Wednesday, December 19, 2018

New Death in June (!!!)

Brand new song is "The Trigger" from their forthcoming album, The Essence.

"Not only did I lose you, I lost myself too..."

Friday, December 7, 2018

Philosophies of art & beauty


This past semester's classes went exceptionally well. In particular I have to commend the students in my Philosophies of Art & Beauty class who did extremely well in handling what was for many of the students in that class their first philosophy class!  This was the second time I've taught the course while at Moravian and I stuck to the plan utilized so successfully the first time I taught it. In essence I basically followed the layout of the course that was taught to me when *I* was an undergraduate - topics, philosophers, textbook, and all.

Hofstadter and Kuhn's Philosophies of Art & Beauty knows of no comparison both in depth and breath if one is selecting a premier aesthetics text. While historically oriented it nevertheless provides students with clear fundamental concepts in a way that is also fresh and engaging with respect to young people and their views about art today.  I even decided to show the same rendition of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex that my professor showed to our class when I took the course and was so moved by it.



When teaching the course I begin with Plato on the good and the beautiful, discuss his theory of form, his theory of beauty found through the unity of variety, and his views on symmetry, order, harmony, measure, balance, and proportion. Next comes Aristotle on tragedy, techne' and technique in craft, the theory of form and matter with respect to creativity and the vision of the artist, and Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. Then was David Hume on taste and the role of the critic - asking whether beauty is in the eye of the beholder (a favorite question that students love to pose).  Then was Kant's four moments of the beautiful from The Critique of Judgment (by far the most important part of the course). We then read and discussed Schopenhauer on music, and ended with Nietzsche on tragedy, distinguishing Nietzsche's views from Aristotle's. What worked particularly well was using Nietzsche's The Dionysian Vision of the World in addition to The Birth of Tragedy, the former of which resonated with students in its clarity and audacity.

I have to say that along with courses like Continental Philosophy, Existential Philosophy, and Philosophy of Human Experience (Phenomenology) this course is certainly one of my favorites to teach because it provides more than ample opportunity for students to find a topic that genuinely interests them and they then pursue that topic working out how it is relevant in their lives.

This semester's class went really well and I am very proud of the students who worked so hard and learned so much.




Saturday, November 17, 2018

Why is ethics impossible for object-oriented ontology?

Speculative theists during the early to mid 1800's were attempting to work out Schelling's various criticisms of Hegel. One output of those criticisms was that of Christian Hermann Weisse (1801–66) who transformed Hegel's absolute idealism into personal idealism. This mainly occurred due to Weisse's association with I.H. Fichte (1796-1879), Johann Gottlieb Fichte's son, where both Weisse and I.H. attempted to work out a philosophical basis for the personality of God.
Personalism in the sense of a distinct philosophy or worldview focusing on the full, accumulated import of the concept of the person, however, emerged only in the context of the broad critical reaction against what can be called the various impersonalistic philosophies which came to dominate the Enlightenment and Romanticism in the form of rationalistic and romantic forms of pantheism and idealism, from Spinoza to Hegel. Key figures in this reaction were Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743–1819), the initiator of the so-called Pantheismusstreit in the 1780s, and F. W. J. Schelling (1775–1854), who in his later work rejected the impersonalist positions of his early idealist systems. (SEP entry "Personalism")
In particular following I.H. Fichte was Hermann Lotze (1817-1881) who emphasized the ancient Greek distinction between persons and things within a personalistic idealism. "Persons" were said to be centers of consciousness, properly "subjects" so-called, which can initiate causes and change by their own intentional volition (among other requirements, many outlined in Schelling's Outline nature book), where volition is understood as agency. In Europe this was picked up later on in the metaphysics of the French philosopher Emmanuel Mounier (1905-1950) in his book Personalism. German personalism, by the time of the twentieth-century, had largely been adopted only by the Catholic church but not so much by other philosophers (with the exception of Max Scheler).

While reading this, I had three thoughts that I'd like to type out very, very quickly.

1. Arne Naess, the Norwegian ecophilosopher, proposed we ought to consider mountains "persons," not because they "think" in any regular sense of the term or possess consciousness as in panpsychism (which would be ridiculous), but because of the intrinsic dignity of the mountain afforded by the agency it possesses - its power to affect change. Today, corporations have been long considered "persons." But if a corporation is a "person," then why isn't a mountain? There is a distinction of course between legal and moral rights, yet ontologically legal rights rely upon moral rights - for the value those laws and considerations possess can only be established by the reality and natures of the subjects those laws are said to govern. Thus, according to personalistic criterion, whose lineage goes back to the German idealists and the American personalists who followed from them (from Lotze to Bowne), and the European personalists who followed from the German idealists (in particular Mounier, perhaps Scheler), certain "things" are now being granted rights as persons due to new ontological perspectives which owe their viewpoints to the personalists of the 19th and 20th centuries - for example, recently rivers have been granted the same rights as human beings, due to environmental concerns. See HERE.

2. The danger of miscategorizing all of nature as "objects" or "things" is worse now than its ever been, and this danger is much worse than miscategorizing all of nature as "persons" by way of contrast. Object-oriented ontologies may grant agency to things, fine; but nevertheless objects are things without personal rights, according to their view. Many object ontologies deny consciousness or personhood to even the most basic of "things" for fear that consciousness or personhood is an "anthropocentric" trapping. While I agree we ought to, in the name of an ecological approach, not make our choices according to anthropocentric and heirarchical orderings of value, I do not agree personhood is an improper attribution to non-human animals, for instance; or to rivers and mountains given proper metaphysical consideration. "Objects" - as a category - is, frankly, a depersonalizing categorization from the start. And when one starts with a category mistake, then one's following system is completely flawed from the start for it is flawed in its very foundations. "Agents" would at the very least be a better start, if "persons" is too "humanistic" (which, in cases of helping others less fortunate, the weak, the sick, the dying, then a humanistic-oriented form of personalism is indeed called for. In cases where the weak, the sick, the dying or suffering are non-human animals then the more encompassing form of agentialism, personalism, is called for.

3. If onto-sympathy and empathy are key in understanding persons  (persons, not things) as well as their agency, I am wondering about the following when it comes to the connection between persons, each its own center of value deserving dignity, value, and response as a person. The question is. if the real is always concrete and individual, yet through empathy we are able to universalize each individual so that each is its own center of value within a community of fellow centers of value (each is its own "I" so to speak), that it is nevertheless possible to lose a sense of community among the particulars we are universalizing. So in other words, does someone like Max Stirner, for example, make the same mistake as the object ontologists in having each I universalize into its own Absolute such that any chance for empathic community is lost due to that particular I being so absolutely private and distinct from all others that it is always collapsing back into its own universality, thus eliminating the very possibility of any real community or connection, any real contact or feeling, or any communication between each 'I'? Or, on the other hand, is it the case that for Stirner, universality is commens, and in that very collapse there is an inner form of empathy that is the same as the outer extension of touch, feeling, prehension, or whatever modes of interaction allow communication between particulars? This would mean that any "vicarious" form of causation (connection) between them would not be required. No "magic" needed.

Thinking about Stirner and personalism leaves me torn. There seems to be two very different and distinct dimensions at work when one considers Stirner and personalism. Stirner's "ownness" means each One is a Unique One, each particular itself Absolute. This uplifts each individual self, or subject, or person, or agent, to the infinite degree of value it ought to have in being One. Yet, personalism allows for individuals, selves, subjects, agents, to allow their own current status of value to meet the status of value had by another.  This is especially apparent in connections involving suffering, to attempt to feel what others do in lack and in need. (See for example Jean Vanier's Becoming Human - I would also point out the work of Robert Spaemann, Jacques Maritain, or Wojtyla's Person and Act.)

Obviously Stirner's "egoistic" (or better, "individualistic") personalism is very, very different from its speculative theist roots. But whether "individualistic" personalism or personalism proper (idealistic personalism), both are extremely preferably beginning points to ontologies which begin from the category mistake of seeing persons as "objects" from the start.

Any subject or agent is not a "thing" - persons are not "things," persons are not "objects." This is the sort of thinking that leads to murder, torture, and genocide, not only of "human" persons, but of non-human persons such as non-human animals. This is why object-oriented ontologies are not able to complete the ethical projects they propose to begin - especially ethical projects dealing with non-human persons (i.e. animal ethics, but there are issues with how it sees environmental justice).

For object-oriented ontology, it seems that ethics is impossible if only because in its treatment of value something quite necessary for ethics is lost. Namely, the notion of a "to whom" might we attribute such a value. In other words, object oriented ontology is unable to recognize the notion of a "subject of a life" and how non-human beings especially (animals) are not objects or "things" but rather are fellow subjects-of-a-life.  This is not to anthropocentrically raise up the non-human to some supposed "higher level" of consciousness and feeling occupied by the human being, but nor is it to categorically drain all beings of subjectivity in fear of subjectalism and render all to the common value level of "objects' either.

To see beings as fellow "subjects-of-a-life" is to accept the notion of "ontological parity" (cf. Justus Buchler's Metaphysics of Natural Complexes) among and between any and all beings not just in terms of reality status - that nothing is more nor less real than anything else - but also in terms of axiological value: each being is equally infinite in its dignity, worth, and value so far as it exists... in whatever way it exists.  It is from personalism that we inherit the strongest alternative to the kind of thinking that in fear of anthropocentrism reduces all persons to the level of non-personal objects. And this is why ethics shall forever be impossible for object oriented ontology.  It is, afterall, object oriented.

Friday, November 16, 2018

Fichte contra object-oriented ontology


It never took much for object-oriented ontology to be revealed as the house-of-cards philosophy that it is, if only because it rests primarily on allure and slippery rhetoric rather than any real solid or rigorous argument (its authors have even admitted that one should save rigor "for the dead.")

Still, if for some amusement you want to see object-oriented ontology easily crack under pressure, watch Fichte blow over the house of cards in Book Two ("Knowledge") of the Vocation of Man. It is there he addresses a familiar question that I once posed to Tom S., one of the last few object-ontologists remaining today, namely the question of, "Why objects?" And to this Tom S. answered, "Well, that's what I *perceive*."

Boy does Fichte ever have fun with that answer! Read the second book of the Vocation of Man. It doesn't disappoint.

I'll have to dig it up sometime, but I recall Iain Grant dismantling object-oriented ontologies for similar reasons to Fichte, and he also brings in Deleuze to finish the job.

Just a thought as I've been working through Kant and Hegel, Ficthe and Schelling as of late.

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Corringron’s new blog



Linked below. There's actually quite a few interesting posts so definitely check it out if you have time. In a sense, the blog is a sincere foray into the petrified forest known as the "blogosphere" - where it casts a ray of light among dead husks of old trees long forgotten. Perhaps a new small, little tree has been planted.

https://ecstaticnaturalism.org/

Monday, November 12, 2018

Animality and Animals in Continental Philosophy – Course Reading List (Spring 2019)


Animality and Animals in Continental Philosophy – Course Reading List (Spring 2019)
  • Giorgio Agamben, “Mysterium disiunctionis,” “The Anthropological Machine,” and “Anthropogenesis” in The Open: Man and Animal
  • Donna Haraway, “The Companion Species Manifesto”
  • David Abram, “The Speech of Things” and “The Discourse of the Birds” in Becoming Animal
  • Astrida Neimanis, “Becoming-Grizzly: Bodily Molecularity and the Animal that Becomes”
  • Deleuze & Guattari - Becoming-intensitiy, becoming-animal
  • Fernand Deligny, “The Arachnean” (excerpts)
  • Philippe Descola, “Metaphysics of Morals” from Beyond Nature and Culture
  • Eduardo Kohn, “Introduction” from How Forests Think: Toward and Anthropology Beyond the Human
  • Jacques Derrida – The Animal that Therefore I am (369-397 only)
  • H. Peter Steeves – Animal Others: On Ethics, Ontology, and Animal Life
  • M. Calarco - Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida
  • Bell and Naas – Plato’s Animals


Tuesday, October 30, 2018

The After Nature Korean world tour continues

Interview with Corrington and Niemoczynski by Seoul's largest Ecumenical newspaper on ecstatic naturalism and speculative naturalism, soon to be published along with video clips and photos on their website. (See below.) - A huge amount of thanks is in order both to our host and translator, Iljoon P., as well as the interviewer who asked absolutely amazing questions. Very deep questions actually, over an hour long interview.

Also, there was another interview I did a week ago in the US with a smaller publication, more on that soon, but the essence of it was the spirit of speculative naturalism (versus other real or imaginary "movements" found elsewhere online) as speculative naturalism is found here represented on my blog of seven years, After Nature.

The rest of this week is devoted to two conferences, the largest of which is actually on Thursday, contrary perhaps to my prior report.

The After Nature Korean world tour continues!

Saturday, October 27, 2018

After Nature Korean World Tour

If anyone is in Seoul, Korea I'll be delivering two talks Wednesday and Thursday at Yonsei University, or if you're an After Nature reader and want to meet, please feel free to send an email. The first talk is entitled "The Sorrow of Being" and the second is on bleak theology, the latter being a debate of some sort in front of what is expected to be a rather large audience. - Below is a view from downtown Seoul last evening. -

I have quite a few thoughts on Seoul but will save them for a future post. Let's just say a Nick Land assessment is in order. (Certainly different from Japan's vibe, that's for sure. My time at Kyoto University two years ago was incomparable to this. We're talking accelerationism and hyper-capitalism unleashed... and I don't think either Japan or Hong Kong could ever catch up.)

Friday, September 21, 2018

Overcoming the fear of diving into the intensity of life (quote of the day)

"You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it—it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."

- Charles Baudelaire

Friday, September 14, 2018

Debut issue of Kabiri: Journal of the North American Schelling Society

First issue titled "The Heritage and Legacy of F.W.J. Schelling," HERE. Interesting article by Tyler Tritten on Schelling's read of Plato's Timaeus (which reminds me of an After Nature post I once wrote, HERE), as well as some other good articles. Everything is Open Access, so no paywall.

Monday, September 10, 2018

Monday, September 3, 2018

Plato’s Forms in the “Parmenides” (Part One)

Another great episode available.

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Episode 198: Plato's Forms in the "Parmenides" (Part One)
// The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

On the most peculiar Platonic dialogue, from ca. 350 BCE. Are properties real things in the world, or just in the mind? Plato is known for claiming that these "Forms" are real, though otherworldly. Here, though, using Parmenides as a character talking to a young Socrates, Plato seems to provide objections here to his own theory. What's the deal?

Tuesday, August 28, 2018

The Gestation of German Biology: Philosophy and Physiology from Stahl to Schelling (NDPR Review)

NDPR Review, first paragraph and link below.
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The Gestation of German Biology: Philosophy and Physiology from Stahl to Schelling
// Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // 


John H. Zammito, The Gestation of German Biology: Philosophy and Physiology from Stahl to Schelling, University of Chicago Press, 2018, 523pp., $45.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780226520797.

Reviewed by Lenny Moss, University of Exeter

In his 2004 review of both Frederick Beiser's German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism 1781-1801, and Robert Richards' The Romantic Conception of Life and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe,[1] John H. Zammito defines the conversation that shapes the aims and point of departure of his recent book and in relation to which he offers some criteria for assessing its merits. The conversation in question is about critically advancing a new appreciation for the status of German Idealism and Romanticism in relation to contemporary naturalism but even more specifically it's about overthrowing old prejudices against Naturphilosophie and defending its relevance to empirical life science. In the background, but not deep in the background,...


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Friday, August 24, 2018

The Sorrows of Young Nimrod the Toady (Taki's Magazine)

Real life happenings. Those interested in academic politics may wish to read this...
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The Sorrows of Young Nimrod the Toady - Taki's Magazine - 
http://takimag.com/article/the-sorrows-of-young-nimrod-the-toady/#axzz5P5crAVwO
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Wednesday, August 15, 2018

2018 Biosemiotics Gathering – Video Archive (ht dmf)


Dmf shares quite a large list of videos featured from a recent gathering "Biosemiotics 2018," HERE.

Thursday, August 2, 2018

Eco-phenomenology and Eco-Cosmology

Interesting issue of Analecta Husserliana, "Eco-Phenomenology: Life, Human Life, Post-Human Life in the Harmony of the Cosmos" HERE.  Too many fascinating articles to discuss in a short blog post such as this one is intended to be, thus if the issue's topic sounds interesting for you head on over to check it out for yourself.

Monday, July 30, 2018

Hegel on the Proofs and the Personhood of God: Studies in Hegel's Logic and Philosophy of Religion (NDPR Review)



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Hegel on the Proofs and the Personhood of God: Studies in Hegel's Logic and Philosophy of Religion
// Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // 


Robert R. Williams, Hegel on the Proofs and the Personhood of God: Studies in Hegel's Logic and Philosophy of Religion, Oxford University Press, 2017, 352pp., $95.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780198795223.

Reviewed by Nicholas Adams, University of Birmingham

This is a book for those interested in the intricacies of Hegel's philosophy of religion. It asks and answers two questions: how can Hegel's accounts of the proofs for God's existence best be understood; in what sense is Hegel's God 'personal'?
The study is split into two halves named in the title. The first part, chapters 1 to 3, treats Hegel's handling of the proofs for God's existence, principally in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (which contains Hegel's defence of Anselm against Kant) and the Lectures on the Proofs for the Existence of God (published for the first time in English in 2007 in a translation by Peter Hodgson). The second part investigates...


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Thursday, July 26, 2018

On snake oil and Latour, Meillassoux, and Garcia

We were told ad nauseum that Bruno Latour was the second coming of academic Christ. The world would be changed, statues would be erected in his honor, departments would be devoted to the man. Latourians would come to utterly displace and destroy those damn billie-club wielding Deleuzeans with either "bare-knuckles" or drawn "knives" (note the stark violence associated with these intellectual transitions).

But then we were told "no," instead the second coming was not to be Latour but one Quentin Meillassoux. Watch out! In years' time an aged Meillassoux would reign supreme from his throne, the academic world bowing beneath his popularity and power. The case was pushed as, "Meillassoux supports me and my ontology, so he'll reign supreme as will I."

But then, wait! It was to be the "handsome" and millennial (as if that were a positive quality) Tristan Garcia! Buy his book! Two people have written about him!

And so on.

I say, has any of this cashed out?

How much snake oil does one buy before they realize they've been had.

More folks write about Schelling and Merleau-Ponty than any of the above, combined.

Monday, July 23, 2018

Why cosmology without philosophy is like a ship without a hull (Aeon article)


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Why cosmology without philosophy is like a ship without a hull
// Aeon



What is it with the philosophy-haters in astrophysics and cosmology? From the late Stephen Hawking's claim that 'philosophy is dead', to Steven Weinberg's chapter-long jeremiad 'Against Philosophy' in Dreams of a Final Theory (1992), plenty of physicists and astrophysicists think that philosophy ...

By Bridget Falck

Read at Aeon

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Friday, July 20, 2018

Thinking Between Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty (NDPR Review)

Very interesting book reviewed over at NDPR. Although, another interesting pairing to look at might be Schelling and Merleau-Ponty.


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Thinking Between Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty
// Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // News


Judith Wambacq, Thinking Between Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty, Ohio University Press, 2017, 264pp., $95.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780821422878.

Reviewed by Laura McMahon, Eastern Michigan University

Judith Wambacq's book, which explores resonances between the philosophies of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gilles Deleuze, is thoughtful, well-researched, and a good resource for scholars interested in the philosophies of either or both Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze, and in the development of twentieth-century Continental philosophy more broadly. Though the philosophical projects of Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze are often sharply contrasted, Wambacq makes a convincing case that the differences between the two are more stylistic and matters of emphases than they are substantial and central, and argues that it is philosophically worthwhile to read Merleau-Ponty through a Deleuzian lens and Deleuze through a Merleau-Pontean lens. In what follows, I will (1) outline what I take to be Wambacq's central thesis and argument; (2) provide...


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Monday, July 2, 2018

The Nietzsche House in Sils Maria, Switzerland

A re-post from last year around this time of the summer, for those who may have missed it when posted then. Surely one of the most exceptional places I've seen first-hand for sure, the Nietzsche Haue did not disappoint (nor did the surrounding area of Sils Maria...it was absolutely gorgeous). Recently Corrington and I visited the C.S. Peirce house in Milford again - this was about two or so weeks ago - and so while I work on a post for that I thought to re-post the below. Enjoy.

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Original post from July 11th, 2017 - Sils Maria, Switzerland (original post HERE)

Sign-post to the Nietzsche Haus 
PHOTO: Niemoczynski, 2017

Sils Maria is an indescribable place, if one wants to paint a picture of it perfectly. I'm not sure words could do justice to the peace which is that place. Granted, Switzerland now has a special place for me - mostly because of its picturesque landscapes, its pine forests, its mountains and peaks, and of course its quaint and romantic way of life . But if I had to put my finger on it (and I believe Nietzsche had mentioned this) - there is something about the air there. Something, rejuvenating, perhaps?

“Well, my dear old friend, I am once more in the Upper Engadine. This is my third visit to the place and once again I feel that my proper refuge and home is here and nowhere else.” 

- Friedrich Nietzsche to Carl von Gersdorff, Sils Maria, late June 1883

Our visit to the Nietzsche house was quick but informative. The house is tucked away just off the street past the train station stop which is marked "Sils Maria." Proceed not even a minute's walk to your left and the Nietzsche house is there off the street on the left.

My wife wasn't so much interested and began studying the adjacent hotel, a charming building in its own right. And for a few minutes she began to say how nice it would be that if we had children we could venture here as a family and vacation. I agreed. (We desperately want children, and the thought of vacationing in this beautiful place with my wife, and hopefully one day children, for a moment moved me.)

As to my expedition regarding more philosophical things, I think I learned more just by absorbing the surrounding experience of the mountains and forests, the creek nearby, the silence only being interrupted by the sounds of insects or the wind. But it was Nietzsche's own bare room which spoke most profoundly to me.

Inside the home there are many, many books which are organized according to various donated collections. There are various artifacts and items to look at, and a room dedicated to Nietzsche studies or exhibitions (currently in one of the rooms are paintings by an artist who lived in the house recently for two years). For me, though, it was Nietzscbe's room as well as the view from his room to the mountain outside which affected my experience of this place. Reminiscent of the painting by Caspar David Friedrich I had to think that the "wanderer"who was meant for those mountains could have only been Nietzsche himself. Inside his room there is not much to see but certainly much one might sense. The walls are bare, one small carpet is at the center of the floor, there is a small bed, and there is a porcelain washbowl and pitcher across from the bed. That's it.

But, there is a thing that struck me - and let me say right away that this will come off as quite personal and thus perhaps strange - is how Nietzsche placed on his wall a green piece of wall paper. Neat and rectangular, there it was in the midst of his Spartan-like room. But, it was the tone of the green which struck me. The tone was deep and seductive.

The Wanderer above a Sea of Fog, Caspar David Frierich, c. 1818
When I first discovered Nietzsche at age 19 one of my favorite poems that he wrote was called "The Sun Sinks," written in the year of 1888. I know this poem by heart and can recite it freely. However, there are a few very interesting lines in that poem which reference the color green. And yet within Nietzsche's room, his sheets? The color green. His carpet? Green. The wallpaper? Green. The room was bare save for whatever minimal color there was, it was green.

If one is to reflect upon the meaning of green in that poem alone, let alone its place in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the poem's use of color all hangs upon green and its place vis-a-vis the abyss. Standing there, in Nietzsche's room, looking out from his window, to his fabled mountains of Zarathustra, I realized that the color green was for him, the abyssFrom there we hear about gold, blue, brown, black, and so on.

But "green," a dark majestic green, is the color of the golf-course greens where I was a night watchmen, my own Zarathustra at age 19, reading Nietzsche and marveling beneath the stars in the middle of those humid but cool, clear summer nights at 3am. Here in Sils Maria I was at the very place where one of the most influential philosophers who attracted me to philosophy in the first place lived. And here I was gazing out his window - at the same forests, the same mountains, the same stream. My Nietzsche journey had come full circle as I looked out his window.

Now that I have become part of "the establishment" of academia - a "philosophy professor" - part of that same establishment Nietzsche so despised, Herr Nietzsche and his anti-philosophy has crept up from behind me yet again to spur me into open reflection, just as he had when I was 19. And for that, my good friend, Friedrich Wilhem Nietzsche, I am thankful.

Today I still ask that most dreadful question, why? Hanging onto my late '30s, with respect to that question maybe Nietzsche's response, fittingly from the poem, remains the same when I found him while I was so young. "Stand firm my brave heart, do not ask: why? -"



A visit to the house costs 8 Francs (no Euros accepted).

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Below one can find photos with captions of my visit. I'll attempt to upload a video of me traveling the path behind the house where Nietzsche would take walks when he could. As Sils Maria is a place for holiday one can see a hotel near the one where Nietzsche himself stayed. The only two cars that pass in the video toward the end were the only two heard during the hour I was there. Otherwise it was complete silence.

Finally, I am not an expert video producer so my apologies for the camera work (which is non-existent). I just wanted to show what the path looked like and attempt to transcribe to video the experience of what it may have been like for Nietzsche to walk along that path. Of course, that is impossible. In the end this was really an amazing experience and is on par with our visit to the Heidegger Hut (link HERE). Both visits were magical. Now on to the photos and video...

Mountains en route to the Nietzsche Haus

We've arrived! Sign directing visitors to the Nietzsche Haus, just off the street at Sils Maria, Switzerland 

View, front of the house

Entrance

Dedicatory sign above front door

A simple stone path directors visitors 
Left side front of house



Right side front of house where Nietzsche stayed

Forest path behind the house



View of the mountains from the front path front of house

View of adjacent hotel

Some visitors leaving Sils Maria

Leon and Na leave Sils Maria

Last glance at the lake before we leave for Turano


Read also about our visit to the cabin where the most infamous philosopher of the 20th-century Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) would stay each summer, and where he would eventually write his masterpiece, Being and Time (1927), link HERE.

Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Philosophy Talk podcast with free philosophical cosmology episodes


Philosophy Talk podcast has some freely available episodes - so you can download them for free or stream for free straight from the website - available HERE.

The eight episodes form a mini-series covering philosophical cosmology, due in part to grant support from the Templeton Foundation. The program seems quite fascinating, or as Philosophy Talk describes:
What is the origin of the universe? What exactly are space and time? Could the laws of physics ever change? Is the universe fine-tuned to support intelligent life? What are dark matter and dark energy? Are we part of a multiverse? How does science make progress in answering these questions? And are there limits to what we can ultimately know about the nature of the cosmos? 
In this eight-episode series, sponsored by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation, we invite listeners on a grand philosophical journey through the cosmos, tackling deeply puzzling questions about the nature of the universe, and our knowledge of it.

Tuesday, June 19, 2018

quote of the day


"Experience is of as well as in nature. It is not experience which is experienced but nature - stones, plants, animals, diseases, health, temperature, electricity, and so on."

- John Dewey, Experience and Nature

See also THIS After Nature post from some time back.

Monday, June 18, 2018

After Nature streaming

As many of you know, I am winding down the blog so that in place I might begin an official YouTube channel. For the past month I have been doing test streams over at Twitch so as to experiment with equipment, resolution, length of stream, topic, etc. etc.  The reason I have been approaching the stream this way is because I would like to have only the best quality for my audience. Thus far I have purchased/obtained if for free, used, and tweaked to near-perfection a 1080p webcam, a DSLR camera, the Blue Yeti mic, an Ipevo HD document cam, and other equipment or software (such as OBS) that allows me to stream philosophical content while discussing books visible on the stream, PowerPoints, or stream from remote locations.

(The results of my test streams? The technical-quality results have been mediocre at best, not due to the equipment but because I need a new computer which can proficiently use and process the equipment. I had to upgrade my internet just to even run the stream without lag. Content-wise it has just been experimental - nothing too serious in the sense that the streams turn out to be more or less like very loose seminars/philosophical conversations. Those watching report that they like it, which is  good.)

So far the experience has been both positive and negative. Now, the negatives are due mostly to the Twitch platform and the audience that one finds there. On the other hand, the only pro of Twitch is its censorship free (or nearly so) approach to the inclusion of free thought and ideas, as well as music: something YouTube doesn't approach the same way. The very weird thing is that Twitch does ban my videos (they will mute your audio) if you critique their platform or if they catch you using music and then using music again on a following stream. So they are pretty hypocritical when it comes to allowing certain streamers to do something and others not. Still, I've been pretty brazen to test the limit and well, it's been interesting. YouTube would have just deleted me, so I consider it a positive.

The question is whether YouTube's heavy hand of censorship will eliminate my channel as soon as it begins. Time shall tell I suppose, but you dear readers here at After Nature would be the first to know as soon as a channel opened up.

In the meantime I am still struggling for a channel name. I would like to have a new name for the stream other than After Nature if only to start a new chapter in my online philosophy presence. The name I go under at Twitch, I am told, has associations online that could possibly wrongly implicate me with some wrong ideas out there, so that isn't worth the risk. But, I do need a good, interesting stream name for YouTube and I just can't think of one.

A friend of mine suggested Forest Crown, which I quite like... or Eumeswil (the title of Ernst Juenger's best science fiction book), which I like too. Waldganger is too clunky and weird, but in English it translates to something like "Forest Fleer" or "Flight to the Forest" - both interesting. But yet the former's "fleer" may elude some, and the latter sounds, I don't know, like a bad movie title. So I'm stuck. No channel until I think of a good name.

Any suggestions? I really like things from Juenger, who is one of my favorite literary-philosophical authors.

Ever since the golden age of philosophy blogs ended (for better or worse), I've been privy to see that streaming is the future. Twitter's obvious political censorship campaign discourages any free-thinking person from taking them seriously; same with something like Patreon or even Google in general. But Twitter is the absolute worst for it.  Likewise Facebook (another platform I have never used on principle) is pretty much self-explanatory. I've saved myself the trouble from trolling over my own posts and doing re-posts saying, "See? I told you so!"  Gosh, I called that with Facebook probably about five years ago. And people thought I was some sort of outcast. Same with Twitter. It's just unfashionable to use tools which aid the neo-gulag and their thought-police. I don't want anything to do with it it.

Hence my hesitation with YouTube ...

Right now my main objective is to find a channel name and upgrade my computer. The computer is going to be soon, hopefully the new name as well. The original estimate for the channel was this past spring. That seems to have been pushed back until the end of summer (on YouTube that is; if you're lucky you might be able to find me on Twitch in the meantime).

Friday, June 15, 2018

The Legacy of Kant in Sellars and Meillassoux: Analytic and Continental Kantianism (NDPR Review)

Reviewed at NDPR, link below.

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The Legacy of Kant in Sellars and Meillassoux: Analytic and Continental Kantianism // Reviews // Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // University of Notre Dame

https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/the-legacy-of-kant-in-sellars-and-meillassoux-analytic-and-continental-kantianism/
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Thursday, June 14, 2018

Schopenhauer's Aesthetics (SEP entry)

Schopenahuer is a philosopher who, if you haven't looked at his work in awhile, certainly deserves to be dusted off and looked at . Sadly he is neglected in today's standard university survey courses when most definitely he shouldn't be. His relevance not only for aesthetics but for ethics, including animal ethics, is as strong as ever. I suspect that even in today's times he is overshadowed by Hegel. Try glancing at some Schopenhauer today if you can, or if in a rush perhaps the below, which has been updated. (Link is the title.)

 The focus of this entry is on Schopenhauer's aesthetic theory, which forms part of his organic philosophical system, but which can be appreciated and assessed to some extent on its own terms (for ways in which his aesthetic insights may be detached from his metaphysics see Shapshay, 2012b). The theory is found predominantly in Book 3 of the World as Will and Representation (WWR I) and in the elaboratory essays concerning Book 3 in the second volume...
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Wednesday, June 13, 2018

quote of the day

"None of our spiritual thoughts transcends the earth."

- Friedrich Schelling (letter to Eschenmayer, dated 1812)

Sunday, June 10, 2018

Peirce’s transmutation of Schelling’s Philosophie der Natur


A lengthy and extremely well-detailed article covering Schelling's impact upon Peirce and both philosophers' development of a philosophy of nature can be found linked below. I've written somewhat extensively in the past about the connection between Peirce and Schelling and have read quite abit on the subject as well (whether primary sources or secondary literature about it), but this article goes pretty in-depth into it all.

As some After Nature readers might remember, my first book Charles Sanders Peirce and a Religious Metaphysics of Nature has an entire chapter dedicated to exploring the relationship between these two philosophers and Schelling's Naturphilosophie informs an important backdrop of understanding to the book overall.


The article is definitely for anyone who is interested in Schelling's philosophy of nature even most generally, or Schelling's connection to the philosophy of C.S. Peirce more particularly.

Link HERE.

Saturday, June 9, 2018

quote of the day


"The relation between living subject and object is unlike that between two objects; for, the subject does not react mechanistically to all object stimuli but rather it assigns a significance or meaning to specific ones."

- Jakob von Uexküll

"Every living cell is a machine operator that perceives and produces and therefore possesses its own particular perceptive signs and impulses or 'effect signs.' The complex perception and production of effects in every animal subject can thereby be attributed to the cooperation of small cellular-machine operators, each one possessing only one perceptive and one effective sign."

- Jakob von Uexküll


(See also "Introducing Uexküllian phenomenology - Powerpoint download" HERE ; "Some resources on biosemiotics + Uexküllian/Peircean phenomenology" HERE ; and an enormously informative post with tons of great information and links on biosemiotics HERE titled, "Mathew David Segall, media ecology, and biosemiotics.")

Friday, June 8, 2018

Bonn Summer School in German Philosophy: Naturalism in Classical German Philosophy (July 9-20, 2018)

For those in Europe/Germany perhaps of interest...


Bonn Summer School in German Philosophy - Summer 2018

July 9th-20th, Bonn University
"The Issue of Naturalism in Classical German Philosophy" 

(8th International Bonn Summer School in German Philosophy)

Course description:

This year’s international summer school will focus on the issue of naturalism within classical German philosophy. “Naturalism” is a vague concept. As the term is used today it often connotes at least the following (in fact only loosely interrelated) theses: (1) that there are no transcendent objects (e.g. gods or immortal souls); (2) that everything is physical or at least fully describable with the resources of the natural sciences alone; and (3) that human beings are part of the animal kingdom. So understood, “naturalism” was already a central issue in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century philosophy.

In the first week, we will look at various controversies in the 18th century which set the terms of the debate over the prospects of forms of naturalism. The second week will be dedicated to a close reading and reconstruction of Hegel’s philosophy of nature in his mature Encyclopedia. In this context, we will also consult the Schellingian background of Hegel’s philosophy of nature in order to address the issue of naturalism within the overall idealist framework of Hegel that traditionally seemed to be in conflict with the naturalism of his successors.

Many of the most explosive debates of the period revolved around one or more aspects of naturalism, including the debate between the Condillac, Rousseau, Süßmilch, and Herder concerning the origin of language; the debate between Haller and La Mettrie concerning the significance of Haller’s animal experiments on “irritation”; the Pantheism Controversy between Jacobi and Mendelssohn concerning Spinozism; the Atheism Controversy concerning Fichte’s alleged atheism; and the Materialism Controversy that arose in the middle of the nineteenth century. Moreover, virtually all of the major thinkers of the period wrestled with the issue in one way or another, including Kant, Herder, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Alexander von Humboldt, Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, Langer, Helmholtz, and Haeckel.

In the summer school we will look at the German philosophy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through the lens of this issue. Specific topics covered within the seminar and by our keynote speakers will include the debate on the origin of language; Kant, Herder, Hegel, and others on human-animal difference; the Haller-La Mettrie debate and the Materialism Controversy; the role of Spinozism in German philosophy; Kant’s anti-naturalist strategies; the philosophy of nature in Schelling, Hegel, and Humboldt; the emergence of philosophical atheism in Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche; and the German contribution to and reception of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.

As always, we will provide all participants with a reader containing the material to be discussed in our seminar meetings and by our keynote speakers.

For more information (or presumably to inquire if one might attend despite not presenting):  philosophy-summerschool@uni-bonn.de

Website HERE.

Penn State Officials Shut Down Outdoors Club Because Nature Isn't 'Safe'

Following my post from a day or two ago covering Lindsay Sheperd taking to task millennials' attempts to "safe-space" nature. Linked below one can read about Penn State shutting down their Outdoors Club proclaiming that "nature isn't safe." 

Monday, June 4, 2018

Lindsay Sheperd on social justice and the environment

If this is true then as Heidegger said, "Only a God can save us now." What Lindsay Sheperd is pointing out is how frankly absurd the act of looking upon the world anthropocentrically truly is.

Sheperd was spot on when she said, "In some instances the outdoors is not safe for anyone."  She was also correct when discussing how, often times, the "healing" power of nature is actually found in its ability, or even power and potential, to "decenter" identity - to completely overwhelm one's sense of self or, if it so chooses, to destroy one's sense of self or one's identity. Nature has the uncanny ability to remind us that it is nature which gets the last vote in determining "what's what" and that how we may conceive ourselves to be - whether precious, special, important, or identifying as x, y, or z - doesn't necessarily mean that that is how we truly are in reality. Such forms of decentering can and many often times do constitute an act of transcendence through sublimity, as the decentering of one's own identity in light of something much larger and much more encompassing is what affords the natural world its healing power and quasi-religious grace. It reminds us that we may not be as special as we think we are, and that the world is not a safe place. The natural world can and will gladly go on without us.

The millennial obsession with "safety" and "safe spaces" is attempting to sanitize the last outpost where these sort of truly educational and revelatory experiences might occur due to the inherent risk, danger, and all-out lack of human identity found there: the wilderness.  Nature, when made "safe," loses its real educational potential and becomes just another stage prop in the human-all-too-human drama of so-called "social justice." In fact, inasmuch as Sheperd is pointing out, "social justice" is far - very, very far - from any form of real environmental justice where human actors are able to take a step back in their obsessive motions of attempting to grab the limelight and think of others for just once. In the name of safety, avoiding risk, and feeling important, millennials are actually committing worse injustices against the environment and failing to achieve any realist ecological understanding of it. That is to say, millennial narcissism and environmental justice really don't fit together hand-in-glove.

The article Sheperd cites is all millennial narcissism gone way too far. As I tell my students in Existentialism on the first day of class: "The universe doesn't give a shit about you."  When one goes hiking in remote environments and witnesses a pristine and well-functioning world that is completely without the human and doing just fine, that truth can be an eye-opening experience for even the most naive helicopter-parented millennial who will usually melt like a snowflake at the first hint that they may not be as special as they've been told. Eventually, nature (read "Reality") will assert itself and its number one (and only) law will show itself to be supreme. And that law? It's quite simple: "Reality Rules."

Link HERE.

Friday, May 25, 2018

Bergson: Thinking Beyond the Human Condition (NDPR Reviews)



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Bergson: Thinking Beyond the Human Condition
// Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // News

2018.05.19 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews

Keith Ansell-Pearson, Bergson: Thinking Beyond the Human Condition, Bloomsbury, 2018, 194 pp., $29.95 (pbk), ISBN 9781350043954
 

Reviewed by Donald A. Landes, Université Laval
In his introduction to the remarkable new Quadrige/PUF collection of critical editions of Henri Bergson's works in French, Frédéric Worms rightly suggests that, like all philosophical classics, Bergson's oeuvre deserves to be both read with fresh eyes, as if it has just appeared, and studied with the help of scholarly tools equal to its importance and influence.[1] By offering a lively reading of Bergson's texts and providing scholarly explorations of connections, influences, comparisons, and potential further contributions, Keith Ansell-Pearson fulfills both of these goals. The volume is the result of two decades of his research and teaching, gathering together his essays and chapters on various aspects of Bergson's thought, with one new chapter...

Read More

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Nietzsche's Metaphysics of the Will to Power: The Possibility of Value (NDPR Reviews)



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Nietzsche's Metaphysics of the Will to Power: The Possibility of Value
// Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // News

2018.05.21 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews

Tsarnia Doyle, Nietzsche's Metaphysics of the Will to Power: The Possibility of Value, Cambridge University Press, 2018, 240pp., $99.99, ISBN 9781108417280.
Reviewed by Justin Remhof, Old Dominion University
Tsarina Doyle's new book is required reading for those interested in Nietzsche's metaphysics, ethics, and metaethics. Doyle argues that for Nietzsche nihilism arises upon the recognition that our values are not objectively valid because they are not instantiated by a mind-independent world. Nietzsche responds to the threat of nihilism, according to Doyle, by developing will to power as a metaphysical view of reality. On this view, the world is constituted by mind-independent causal powers. For Doyle, Nietzsche believes values are metaphysically continuous with will to power because they are causal-dispositional properties of human drives. Will to power provides a mind-independent, objective constraint on our values, which moves us beyond nihilism.
Doyle's position is bold, and...

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Pragmatism and the European Traditions: Encounters with Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology Before the Great Divide (NDPR Review)

Below.

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Pragmatism and the European Traditions: Encounters with Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology Before the Great Divide
// Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // News

2018.05.23 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews

Maria Baghramian and Sarin Marchetti (eds.), Pragmatism and the European Traditions: Encounters with Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology Before the Great Divide, Routledge, 294pp, $140.00, ISBN 9781138094109.
Reviewed by John J. Stuhr, Emory University
This volume contains twelve essays by European and North American scholars. Following a brief introduction, the essays appear in roughly chronological order. The first section, "Early Encounters," focuses on the pragmatism of William James (with briefer discussions of C. S. Peirce and F.C.S. Schiller), the phenomenology of Husserl and Scheler, and the analytic philosophy of Wittgenstein, Russell, and Ramsey. The slightly shorter second section, "Later Encounters" includes essays that deal with pragmatists: James (again, or still), John Dewey, and C. I. Lewis; phenomenologists: Husserl (again with James) and Heidegger; and analytic thinkers: Carnap, Stevenson, Wilfrid Sellars, Quine, Putnam, Brandom, and the Finnish thinker Eino Kaila.
In "Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: The Mingled Story of...

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Thursday, May 24, 2018

Pythagoras on the Purpose of Life and the Meaning of Wisdom

Reblogging the below on the Presocratic philosopher, Pythagoras.

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Pythagoras on the Purpose of Life and the Meaning of Wisdom
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Abiding insight into the aim of human existence from the man who revolutionized science and coined the word "philosopher."


Pythagoras on the Purpose of Life and the Meaning of Wisdom

The Greek polymath Pythagoras (c. 570–c. 495 BC) ignited the golden age of mathematics with the development of numerical logic and the discovery of his namesake theorem of geometry, which furnished the world's first foothold toward the notion of scientific proof and has been etched into the mind of every schoolchild in the millennia since. His ideas went on to influence Plato, Copernicus, Descartes, Kepler, Newton, and Einstein, and the school he founded made the then-radical decision to welcome women as members, one of whom was Hypatia of Alexandria — the world's first known woman astronomer.
Alongside his revolutionary science, Pythagoras coined the word philosopher to describe himself as a "lover of wisdom" — a love the subject of which he encapsulated in a short, insightful meditation on the uses of philosophy in human life. According to the anecdote, recounted by Cicero four centuries later, Pythagoras attended the Olympic Games of 518 BC with Prince Leon, the esteemed ruler of Phlius. The Prince, impressed with his guest's wide and cross-disciplinary range of knowledge, asked Pythagoras why he lived as a "philosopher" rather than an expert in any one of the classical arts.

Pythagoras (Art by J. Augustus Knapp, circa 1926)

Pythagoras, quoted in Simon Singh's altogether fascinating Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem (public library), replies:
Life… may well be compared with these public Games for in the vast crowd assembled here some are attracted by the acquisition of gain, others are led on by the hopes and ambitions of fame and glory. But among them there are a few who have come to observe and to understand all that passes here. 
It is the same with life. Some are influenced by the love of wealth while others are blindly led on by the mad fever for power and domination, but the finest type of man gives himself up to discovering the meaning and purpose of life itself. He seeks to uncover the secrets of nature. This is the man I call a philosopher for although no man is completely wise in all respects, he can love wisdom as the key to nature's secrets.
Complement with Alain de Botton on how philosophy undoes our unwisdom, then revisit other abiding mediations on the meaning and purpose of life from Epictetus, Toni Morrison, Walt Whitman, Richard Feynman, Rosa Parks, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Martha Nussbaum.

Sunday, May 20, 2018

Is nature continuous or discrete? How the atomist error was born (Aeon)



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Is nature continuous or discrete? How the atomist error was born
// Aeon



The modern idea that nature is discrete originated in Ancient Greek atomism. Leucippus, Democritus and Epicurus all argued that nature was composed of what they called ἄτομος (átomos) or 'indivisible individuals'. Nature was, for them, the totality of discrete atoms in motion. There was no creato...
By Thomas Nail
Read at Aeon

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Shared via my feedly reader

Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Bernard Stiegler: The Neganthropocene (Open Source book-.pdf, 2018)

See below.

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Bernard Stiegler: The Neganthropocene (2018)
// Monoskop Log

"As we drift past tipping points that put future biota at risk, while a post-truth regime institutes the denial of 'climate change' (as fake news), and as Silicon Valley assistants snatch decision and memory, and as gene-editing and a financially-engineered bifurcation advances over the rising hum of extinction events and the innumerable toxins and conceptual opiates that Anthropocene Talk fascinated itself with—in short, as 'the Anthropocene' discloses itself as a dead-end trap—Bernard Stiegler here produces the first counter-strike and moves beyond the entropic vortex and the mnemonically stripped Last Man socius feeding the vortex.

In the essays and lectures here titled Neganthropocene, Stiegler opens an entirely new front moving beyond the dead-end "banality" of the Anthropocene. Stiegler stakes out a battleplan to proceed beyond, indeed shrugging off, the fulfillment of nihilism that the era of climate chaos ushers in. Understood as the reinscription of philosophical, economic, anthropological and political concepts within a renewed thought of entropy and negentropy, Stiegler's 'Neganthropocene' pursues encounters with Alfred North Whitehead, Jacques Derrida, Gilbert Simondon, Peter Sloterdijk, Karl Marx, Benjamin Bratton, and others in its address of a wide array of contemporary technics: cinema, automation, neurotechnology, platform capitalism, digital governance and terrorism. This is a work that will need be digested by all critical laborers who have invoked the Anthropocene in bemused, snarky, or pedagogic terms, only to find themselves having gone for the click-bait of the term itself—since even those who do not risk definition in and by the greater entropy."

Edited, translated, and with an introduction by Daniel Ross
Publisher Open Humanities Press, London, 2018
CCC2: Irreversibility series
Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 License
ISBN 9781785420481
345 pages

Publisher

PDF, PDF


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Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Did Susanne Langer invent virtual reality? (Aesthetics Today post)

Interesting read for some perhaps. Langer was Whitehead's student and in her own right deserves more attention than has been paid to her in the history of philosophy.

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Did Susanne Langer invent virtual reality?
// Aesthetics Today

I have long thought that Susanne Langer originated sthe term "virtual reality."  She did not, however there is reason to believe that she inspired the term since "virtual" this and virtual that appear throughout her Feeling and Form (1953).  Here is an account of the origin of the term from Science Focus:  The online home of BBC Focus Magazine  (author unknown)  "The History of Virtual Reality"    here

"In 1982, Thomas G Zimmerman would file a patent for such an optical flex sensor, and would go on to work with Dr Jaron Lanier – the man who coined the term 'virtual reality' – to add ultrasonic and magnetic hand position tracking technology to a glove. This led to what would become the Nintendo Power Glove sold alongside a small number – two – of NES games in 1987. "Virtual reality originally meant an extended version of virtual worlds," says Lanier, who these days is to be found working for Microsoft Research as well as writing books and music. "Ivan [Sutherland] had talked about the virtual world that you would see through a headset like that. He didn't make up that term; it actually comes from an art historian called Susanne Langer, who was using it as a way to think about modernist painting. To me, what virtual reality originally meant was moving beyond the headset experience to include some other elements, which would include your own body being present, so to have an avatar where you could pick up things, and also where there could be multiple people, where it could be social."

Langer, of course, was not an art historian but a philosopher of art.  Feeling and Form, which I will discuss in my next post, was a major work of mid-20th century aesthetics.   Also, Langer used "virtual" not just in relation to modernist painting but in relation to several arts including sculpture, architecture, and dance.
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