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Archive for the ‘Continental Philosophy’ Category

Dearest unhappy nihilist,

You do not know me, but I write to you as a brother. (Excuse me if I have mistaken your gender. Remember, I do not know you.) I know that, in your current place, the brotherhood relationship can have no value, but I invoke the relationship as a way to tell you this: We are from the same philosophical family, which is just to say that you and I have lived under the same roof with that bastard of a father, Nihilism.

You and I have suffered together the presence of his absence. He abandoned us because that is his character. That is how he shows himself. If we were wiser, we would have expected nothing more, or shall I say nothing less? We have suffered his present-absence on those quiet nights when we have looked up at the cold and uncaring sky, when we have contemplated the vastness of the earth and our next-to-thing-ness among it all, when we have come to that same breathtaking truth Solomon discovered many years ago: Everything is nothing. All is vanity, a chasing after the wind.

I am sorry, dear brother, to stab you again with those words. The wound I inflict here, however, is necessary. “Necessary for what?”, you ask. You are both angry and suspicious with your question. Angry, because you have been mildly successful at forgetting the present-absentness of our father. (Be not excessively angry, dear Brother, for you and I know that forgetfulness of this kind can be rekindled as easily as it is disturbed.) You are suspicious because the phrase “Necessary for” hints at some goal for one’s actions, and if we really are brothers, then neither of us can have such goals. Your suspicion is correct, and this is the purpose of my letter to you.

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What does the world’s most high profile high tech vigilante have to do with the world’s most incoherent philosopher? I’m not sure, but you can now bid on eBay to have lunch with both of them. Check it out here.

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I have been in Madrid, Spain for nearly a week now. From this stay I have made some generalizations, of which the philosophy related ones I´d like to share here. Notions of what Philosophy “is” are different in Spain, and perhaps this applies to all of continental Europe as well. Here, the Philosopher is closer to what I would consider, back in the States, an anthropologist, sociologist, literary theorist, or even amateur psychologist. Back home, Quine is the standard, here it is Foucault. Get into a conversation about Philosophy with an English speaking native and you´ll be likely discussing literary theory, capitalist oppression, or the recent unfolding of history. Here, Philosophy of Langauge, of Mind, of Science, of Mathematics, of Logic, and non-political ethics simply are nowhere to be found. Unfortunate.

However, the average Spaniard is more likely to have heard of Nietzsche, Benjamin, Heidegger, Foucault, and Adorno. The Spanish teach their children the virtues of art much more than Americans do and it is usually through discussions of art that people here hear of the said philosophers. In Spain, philosophers are better respected than they are in the States. There is a respect of the willingness to spend so much time reading, thinking, discussing and writing. No burger flipping jokes here. The philosopher is held in high regard, he is a public intellectual.

I´ll close with this photo that I took today from an exhibit called “Atlas” at the Museo Reina Sofía. Those are the type of bar room conversations I have gotten into, even at the English pub.

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Welcome the 116th Philosophers’ Carnival!

The Florida Student Philosophy Blog is proud to once again host the Carnival. This instantiation of the Carnival is a collection of the best submitted Philosophy posts for the last three weeks of October 2010.

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From USF:

The University of South Florida Philosophy Graduate Student Organization is pleased to announce:

The Fourth Annual USF Graduate Philosophy Conference “Ipseity & Alterity: Dialectics and Distances between Self and Other”

March 4th & 5th, 2011

Deadline for Submission: December 31st, 2010

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Thomas Flynn (Emory University): “Sartre and Merleau-Ponty on the Dialectic”

We are also pleased to announce a faculty address by Dr. Charles Guignon (University of South Florida)

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Congratulations to Andrew Brenner and Ace Comparato whose projects were accepted for presentation at UNF’s annual Undergraduate Research Symposium!

Here are the abstracts of their projects:

“Special Relativity and Divine Eternality: The Contemporary Debate”
Andrew Brenner

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Congratulations to the students whose papers have been accepted for presentation at the 12th Annual Northeast Florida Student Philosophy Conference at UNF on February 7th:

“How to Motivate the Maxim that ‘Ought Implies Can’ to Defend the Principle of Alternate Possibilities”
Sean Armil (University of Florida)

“On the Limitations of Formal Methods”
Wataru Asanuma (Florida State University)

“A Defense of Lewisian Contextualism”
Yael Benjamin (University of Massachusettes at Dartmouth)

“The Impact of Chalmers’ Theory of Consciousness on the Theistic Argument from Consciousness”
Andrew Brenner (University of North Florida)

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The current issue of Philosophy Now marks the 100th birthday of Simone de Beauvoir with several informative articles about her work.

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January 9th marked Simone de Beauvoir’s 100th birthday.

(HT: SWIP-List)

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Class is officially in session for the 53rd PhilosophersCarnival!

Since we at the Florida Student Philosophy Blog have recently returned to class, we thought you should too. We would like to thank all those who submitted, and we hope that you find the current selection as engaging as we did. Courses (or posts if you prefer) are organized by major subject, so go straight to your specialty or feel free to survey the catalog.

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With the Fall semester fully in swing there are great articles and discussions abound. Here are some for your consideration:

In his most recent post, Efficiency and Value, Richard from Philosophy, Etc. wonders whether supporting high-efficiency superstores provides more value than less efficient craft oriented systems.

Over at Brains, the most recent post is a discussion on Analytic vs. Continental Philosophy.

Brian Leiter’s Nietzsche blog is picking up steam.

In Changing the Ideology and Culture of Philosophy: Not by Reason (Alone). Sally Haslanger addresses the issue of women in academic philosophy. Here is Brian Leiter’s brief comment on the essay.

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With the Fall Semester approaching quickly the blogsphere has been buzzing. Some interesting discussions to get your brain back in shape:

The multi-post discussion on Naturalizing Epistemology at The Space of Reasons is quite interesting (link to main page, the discussion goes back a few posts).

And Movement of Existence‘s most recent post is Arguments for the Necessity of Phenomenology.

Hopefully everyone had a safe and enjoyable summer.

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Suggestions for which departments might be best suited to your interests are available here.

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If you missed Ian’s three-part discussion of Nietzsche, I suggest you check it out:

  1. Nietzsche’s Mythological Story
  2. ‘Der wille zur Macht’ and Reductionism
  3. Rescuing ‘Der Wille zur Macht’ from Reductionism

- Rico Vitz

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This post concludes my discussion on Nietzsche’s ‘Will to Power’ in light of its possible reductionist appearance. What I have said in the last posts still holds for this one, so no need to repeat myself! :-)

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For this 2nd part of my three part discussion on Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’ (WTP), I wish to investigate the claim that Nietzsche is a reductionist in concern to humans being driven solely by the WTP like machines. As with my last entry on Neitzsche, this essay comes from my senior thesis and has be rescaled for this blog. Thus, I have added and deleted certain items to ensure the shortest yet best discussion possible. And like my last entry, I ask that if you feel like saying anything about the post to do so! Every work is a continuous work that should be shaped and sculpted over and over again. Hopefully, with enough work, I can entertain my ideas on Nietzsche at the next FPA convention thanks to the help all you critical readers can give! Enjoy!

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Below is a part of my senior thesis I recently wrote for my degree in Philosophy at Stetson University. In this part, I attempted to show that Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’ is a mythological doctrine and not a metaphysical or empirical theory. Since this is a blog, I’ve cut down on my work so that no reader will be bogged down with a lengthy essay. However, I believe what I have fits my idea of a good defense of a thesis that originally came from M. Clark. In a few days I will submit another part (or parts) of my thesis that come from the ‘heart’ of my work’s thesis. Enjoy and please comment like hell since I consider my thesis a ‘work in progress’ for future journal submission. (Note: Before this part of the essay, I went over Heidegger’s idea that the ‘will to power’ is a new valuation for Nietzsche, and hence the language of the first sentence. If wanted, I can always add that section if enough of you care to read it.)

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Our good fortune continues. Today, we are very pleased to welcome Richard Shusterman (Florida Atlantic University) to our blog for a brief interview related to the opening of the Center for Body, Mind, and Culture and its inaugural conference, which will take place this week.

FSPB: Richard, thank you for joining us. Congratulations to you and to FAU on the opening of the Center for Body, Mind, and Culture. Can you tell us a little about the center: what motivated its development, and what is its purpose?

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It seems to me that when hallucination is discussed in Phenomenology, it is generally in the context of perception. Hallucination might be considered a type of perception, but this is not very illuminating for a phenomenon that seems to be so apart from what we consider normal perception. In the phenomenological context of perception we tend towards three modalities: memory, present perception (normal perception) and imagination. Hallucination is generally just lumped in as a part of present perception. The peculiar nature of a phenomenology of hallucination becomes more clear when we consider just what we mean by memory, perception and imagination. Memory is perception of things “as they were,” with the hedge that we are the same person that originally perceived particular events in a then present. Imagination might be related as perception of things “as they might be.” If there is a displacement of the present self in memory, especially revelry, it must be noted that despite the most involved potentials of day-dreams we are still surrounded by reality in the present, so the present self is not suspended.

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… a colloquium featuring Stephen Watson (Notre Dame) at UCF today — Monday, February 5th. Information is available here.

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