In the 7th essay of his Commentary on the Republic of Plato, Proclus supplies the elements of a fairly robust Neoplatonic political philosophy. In general he agrees with Plato’s account of the tripartite soul and the four cardinal virtues, while introducing important nuances into the theory. The idea of the dominance of one part of the soul over a…[Read more]

Philosophy has as its task not only the discovery of the determinations into which all things fall, but also the explanation of how these determinations arise. In Proclus we may distinguish three related sorts of deter- minations. First, there are the determinations which emerge within any given taxis in the hierarchy of all things and which may…[Read more]

In this study I will show how Neoplatonism is not properly understood as a moment within the Hegelian dialectic. The Hegelian analysis obscures both the true character of the Neoplatonic One, and the Neoplatonic account of the relation between thought and its object, because it treats these positions as deficient versions of itself. We must r…[Read more]

For Proclus philosophical system is expressed in dianoetic terms. Thus while Proclus is a systematic thinker, the terms in which his system is written themselves fall short of the reality which they seek to express. Moreover, because dianoia is a thinking which never has a complete grasp on its object, the Procline system must be considered to be…[Read more]

Proclus discusses imagination (phantasia) in the second prologue to his Euclid commentary. In his discussion, he describes phantasia in terms which make it seem like a passive screen, onto which geometrical figures are projected. However, he also speaks of phantasia in this text in terms which make it seem active, as if it were the projector…[Read more]

A reconstruction of the Greek text of the final part of Proclus’ Commentary on the Parmenides, from the extant Latin, by Carlos Steel and Friedrich Rumbach, with an English translation by D. Gregory MacIsaac.

In Proclus dianoia is the Soul’s thinking activity, through which it makes itself into a divided image of Nous. Dianoia’s thoughts are logoi, because in the Greek philosophical tradition, logos came to mean a division of a prior unity (ch.I). Proclus’ theory of dianoia rejects induction, and is a conscious development of Plato’s theory of…[Read more]

Responding to the title of the seminar, “Nordic Art Education in Motion,” and to its theme, “Digital competences and computational thinking: preparing children, young people and adults for a digitalized society,” I discuss the “archaic identity of change” (to draw from Etel Adnan) present in calls for motion and preparation. I conceptualize art…[Read more]

In Kant’s Critique of Judgment, his exploration of how something like life (organized matter) can appear to the faculties of a finite consciousness makes life as possible as it is impossible. A passing reference Kant makes to the idea that every organ of an organism can be seen as a parasite is taken as a lever to deconstruct his notion of…[Read more]

Spanish Abstract: Presentamos una perspectiva pragmalingüística sobre la actuación discursiva inspirada en la sociología dramatística de Erving Goffman. En su actuación discursiva el hablante intenta justificar su postura con respecto a la afiliación con grupos e identidades sociales determinadas. Al posicionarse, perfila su identidad y modela…[Read more]

This paper interrogates the connection between entities that hover in the liminal state between life and death (such as vampires and spirits) and the manner in which these entities relate to Alaya Dawn Johnson’s conjurings of alternate political structures and hierarchies in her Spirit Binders series. Johnson’s alternate hierarchies are com…[Read more]

The Berliner Repertorium (http://opus.ub.hu-berlin.de/repertorium/page/home), online since June 2017, provides a database of Middle High and Low German translations of Latin hymns, sequences, and antiphons until the year 1600. In this contribution on our database of hymn translations, the ‘Berliner Repertorium’, I will introduce you to its str…[Read more]

This essay argues that the tension in Coetzee’s reading of Robinson Crusoe springs from the exposure of the Christian secret in both the colonial enterprises of the characters and the authorial presences of Defoe and Coetzee. My argument draws on Jacques Derrida’s The Gift of Death, which outlines how Christianity tacitly incorporates (but doe…[Read more]

Call for Proposals

Media, Lingualisms, Translations: Technologies of Language and Power

Conference to be held November 13-14, 2020; hosted by the School of International Letters and Cultures, Arizona State University, Tempe.

Keynote speakers: Jean-Noël Robert (Collège de France, Paris)
Lourdes Ortega (Georgetown University, W…[Read more]

This course is a study of Latinx literatures and cultures produced in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We will concentrate our attention on works by Chicanos, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and Dominican Americans. We will consider how these works represent and participate in the upheavals that characterize the…[Read more]

It is well known the harmful effects that savage capitalism has been causing to the environment since its introduction in a sphere in which a different logic and approach to nature are the essential conditions for the maintenance of the ecosystem and its complex relations between humans and non-human organisms. The amazon rainforest is a portion…[Read more]