Alain Badiou’s entire philosophical project rests on reclaiming the centrality of truth in philosophy, and he does so through a detailed working through of subjectivity, truth, and the event. Badiou makes it clear that in his systematic philosophy he wants to do without any reference to a subject who has and constructs its experiences, and the phenomenological structures of conscious life are not his focus. Although Badiou calls the method he uses in Logics of Worlds a phenomenology - it is, in his terms an objective phenomenology because it is about the existence of objects in a world and the relations that obtain among these objects, “the degrees of identity and difference among objects in a world” (Logics of Worlds, p. 48) Badiou identifies …show more content…
For Badiou, Kierkegaard’s theory of radical choice presents a way of understanding the process involved in the subject’s encounter with the truth-event by providing an understanding of the “connection … between choice as a cut in time and the eternity of truth as subjective truth” (LW, 425). Understanding how the ahistorical can take on a subjective form is key to enabling us to have a fuller understanding of how rational thought can “take on the historicity of the Absolute” (LW, 426). Key to this reading of Kierkegaard is Badiou’s shift from Being and Event to Logic of Worlds, whereas in the former Badiou was concerned mainly with the articulation of truth in an examination of abstract ontology; in the latter Badiou realizes he needs to provide an account that “thought and truth must not simply account for their being, but also for their appearing, which is say for their existence” (LW, …show more content…
Underpinning this typology are three modalities/engagements with the truth: 1) “an active and identifiable form of … production” of truth and what “2) hinders or 3) annuls” this production (LW, 50). Corresponding to these engagements respectively are the 1) faithful subject, 2) reactive subject, and 3) obscure subject. (LW, 50) This typology of the subject presents a more nuanced formalization of the subject and also allows Badiou to examine how the truth ‘operates’ in the situation/world by linking each subject with the notion of appearance. While the event is unapprehendable in the situation, it nevertheless leaves a trace which the subject can either articulate and thus engage in the production of truth, stop by denying the possibility of the event and its trace, or suppress it through a rigid imposition of the norms of the situation. The notion of appearance thus moves Badiou’s conceptualization of the subject away from a simple rigid dualism to an acknowledgement of degrees of appearance, and the introduction of two kinds of consequences, and two modalities of the faithful subject. The first resides in the world, where the subject makes “continuous adjustments within the old world”, while the second “deals with closures imposed by the world”, presenting the subject with a “choice between two possibilities and two alone”, a
Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher in the mid 1800s. He is known to be the father of existentialism and was at least 70 years ahead of his time. Kierkegaard set out to attack Kant’s rational ethics and make attacks on the Christianity of our day. He poses the question, how do we understand faith? He states that faith equals the absurd. In “Fear and Trembling”, he uses the story of Abraham and his son Isaac to show an example of faith as the absurd. The story of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac signifies a break in the theory that ethics and religion go hand in hand. He shows how the ethical and the religious can be completely different. “I by no means conclude that faith is something inferior but rather that it is the highest, also that it is dishonest of philosophy to give something else in its place and to disparage faith” (Fear and Trembling, 12).
In the critique of pure reason, Kant states, “All alternations occur in accordance with the law of the connection of cause and effect.”1 This statement is interpreted in two different ways: weak readings and strong readings. Weaker readings basically suggest that Kant's statement only refers to “All events have a cause”; however, the strong readings suggest that “the Second Analogy is committed not just to causes, but to causal laws as well.”2 To understand the difference between the readings, it is helpful to notice Kant's distinction between empirical laws of nature and universal transcendental principles. Empirical laws have an empirical element that universal transcendental principles cannot imply. On the other hand, empirical experiences require necessity to become a law, accordingly, “the transcendental laws “ground” the empirical laws by supplying them with their necessity.”3In this paper, according to this distinction, I first, argue that the second analogy supports the weak reading, second, show how in Prolegomena he uses the concept of causation in a way that is compatible to the strong reading, and third, investigate whether this incongruity is solvable.
ABSTRACT: Phenomenology and logical positivism both subscribed to an empirical-verifiability criterion of mental or linguistic meaning. The acceptance of this criterion confronted them with the same problem: how to understand the Other as a subject with his own experience, if the existence and nature of the Other's experiences cannot be verified. Husserl tackled this problem in the Cartesian Meditations, but he could not reconcile the verifiability criterion with understanding the Other's feelings and sensations. Carnap's solution was to embrace behaviorism and eliminate the idea of private sensations, but behaviorism has well-known difficulties. Heidegger broke this impasse by suggesting that each person's being included being-with, an innate capacity for understanding the Other. To be human is to be "hard-wired" to make sense of the Other without having to verify the Other's private sensations. I suggest that being-with emerged from an evolutionary imperative for conspecific animals to recognize each other and to coordinate their activities. Wittgenstein also rejected the verifiability criterion. He theorized that the meaning of a term is its usage and that terms about private sensations were meaningful because they have functions in our language-games. For example, "I'm in pain," like a cry of pain, functions to get the attention of others and motivate others to help. Wittgenstein's theory shows how Dasein's being-with includes "primitive" adaptive behavior such as cries, smiles, and threatening or playful gesture. As Dasein is acculturated, these behaviors are partially superseded by functionally equivalent linguistic expressions.
This paper is an initial attempt to develop a dynamic conception of being which is not anarchic. It does this by returning to Aristotle in order to begin the process of reinterpreting the meaning of ousia, the concept according to which western ontology has been determined. Such a reinterpretation opens up the possibility of understanding the dynamic nature of ontological identity and the principles according to which this identity is established. The development of the notions of energeia, dynamis and entelecheia in the middle books of Aristotle’s Metaphysics will be discussed in order to suggest that there is a dynamic ontological framework at work in Aristotle’s later writing. This framework lends insight into the dynamic structure of being itself, a structure which does justice as much to the concern for continuity through change as it does to the moment of difference. The name for this conception of identity which affirms both continuity and novelty is "legacy." This paper attempts to apprehend the meaning of being as legacy.
Accepting that we cannot establish the "objectivity" of our experiences' content, Kant nevertheless attempts to resist a slide into relativism by insisting that they are mediated by rationally delineated categories which supposedly insure the transcendental or universal nature of their form, thereby providing an absolute standard against which we might check the veridicality of our descriptions of, and communications concerning, them. However as a priori preconditions of the possibility of experience such categories are obviously inexperienceable in themselves, and consequently must also fall to the phenomenological reduction. (3) Nevertheless, a moments reflection will confirm that our experiences do indeed exhibit structure or form, and that we are able, even from within, or wholly upon the basis of, the (phenomenologically reduced) realm of, our experiences per se, to distinguish between the flux of constantly changing and interrupted subjective appearances, and the relatively unchanging and continuously existing objects constituted therein. Husserl confirms:
The 'doctrine of recollection' states that all true knowledge exists implicitly within us, and can be brought to consciousness - made explicit - by recollection. Using the Platonic concepts of 'Forms', 'particulars', 'knowledge' and 'true opinion', this essay explains what can or cannot be recollected, why all knowledge is based on recollection, and why the doctrine does not prove the soul to be immortal.
In The Landscape of History, John Lewis Gaddis makes a cohesive argument concerning about the debate over the objectivity of truth by stating “objectivity as a consequence is hardly possible, and that there is, therefore, no such thing as truth (Gaddis 29). The question for objective history has long been debated by numerous historians, and the differing viewpoints of history have led to a transition in our ways of thinking in the modern world. Ultimately, the question that this paper focuses on is: to what extent is history objective? Along with this, the relation to historical consciousness and the challenges of living in modernity will also be assessed. This paper will analyze the texts of John Lewis Gaddis, Nietzsche and the Birth of Tragedy, Modernity and Historical Vision, Living in Modernity, and Hermeneutics. Finally, the paper will argue that history is not largely objective, and is fundamentally shaped through the historian’s subjectivity.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig; G. E. M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte (eds. and trans.). Philosophical Investigations. 4th edition, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Print.
...sen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” relate to Abercrombie and Kahneman concept of reality. By considering the overlapping concepts of reality, that words and metaphors structure our understanding of what is real, reality can be altered from different perspectives, and that ignorance can actually be bliss, it can be seen that the complex process of developing reality is essential in life, and it should not be drastically altered even if it is a false reality. Although some of the readings were written decades ago, the concept of reality can still be applied to real situations today, and how there universal concerns for what is believed to be an illusion or a false reality. Despite these conflicts of what people believe to be the truth or a false reality, I argue that people should accept the fact that people have different interpretations and perspectives of reality.
In Hamlet, the value of truth incorporates the theme of appearance as opposed to reality and it links ...
In Part I of Experience and Judgment, Husserl proceeds with an analysis of the “passive” data of experience. It is here that Husserl hopes to exhibit what he refers to as the “prepredicative” conditions of predication as such. These prepredicative conditions underlie every act of objective experience, such that these structures ultimately found the distinct forms of judgment that one would encounter on the level of formal logic. Part II concerns the structure of predicative thought as such; that is, it is concerned with the origin of predicative forms of judgment in prepredicative experience. Husserl argues that on the level of predicative thought, "objectivities of understanding” are realized in acts of categorical judgment, which form the logical structures necessary to the founding of a formal logic. The origin of general, conceptual thought is treated in Part III. The process of isolating the forms of judgment from the data of pregiven subjective experience, begun in Part II, is here continued.
"Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy." Beauvoir, Simone de []. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2014. .
The only distinction between this case and standard sight is that in this case there is a Censor who is prepared to intervene if the scene were any different. Thus, the subject would have the same experience of the scene even it were different due to the intervention of the Censor. Lewis claims that because the subject would be unable to distinguish the current scene from possible alternatives, he cannot be said to genuinely see the scene. In this essay I will argue that the Censor is misleading because it lacks sufficient context and details for the reader to properly gauge their intuitions of the case. I will use the model of the Censor to construct a new vignette I call, “The School of Athens”. In The School of Athens, I will attempt to demonstrate how our intuitions of the Censor model can be very different depending on the context in which it is presented. Lastly, I will provide three reasons the counterfactual dependence requirement it too demanding for mere sight and thus, the Censor is in fact a case of genuine
In support of this view—the “abandonment of the quest for certainty, acceptance of provisional solutions as long as they work, and readiness to discard them when changing conditions make them no longer appropriate”—I will endeavor to briefly examine substance, the self, and the presumed necessary connection of ideas or events (Jones 349).
Kierkegaard, a highly regarded philosopher of the 19th century, put to us the idea of living life in three different stages. He named these stages the Aesthetical, the Ethical and the Religious. He himself passed through each of the stages in his own lifetime and he adopted them as his own philosophy of human existence. The first two stages are characterized by a distinct set of beliefs and behaviors that are easily identified, whereas the last stage, the religious is characterized by a highly personal, subjective and non-rational ‘’leap of faith’’. The ideal is to progress from the aesthetical to the ethical, finally reaching the religious stage but as Kierkegaard himself realized, it is possible to regress or go back a stage. He said that he felt that he had never really left the first two, these stages were always there. He believed that one can move in and out and through all three stages within a lifetime. For the purpose of this essay I will explain each of the three stages in order to give an understanding of Kierkegaard’s philosophical theory of life. Also I will discuss why Kierkegaard considered the religious stage as the best kind of life for humanity and I will present to you some criticisms against Kierkegaard’s third stage.