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Publication Open Access A principle of universal strife: Ricoeur and Merleau-Ponty's critiques of Marxist universalism, 1953-1956(University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015) Department of Philosophy; Chouraqui, Frank; Faculty Member; Department of Philosophy; College of Social Sciences and Humanities
Publication Metadata only Ambiguity and the absolute: Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty on the question of truth(Fordham University Press, 2014) Department of Philosophy; Chouraqui, Frank; Faculty Member; Department of Philosophy; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; N/AFriedrich Nietzsche and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Chouraqui argues, are linked by how they conceive the question of truth. Although both thinkers criticize the traditional concept of truth as objectivity, they both find that rejecting it does not solve the problem. What is it in our natural existence that gave rise to the notion of truth? The answer to that question is threefold. First, Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty both propose a genealogy of "truth" in which to exist means to make implicit truth claims. Second, both seek to recover the preobjective ground from which truth as an erroneous concept arose. Finally, this attempt at recovery leads both thinkers to ontological considerations, regarding how we must conceive of a being whose structure allows for the existence of the belief in truth. In conclusion, Chouraqui suggests that both thinkers' investigations of the question of truth lead them to conceive of being as the process of self-falsification by which indeterminate being presents itself as determinate. The answer to that question is threefold. First, Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty both propose a genealogy of "truth" in which to exist means to make implicit truth claims. Second, both seek to recover the preobjective ground from which truth as an erroneous concept arose. Finally, this attempt at recovery leads both thinkers to ontological considerations, regarding how we must conceive of a being whose structure allows for the existence of the belief in truth. In conclusion, Chouraqui suggests that both thinkers' investigations of the question of truth lead them to conceive of being as the process of self-falsification by which indeterminate being presents itself as determinate.Publication Open Access An algebraic approach to physical fields(Elsevier, 2021) Fritz, Tobias; Department of Philosophy; Chen, Lu; Faculty Member; Department of Philosophy; College of Social Sciences and HumanitiesAccording to the algebraic approach to spacetime, a thoroughgoing dynamicism, physical fields exist without an underlying manifold. This view is usually implemented by postulating an algebraic structure (e.g., commutative ring) of scalar-valued functions, which can be interpreted as representing a scalar field, and deriving other structures from it. In this work, we point out that this leads to the unjustified primacy of an undetermined scalar field. Instead, we propose to consider algebraic structures in which all (and only) physical fields are primitive. We explain how the theory of natural operations in differential geometry-the modern formalism behind classifying diffeomorphism-invariant constructions-can be used to obtain concrete implementations of this idea for any given collection of fields. For concrete examples, we illustrate how our approach applies to a number of particular physical fields, including electrodynamics coupled to a Weyl spinor.Publication Metadata only Animality in Lacan and Derrida: the deconstruction of the other(Springer, 2018) Department of Philosophy; Direk, Zeynep; Faculty Member; Department of Philosophy; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 5771In The Beast and the Sovereign, Derrida's last seminar, Derrida criticizes Lacan for making no room for animality in the Other, in the unconscious transindividual normativity of language. In this paper, I take into account the history of Derrida's interactions with Lacan's psychoanalysis to argue that Derrida's early agreement with Lacan's conception of subjectivity as split by the signifier gives place in his late thought to a deconstruction of Lacan's fall into humanist metaphysics, which makes a sharp moral distinction between the animal and the human in order to subordinate animals to the domination of mankind.Publication Metadata only Aristotelian penalties: action-centred rectification and character-centred punishment(Imprint Academic Ltd., 2017) N/A; Department of Philosophy; Platanakis, Charilaos; Faculty Member; Department of Philosophy; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; N/AThis article offers an account of Aristotle’s penology that is sensitive to his corrective justice (EN V.4) and the archon counterexamples (opening of EN V.5). By emphasizing the rectificatory nature of corrective justice, I argue for its independence from its distributive counterpart and its contrast, both formal and functional, with Pythagorean reciprocity. After criticizing the various justifications of the archon counterexamples, I propose a rôle-based justification that is compatible with Aristotelian corrective justice. By eliminating the inconsistency between corrective justice and the archon counterexamples, I distinguish between different types of penalty in Aristotle, action-centred rectification and character-centred punishment, as well as their respective domains and functions.Publication Metadata only Auto-affection and ethics(ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2024) Department of Philosophy; Direk, Zeynep; Department of Philosophy; College of Social Sciences and HumanitiesThis essay starts with the possibility of situating Derrida's aporetic ethics in the domain of normative ethics and argues that Derrida's reflection on ethics is enrooted in the specific way he conceives the phenomenological notion of auto-affection. In the second section, I analyze, in the early work, auto-affection with signs and show its centrality in Derrida's first encounter with Levinas's philosophy. Derrida refuses to substitute the hetero-affective relation to the Other for auto-affection as the source of universal law and normativity. He does not sacrifice universality and tackles the problem of autonomous ethical decision-making even though he welcomes through affectivity the signification of the singular other, which is irreducible to conceptual, emotive, and normative self-relation. This background helps us understand the rootedness of ethical aporias in a reflection on auto-affection.Publication Open Access Awareness of ignorance(De Gruyter, 2020) Department of Philosophy; İnan, Halit İlhan; Faculty Member; Department of Philosophy; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 144349Despite the recent increase in interest in philosophy about ignorance, little attention has been paid to the question of what makes it possible for a being to become aware of their own ignorance. In this paper, I try to provide such an account by arguing that, for a being to become aware of their own ignorance, they must have the mental capacity to represent something as being unknown to them. For normal adult humans who have mastered a language, mental representation of an unknown is enabled by forming linguistic expressions whose content is grasped, but whose referent is unknown. I provide a neo-Fregean, a neo-Russellian, and then a unified account of this. On that basis, I then argue further that the content of ignorance can always be captured by a question. I then distinguish between propositional ignorance and non-propositional ignorance and argue that propositional ignorance attributions can be of three types, that-ignorance, whether-ignorance, and fact-ignorance. I conclude by arguing that the acquisition of truths, even when it yields knowledge that is certain, does not always eliminate one's ignorance and that there is a degree of ignorance in almost everything we claim to know.Publication Metadata only Bataille and Kristeva on religion(Fordham University Press, 2015) Department of Philosophy; Direk, Zeynep; Faculty Member; Department of Philosophy; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 5771N/APublication Open Access Book review: The idea of comedy: history, theory, critique(Penn State University Press, 2007) Department of Philosophy; Freydberg, Bernard; Faculty Member; Department of Philosophy; College of Social Sciences and HumanitiesPublication Metadata only Can we "effectivize" spacetime?(Elsevier Sci Ltd, 2022) Department of Philosophy; Chen, Lu; Faculty Member; Department of Philosophy; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 329122According to effective realism, scientific theories give us knowledge about the unobservable world, but not at the fundamental level. This view is supported by the well-received effective -field-theory (EFT) approach to high energy physics, according to which even our most successful physical theories are only applicable up to a certain energy scale and expected to break down beyond that. In this paper, I advance new challenges for effective realism and the EFT approach. I argue that effective quantum gravity (EQG) does not give us a realistic theory of spacetime even within its scope of validity. This also exposes a general interpretative dilemma faced by all EFTs concerning their indispensable references to classical spacetime beyond their scope of validity.