Continental Philosophy » Web resources

New Entry: Négritude (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Farhang Erfani — Thu, 27 May 2010 04:01:16 +0000

Towards the end of his life, Aimé Césaire has declared that the question he and his friend Léopold Sédar Senghor came to raise after they first met was: “Who am I? Who are we? What are we in this white world?” And he commented: “That’s quite a problem” (Césaire 2005, 23). “Who am I?” is a question Descartes posed, and a reader of the French philosopher naturally understands such a question to be universal, and the subject who says “I” here to stand for any human being. But when “who am I?” has to be translated as “who are we?” everything changes especially when the “we” have to define themselves against a world which leaves no room for who and what they are because they are black folks in a world where “universal” seems to naturally mean “white”.

“Négritude”, or the self-affirmation of black peoples, or the affirmation of the values of civilization of something defined as “the black world” as an answer to the question “what are we in this white world?” is indeed “quite a problem”: it poses many questions that will be examined here through the following headings:

via Négritude (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

New Entry: Immanuel Kant (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Farhang Erfani — Mon, 24 May 2010 03:34:32 +0000

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) is the central figure in modern philosophy. He synthesized early modern rationalism and empiricism, set the terms for much of nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy, and continues to exercise a significant influence today in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, and other fields. The fundamental idea of Kant's “critical philosophy” — especially in his three Critiques: the Critique of Pure Reason (1781, 1787), the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790) — is human autonomy. He argues that the human understanding is the source of the general laws of nature that structure all our experience; and that human reason gives itself the moral law, which is our basis for belief in God, freedom, and immortality. Therefore, scientific knowledge, morality, and religious belief are mutually consistent and secure because they all rest on the same foundation of human autonomy, which is also the final end of nature according to the teleological worldview of reflecting judgment that Kant introduces to unify the theoretical and practical parts of his philosophical system.

via Immanuel Kant (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

Louis Althusser ( New Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry)

Farhang Erfani — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 02:32:05 +0000

Louis Althusser (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

Discourse Notebook Archive

Farhang Erfani — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 03:27:15 +0000

About: The discourse notebook is an effort (in conjunction with ‘The Bernstein Tapes’*) to make available lectures in contemporary continental philosophy.

Link

Nietzsche Source is now open

Farhang Erfani — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 02:30:27 +0000

About Nietzsche Source: Nietzsche Source is a web site devoted to the publication of scholarly content on the work and life of Friedrich Nietzsche. The contents of the site and its internet addresses are stable and can be freely consulted
and used for scholarly purposes. Two editions are currently being published in Nietzsche Source: the digital version of the standard critical edition
[http://www.nietzschesource.org/documentation/en/eKGWB.html] and the facsimile edition of the entire Nietzsche estate [http://www.nietzschesource.org/documentation/en/DFGA.html].

The genetic editions of two of Nietzsche’s works The Wanderer and his Shadow and Dawn, including the reproduction of all related manuscripts, are in preparation. The website is managed by the Nietzsche Source Organization (formerly, the Association HyperNietzsche), a non-profit organisation hosted at the Ecole normale superieure in Paris. Its main
purpose is to continue work on the edition, commentary and interpretation of Nietzsche’s work.

For more information, see http://www.nietzschesource.org

Protevi’s outline on Foucault

Farhang Erfani — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:03:00 +0000

John Protevi has posted a new outline of Foucault’s Security, Territory, Population 1-4

Link

Thomas Hobbes

Farhang Erfani — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 00:49:00 +0000

New Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry

Link

NEW SEP: Feminist Political Philosophy

Farhang Erfani — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 22:10:18 +0000

Noelle McAfee has the new entry:

Feminist political philosophy is an area of philosophy focused on understanding and critiquing the way political philosophy is usually construed, often without any attention to feminist concerns, and to articulating how political theory might be reconstructed in a way that advances feminist concerns. Feminist political philosophy is a branch of both feminist philosophy and political philosophy. As a branch of feminist philosophy, it serves as a form of critique or a hermeneutics of suspicion (Ricœur 1970). That is, it serves as a way of opening up or looking at the political world as it is usually understood and uncovering ways in which women and their current and historical concerns are poorly depicted, represented, and addressed. As a branch of political philosophy, feminist political philosophy serves as a field for developing new ideals, practices, and justifications for how political institutions and practices should be organized and reconstructed.

While feminist philosophy has been instrumental in critiquing and reconstructing many branches of philosophy, from aesthetics to philosophy of science, feminist political philosophy may be the paradigmatic branch of feminist philosophy because it best exemplifies the point of feminist theory, which is, to borrow a phrase from Marx, not only to understand the world but to change it (Marx and Engels 1998). And, though other fields have effects that may change the world, feminist political philosophy focuses most directly on understanding ways in which collective life can be improved. This project involves understanding the ways in which power emerges and is used or misused in public life (see the entry on feminist perspectives on power). As with other kinds of feminist theory, common themes have emerged for discussion and critique, but there has been little in the way of consensus among feminist theorists on what is the best way to understand them. This introductory article lays out the various schools of thought and areas of concern that have occupied this vibrant field of philosophy for the past thirty years.

Link

Religion and Politics

Farhang Erfani — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 06:07:00 +0000

SEP’s new entry on “Religion and Political Theory”

And Balibar’s Spinoza and Politics

New SEP entry

Farhang Erfani — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:16:14 +0000

On Aristotle