I am terribly sorry. Health issues kept me to minimal activity for the past few weeks. I’m trying to catch up with the backlog. Site is back now.

i am sorry for the slowdown of the site. it should be back to a normal routine this week. please bear with me as i’m catching up with emails you have kindly sent.

It is a peculiar fact that the severe economic turmoil of the past year has for the most part not led people to ask the most fundamental question about the root of all this angst: What is money?

Money is, of course, many things: the coins and notes rattling in our pockets, as well as the piles of real and virtual stuff lying in banks, or the smart money that tends towards disappearance and increasing immateriality, being shuffled electronically along the vectors of the financial networks.

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Alain Badiou:  The Uses of the Word “Jew”

http://www.lacan.com/essays/?page_id=276

For the last couple of decades, the intellectual situation in France has been marked by countless discussions about the status to be accorded to the word “Jew” within the divisions of thought. Undoubtedly, this has to do with the suspicion, based on some indubitable facts and some contrived ones, that anti-Semitism has made a “return”. But had it ever disappeared? […]

Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy — La Société canadienne de philosophie continentale

Annual Conference / Congrès annuel October 15-17, 2009
King’s University College at The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario CANADA
Invited Guests / Conférenciers invités

Linda Martín Alcoff, CUNY Graduate Center
Ugo Perone, Università del Piemonte Orientale (with Silvia Benso and Robert Valgenti)
Tilottama Rajan, University of Western Ontario
Constantin Boundas, Trent University Steve Lofts
King’s University College at UWO
Helen Fielding, University of Western Ontario
Dawne McCance, University of Manitoba

Registration / Inscription:

www.c-scp.org

TRANSFORMATIONS
Issue No. 17 2009 — Bernard Stiegler and the Question of Technics

Transformation as an Ontological Imperative: The [Human] Future According to Bernard Stiegler
Stephen Barker

The Duck and the Philosopher: Rhythms of Editing and Thinking between Bernard Stiegler and The Ister
Patrick Crogan

The Cosmeceutical Face: Time-Fighting Technologies and the Archive
Grayson Cooke

Politics and Aesthetics, or, Transformations of Aristotle in Bernard Stiegler
Daniel Ross

Culture Industry Redux: Stiegler and Derrida on Technics and Cultural Politics
Robert Sinnerbrink

Animality, Humanity, and Technicity
Nathan Van Camp

Stiegler and Marx for a Question Concerning Technology
Irmak Ertuna

Unweaving the Program: Stiegler and the Hegemony of Technics
Andrés Vaccari

Prolegomena to a Future Robot History: Stiegler, Epiphylogenesis and Technical Evolution
Andrés Vaccari & Belinda Barnet

At the end of a class today on Democracy, the students and I were discussing the value of fiction in understanding politics. One objection was that fictional characters are too exaggerated and simplistic and distract from overall message. Thankfully, reality is more imaginative than fiction:

What the ancient Greeks—at least in the archaic phase of their civilisation—called muthos was quite different from what we and the media nowadays call “myth”. For them a muthos was a true story, a story that unveils the true origin of the world and human beings. For us a myth is something to be “debunked”: a widespread, popular belief that is in fact false. In archaic Greece the memorable was transmitted orally through poetry, which often relied on myth. However, starting with the beginning of the seventh century BC two types of discourse emerged that were set in opposition to poetry: history (as shaped by, most notably, Thucydides) and philosophy (as shaped by the peri phuse?s tradition of the sixth and fifth centuries BC). These two types of discourse were naturalistic alternatives to the poetic accounts of things. Plato broke to some extent from the philosophical tradition of the sixth and fifth centuries in that he uses both traditional myths and myths he invents and gives them some role to play in his philosophical endeavor. He thus seems to attempt to overcome the traditional opposition between muthos and logos.

Link

Sofia University in Bulgaria offers doctoral scholarships at the Graduate Program in Philosophy Taught in English Language; the program features a strong emphasis on Continental Philosophy. The scholarships carry a full tuition waiver plus a monthly stipend over 36 months. Citizens of EU/EEA and Switzerland are eligible to apply. Federal Loan and Provincial Government Loan are available for American and Canadian citizens. Master’s degree at the time of application is required. Deadline for application: September 15, 2009.

For more information write to Dr. Alexander Gungov as Gungov@sclg.uni-sofia.bg or visit http://portal.uni-sofia.bg/eng/ma_phd_phil

The Third Annual TELOS Conference

I have finally set up the site in a way that it should be nicely viewed on mobile phones, such as the iphone and different browsers of smartphones. There is no new link; the site should automatically detect mobile browsers and adapt itself. I would be grateful if readers could give me some feedback. I have tested it on a few mobile browsers but not all…and not yet the iphone. So please do let me know.

A new entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, by my good friend J.C. Berendzen:

Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) was a leader of the so-called “Frankfurt School,” a group of philosophers and social scientists associated with the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute of Social Research) in Frankfurt am Main. Horkheimer was the director of the Institute and Professor of Social Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt from 1930–1933, and again from 1949–1958. In between those periods he would lead the Institute in exile, primarily in America. As a philosopher he is best known (especially in the Anglophone world), for his work during the 1940s, including Dialectic of Enlightenment, which was co-authored with Theodor Adorno. While deservedly influential, Dialectic of Enlightenment (and other works from that period) should not be separated from the context of Horkheimer’s work as a whole. Especially important in this regard are the writings from the 1930s, which were largely responsible for developing the epistemological and methodological orientation of Frankfurt School critical theory. This work both influenced his contemporaries (including Adorno and Herbert Marcuse) and has had an enduring influence on critical theory’s later practitioners (including Jürgen Habermas, and the Institute’s current director Axel Honneth).

Read the rest

UPDATE: The site is back! Clean and safe! Thank you all for your patience and the kind emails in the meantime! Hope people like the new look too (thanks to Chris)!

If you do get here and bypass our google overlord, you probably had to bypass a few warnings. I am terribly sorry. It looks like my linking to Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory (which has been compromised) has by proxy compromised my credibility with Google. We should be back soon and to the best of my knowledge this site is not dangerous.

Read online. Link

Again, sincere apologies. In addition to end of the semester stuff that many of us are going through, I have some some site revamping to do (hoping to make the site iphone friendly, per readers’ request). Should be back to a normal schedule within a day or so and will take care of the backlog! Thank you for your patience all and for visiting the site

The Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy is pleased to announce its 2009 Winter School curriculum.

June 29 – July 17, 2009 – The University of Melbourne

Week 1: June 29 – July 3

11am. Meaning and Metaphor in Nietzsche and Wittgenstein , Paul Daniels & Gareth Davies

2pm. Gilles Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, Jon Roffe

Week 2: July 6-10

11am. Kant’s Critical Philosophy 1, Marc Hiatt & Paul Daniels

2pm. Marx and Marxism, Andy Blunden

Week 3: July 13-17

11am. Kant’s Critical Philosophy 2, Marc Hiatt & Paul Daniels

2pm. Recent Continental Rationalism, Jon Roffe

For further details, recommended readings and enrolment go to www.mscp.org.au

Read the rest of this entry »

Apologies for lack of posting. Coming back to the site tomorrow!

Just the strangest illustration of Sartrean Bad Faith:

A Maryland woman involved with a group described as a religious cult pleaded guilty in the starvation death of her son, but insisted that the charges be dropped when he is resurrected.

The condition was made a part of Ria Ramkissoon’s plea agreement, officials said. She entered the plea Monday in Baltimore, Maryland, to a first-degree felony count of child abuse resulting in death, her attorney, Steven Silverman, said Tuesday.

Ramkissoon, a member of a group called One Mind Ministries, believes Javon Thompson, her year-old son, will rise again, and as part of her plea agreement, authorities agreed to the clause.

“She certainly recognizes that her omissions caused the death of her son,” Silverman said. “To this day, she believes it was God’s will and he will be resurrected and this will all take care of itself. She realizes if she’s wrong, then everyone has to take responsibility … and if she’s wrong, then she’s a failure as a mother and the worst thing imaginable has happened. I don’t think that, mentally, she’s ready to accept that.”

…

In court Monday, it was clarified that the “resurrection clause” would apply only in the case of Javon’s actual resurrection — not a perceived reincarnation, Silverman said.

Link

(h/t: Ben G)

This is of course a very important press for continental philosophy. Note:

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Just in case you missed this on Brian Leiter’s blog, many would be interested in signing this petition urging the APA to actually enforce its own policies of anti-discrimination.

Link