegger, that he considers as the two greatest philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century. In Jaspers, Pareyson identifies the idea that truth is both singular and one, meaning that it can be grasped only through a personal interpretation and never in absolute terms. This implies that truth and person are inseparably tied to each other and that existence carries transcendence in itself: just as truth transcends our personal knowledge of it, Being itself transcends our personal existence. Moreover, Pareyson sees Heidegger as the initiator of an existential ontology that poses a fundamental relation between the human being and Being itself; hence, the philosophical discourse on human existence inevitably turns into a discourse on Being. Therefore, Heidegger finally manages to overcome traditional metaphysics and its forgetfulness of the question of Being itself, by giving such question a central role within philosophical reflection. In conclusion, Pareyson maintains that Jaspers and Heidegger are able to make the voice of Being been heard, in contrast with the humanist and nihilist tendencies of twentieth century philosophy.

In ¡°Pain,¡± Hans-Georg Gadamer offers several reflections on the experience of pain and its importance for both modern medicine and hermeneutic thought. Having already celebrated his 100th birthday at the time of this lecture, Gadamer speaks of his own experience with polio and the pains of old age, and the influence that his friend and physician, Paul Vogler, had on his approach to the treatment of pain. In the year 2000, Gadamer is concerned with the dominance of technology and chemical ¡°pain management¡± in the professional medical community, which has largely forgotten the more natural or traditional healing methods in approaching pain and recovery. In light of this, what is crucial for Gadamer is that individuals approach the challenges of pain by taking an active part in their own recovery. For Gadamer, hermeneutics speaks to these encounters with pain and recovery as decisive for human life and understanding.

Vattimo argues that the core of Gadamer¡¯s hermeneutics resides in the identification of interpreting with changing the world, and analyzes the ontological turn in hermeneutics in light of such identification. Vattimo advocates for a radical reading of Gadamer¡¯s claim ¡°Being, which can be understood, is language¡± and maintains that hermeneutics requires a profound revolution in ontology, overcoming the idea of Being as a given object ¡°out there¡±. In light of the dialogue that Gadamer¡¯s Truth and Method establishes with Heidegger¡¯s Being and Time, Vattimo concludes that hermeneutic ontology has its core in the identification of reality with the history of effects; not as a descriptive proposition, but as the meaning of Being in whose horizon hermeneutics interprets the experience of the world. A coherent philosophy of interpretation, conceived as a call to transform the objective reality of things ¡°out there¡± into truth, namely into language and project, actually changes the world.

In this essay, Weil undertakes a meditation on the idea of ¡°reading¡±, which she thinks can shed new light on a diverse range of conceptual and experiential ¡°mysteries¡±, especially with respect to our existential responses to the world. A central concern is how we ascribe meaning and respond to phenomena. She argues that, for the most part, our reading of the world and the things in it are immediate, not subject to ¡°interpretation¡±, at least as this is regularly conceived. Further, Weil says, our readings of the world are invariably tied to particular kinds of valuation, of ethical assessment and orientation, which appear to us as both obvious and immediate. This immediacy of reading, however, does not entail that our readings cannot be changed or challenged¡ªonly that such a change or challenge requires a particular kind of labor.

Alain Badiou embarks on a close reading of Hegel¡¯s Aesthetics to consider how his own recently-developed concept of the ¡°index¡±¡ªdesignating the crucial point of mediation between finite works and the absolute (or the means by which ¡°works of art obtain their seal of absoluteness¡±)¡ªmight figure therein, as well as to explore what Hegel would have made of cinema, had he lived to experience it. After first examining the various ways that this ¡°index of absoluteness¡± functions in the Hegelian conception of art¡ªboth according to its canonical forms (sculpture, architecture, painting, music, and poetry including theatre) and its historical classifications (classical, symbolic and romantic)¡ªBadiou proceeds to investigate whether Hegel¡¯s aesthetic system could and should have foreseen the eventual birth of cinema, together with its general characteristics; and whether this new development would ultimately refute or confirm his famous thesis on the end of art.