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Writing
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Philosophy
-- Ancient --
Crosswise Christ:
Philosophies come in two basic sorts, immanent or transcendent, according to whether they ascribe the highest reality to the natural world or to another world beyond the natural; locate the highest good in human flourishing or in something beyond humanity; and teach that we die with our mortal bodies or instead live beyond death as immortals. Arguing that any philosophy that is either exclusively immanent or transcendent promotes not love but resentment, this series of posts presents the philosophy of Heraclitus, seeking to show that it is paradoxically both. Is it possible? Is it rational? Yes, but only once reason is properly understood as crosswise. This series of posts appeared on The Immanent Frame, comprising four separate posts: Love and reason,
Truth in conflict,
Crosswise logic, and
Immortal mortal.
Becoming God: Pure Reason in Early Greek Philosophy:
Becoming god was an ideal of many ancient Greek philosophers, as was the life of reason, which they equated with divinity. This book argues that their rival accounts of this equation depended on their divergent attitudes toward time. Affirming it, Heraclitus developed a paradoxical style of reasoning-chiasmus-that was the activity of his becoming god. Denying it as contradictory, Parmenides sought to purify thinking of all contradiction, offering eternity to those who would follow him. Plato did, fusing this pure style of reasoning-consistency-with a Pythagorean program of purification and divinization that would then influence philosophers from Aristotle to Kant. Those interested in Greek philosophical and religious thought will find fresh interpretations of its early figures, as well as a lucid presentation of the first and most influential attempts to link together divinity, rationality, and selfhood. This is the first volume of a two-volume work on pure reason in ancient Greek philosophy. The first volume has chapters on Heraclitus, Parmenides and Pythagoreans, and Plato. The second volume will have chapters on Aristotle, Stoics and Marcus Aurelius, and Plotinus. The first volume became available in the UK in November, 2010, and will be released in the US in January, 2011. It can be previewed through the widget on the left. Here also is where it is listed: Becoming God: Pure Reason in Early Greek Philosophy.
Plotinus: Knowing Oneself:
The paper attempts to show how Plotinus sought divinity by achieving self-knowledge. To do so, however, he had to make sense of knowledge and specifically self-knowledge, since Sextus Empiricus presented serious objections to the intelligibility of both. Knowledge, first, seemed impossible so long as we were thought to know by receiving representations of the objects of knowledge, for then we could not know that our representations represented these objects accurately (without an additional set of representations, of representations, that would be exposed to the same worry at a higher level of abstraction). Self-knowledge, second, seemed impossible to achieve because self-inquiry seemed impossible to begin: as the subject of self-inquiry, I must be the self sought; as the object of this same inquiry, I must be other than myself. Plotinus responds to both of these paradoxes with the same simple yet intricate solution. Put simply, we know the objects of knowledge directly, without representations, because these objects are within ourselves. They are the Forms within our shared Intellect to be precise, so that knowing them we know ourselves. The self for Plotinus, therefore, is a peculiar "one-many": selfsame enough to be the subject of our self-inquiry; other enough to be to the object of this same inquiry. Knowing ourselves as such, according to Plotinus, we become god.
Heraclitean Spirituality:
This paper appeared first in two halves on The Immanent Frame, with the subtitles Ephemeral Selves and Divine Conflict. The first half argues that there is no nugget of self within, no nugget that persists unchanged through time as though outside of it. Instead, the self is as impermanent as a river, as active as a fire, as embedded in greedy time as both. Unlike fires and rivers, however, the self comes to know this impermanence and activity—in the impermanent activity of self-inquiry, the inquiry that is indistinguishable from itself. In this inquiry, it encounters its own self-exceeding logos, which turns out to be the same self-exceeding logos of the world. A vibrant self—a virtuous self, if you will—is therefore one that inquires well, remaining open both to itself and the world, with minimal defenses obstructing its inquiry, ever exceeding itself in wisdom about self and world. The second half resumes from this ethical conclusion to consider the presence of conflict, suffering, and death in both self and world. Defending Heraclitus's recognition that every good in this world is intertwined with such an evil, it enjoins an affirmation of the world nonetheless.
Socrates' Irrational Rationality:
Whoever Socrates was, he inspired greatness -- great good (Plato and Xenophon), great evil (Alcibiades and Critias), and the powerful affects that motivate both. But inspiring powerful affects is not tantamount to managing them. Taming narcissistic aggression, tempering destructive lust, transforming childish passions into mature motivations for goodness -- these are the hallmarks of an affective genius. In this regard, the Socrates of history, as well as of Plato and the other extant accounts, appears inept. Socrates did indeed respect the irrationality of poetry and myth, oracles and his daimonion, but the affects of others he could not manage. Why not? He revered nothing more irrational than relentless rationality. (This has been published in Symploke as a review article of James Hans's, Socrates and the Irrational [Charlottesville, VA: The University of Virginia Press], 225 pp. 2006.)
Searching for Oneself in Heraclitus and Plato:
Self-inquiry was a defining characteristic of Greek philosophy, and it remains one of its enduring contributions. Similarly definitive and enduring has been a respect for logic, especially the prohibition of contradiction. But self-inquiry seems to flout this prohibition: to seek myself, I must be separated from myself, being both myself and not myself. Plato seems to resolve this contradiction by dividing the soul into parts. This paper, first, exposes the shortcomings of his approach, arguing that by making one part of the soul, reason, the inquirer, or subject of self-inquiry, Plato creates a dilemma about the object of inquiry, vacillating about the constitution of the self. In light of these shortcomings, secondly, this paper argues for a renewed Heraclitean understanding of both self-inquiry and selfhood.
Purity of Thought: Dualism and Divinization in Greek Philosophy:
This Ph.D. dissertation shows how the notion of purity of thought entered Greek philosophy through Pythagorean dualism and then grew in importance until, with Aristotle, it functioned simultaneously as the capstone of a psychology (humans are most of all pure thought, nous), a characterization of God (who is thinking thinking of thinking), and a moral ideal (we must strive to become divine, by thinking purely of God, who is himself pure thought). Besides the arrival of Pythagoreanism, major moments in this history include: the assumed correspondence between psychology and cosmology that begins with the Milesians, the supremacy of thought accorded to God by Xenophanes, the logic of self-intellection pioneered by Parmenides, and the doctrine of pure thought advanced by Anaxagoras. Plato is shown synthesizing these Presocratic contributions, incorporating them into the Pythagorean program of purification and divinization. Despite his refinements of Platonism, Aristotle never changes it so much as to compromise this program. Divinity, he maintains, can be achieved through pure thought.
The Origins and Development of Greek Dualism:
Beginning with Plato's Phaedo and its dramatic criticisms of Socrates' monist predecessors, this paper traces Platonic philosophy to its Pythagorean origins, before in turn tracing Pythagoreanism still further back -- to Zoroastrianism and the the Upanishads. Since the Persian religion was dualistic and the Indian philosophical texts monistic, however, Pythagoreanism is shown to be an unstable synthesis of the two. Inheriting this instability, Plato advances monism and dualism ambivalently, thus bequeathing a conflicted cosmology and psychology to his Neoplatonic and Christian heirs. This paper has been adapted from my dissertation, and appears as a chapter in Light against Darkness: Dualism in Ancient Mediterrannean Religion and the Modern World (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011).
Aristotle's Pure Thought:
"God is pure thought; the human is a hybrid of divine thought and mortal nature; the goal of philosophy is to purify this thought of its mortal entanglements, and thus to divinize the philosopher."
This nexus of ideas--a philosophical program of purification and divinization--first emerged in Greece among the Pythagoreans, but Plato soon synthesized it with diverse Preoscratic contributions, fashioning a version that many subsequent philosophers would find irresistible. Among these subsequent philosophers was Aristotle, and this paper exposes his own deep commitment to this Pythagorean nexus. For despite recent efforts to read his ethics as anthropocentric (Nussbaum 2001), his psychology as naturalistic (Wilkes 1992), and his theology as irrelevant (Irwin 1990), this program is at the very heart of his philosophy. According to Aristotle, after all, God is a kind of thought--the kind that actively thinks itself (Metaphysics 12.9); the human is a compound not only of body and soul, but even of inferior psychological capacities and pure thought (nous), which is separable (De Anima 3.5); at the summit of his ethics, finally, Aristotle enjoins us to live according to pure thought, adding that such a life is divine in comparison with a merely human one (Nicomachean Ethics 10.6-8).
Oedipus Rex Revisited:
A comparison of recent psychoanalytic and philological interpretations of Sophocles' play, arguing that each field helps supplement the shortcomings of the other. A synthetic interpretation is offered according to which the tragedy depicts not so much "oedipal" problems as "pre-oedipal" trauma. Oedipus re-enacts this trauma-of betrayal, abandonment, and expulsion-and Sophocles thereby issues prophetic warnings not only to the Athenians of the Greek enlightenment, but also to psychoanalysis.("Oedipus Rex Revisited," in Modern Psychoanalysis v.21, n.2 (Summer, 2007), 229-50.)
A Purpose of Platonic Polyphony:
A discussion of Plato's Gorgias which shows: first, the inter-connections among the various theses of Socrates; second, the inter-connections among the various theses of his rival, Callicles; and third, the extent to which these two networks of theses are incommensurable, a condition that is usually ascribed only to modern practices or philosophies. The dialogue is the genre best suited to capture this incommensurability and the polyphony it produces.
Examine and Punish: The Moral Epistemology of Plato's Gorgias
This MA thesis argues, first, that Socrates' moral and penological
arguments in Gorgias are valid, and second, that Callicles critique of
them also appears valid when it is presented against the wider
background of Thucydides' history. They thus present valid arguments
for mutually exclusive positions, positions that cannot be adjudicated
impartially because they each presume a moral epistemology
incommensurable with the opponent's.
The Role of Medical Metaphors in Aristotle's Ontology:
An elucidation of the fundamental role of medical metaphors - particularly metaphors drawn from Hippocratic theories of digestion - in Aristotle's ontology, arguing that although this most abstract of philosophical systems exalts immaterial purity, it surreptitiously requires the contemplation of the impurities (the excreta, for example).
Pindar in Plato:
An examination of Plato's quotations and misquotations of Pindar that shows how the philosopher uses the poet: from trivial mention to confirmation of moral precepts and authority on the after-life.
Plato's Symposium: The Science of Love:
An interpretation of the dialogue that shows Socrates' account of love to be a synthesis of all the virtues of the accounts that precede him, in the way that scientific theories synthesize the virtues of their antecedents.
Plato's Divided Soul:
An examination of Plato's doctrine of the tripartite soul, especially as it is advanced in the Republic. The following tension is elicited: the parts of the soul must be enough like homunculi to explain the phenomenon Plato develops them to explain (i.e., akrasia), but not so much like homunculi that the soul turns out to be in fact three souls, creating an infinite regress of souls.
-- Medieval --
Infinity in a Moment: Flaubert, Proust, Augustine:
A comparison of three episodes of ecstasy, and particularly the experience of multiple moments in an instant: the first sentimental, the second artistic, and the third spiritual.
Happiness and Desire in Aquinas and Lacan:
A defense of Aquinas's account of happiness, as the satisfaction of natural desire, against a critique, modeled upon the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, that the satisfaction of desire, and thereby happiness, is impossible.
-- Modern --
Immanent Spirituality:
A worthy touchstone to arbitrate between worldviews immanent and transcendent is the désir d'éternité, the "desire to gather together the scattered moments of meaning into some kind of whole." According to Charles Taylor, who has recently adduced this touchstone in A Secular Age, only transcendence has a satisfactory response to this longing: immortality. This paper argues, however, that mortality is a prerequisite of meaning, so that transcendent worldviews necessarily fail to satisfy this longing. The infinities they imagine render all activities meaningless repetitions. Immanent worldviews, ironically, can offer some response to the longing for eternity. This paper offers Nietzsche's, the eternal return, rejecting interpretations of that response that turn it into an infinite repetition. For such interpretations repeat the failure of transcendence. An alternate interpretation of Nietzsche's response is thus offered. By teaching the eternal return, this paper concludes, he enjoins his readers to the love the whole world. This paper first appeared on The Immanent Frame. An expanded version of this paper later received the prize for the Best Submission by a Junior Scholar to the 2009 annual meeting of SPEP (The Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy), and was published in Philosophy Today:
The Problem with the Problem of Induction:
An analysis of the traditional epistemological problem of induction, arguing that any full statement of the problem requires that induction be a valid form of reasoning, thus contradicting itself.
On the Very Idea of a Metaphorical Scheme:
Systematizing the theory of metaphor developed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in Metaphors We Live By, this paper begins and ends with a critique of Donald Davidson's influential papers on metaphor and conceptual schemes.
A Difficulty for Correction:
An analysis of corrective penology, eliciting the epistemological difficulty it suffers: that the good it compels its beneficiaries to pursue will remain incomprehensible to them until they have nearly achieved it. Punishment is just on the most salient, of the many at which power and knowledge are tied together.
Two Nietzsches on Truth:
A comparison of Nietzsche's early discussions of truth, which presuppose some of the Kantian categories he inherited, with his later discussion of the same subject, a discussion which completely rejects, and often mocks, these categories.
An Assessment of Kuhn's Philosophy of Science:
An attempt is made to rescue Kuhn's philosophy of science from the relativism with which it is often charged by adapting the epistemology Aristotle exhibits at the beginning of many of his treatises, most notably De Anima.
-- Comparative --
Psychoanalysis as Spirituality:
This paper begins with a critique of Charles Taylor's denial that psychoanalysis is a moral and spiritual source for modernity. In order to vindicate it as such a source, this paper develops the connections between emotion and meaning defended by recent cognitive understandings of emotion gaining acceptance in American philosophy. Using these understandings, it argues that the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis is the substitution of love for resentment by a disciplined pursuit of self-knowledge that enriches one's emotional world, one's transference, by opening it to the world's otherness. This conception of psychoanalysis makes it a moral and spiritual source for modernity, much as Stoicism and the aphorisms of Heraclitus offered a moral and spiritual source to antiquity. These comparisons are examined in detail, and from them are drawn conclusions about the prospect of a similar modern spirituality that foregoes transcendence in favor of immanence, recognizing the prerequisite of meaning: death. (A shorter version of this appear appears in symploke, Vol. 18, Nos. 1-2 (2010), 196-203.)
Infinity in a Moment: Flaubert, Proust, Augustine:
A comparison of three episodes of ecstasy, and particularly the experience of multiple moments in an instant: the first sentimental, the second artistic, and the third spiritual.
Happiness and Desire in Aquinas and Lacan:
A defense of Aquinas's account of happiness, as the satisfaction of natural desire, against a critique, modeled upon the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, that the satisfaction of desire, and thereby happiness, is impossible.
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