The thirteenth century kabbalist Abraham Abulafia held Hebrew to be the divine language, designed by God as an ontological aspect of reality. Through meditating on and deconstructing names into their letters, one could then engage in the process of reunifying reality into the primordial Name of God, the Tetragrammaton. This paper offers an…[Read more]

The attempts of Mordecai Kaplan and Ludwig Wittgenstein at reforming Jewish theology and analytic philosophy respectively share some important traits. While Kaplan’s scientifically respectable “atheistic” Judaism sought to reinterpret theological principles in line with a modern-day materialist vision of the cosmos, Wittgenstein’s reducti…[Read more]

An exercise for a course on deconstructive criticism, with Jacques deconstructing himself and acknowledging that he partakes of Jean-Jacques’s logocentrism.

This note criticises some equivocations and ambivalent notions in the writings of Derrida, especially ‘Limited Inc’ and ‘De la grammatologie’, as regards the notions of norm, intention, system, center, consciousness, writing, speech act and literal meaning. Derrida is shown to both have his cake and eat it, using his own text as a paradoxical…[Read more]

Politics seems bound up with questions of the ordinary and everyday as opposed to the extraordinary. This may be a Cavellian way of articulating the problem of political praxis, i.e., the point at which theory “becomes” action, but notice, at least in Cavell-speak, which way the trajectory flows. The Wittgensteinian charge to bring language bac…[Read more]

This is a brief note criticising some anti-foundationalist and anti-essentialist semiotic assumptions in Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, from the standpoint of a classical structuralist perspective which (following Saussure) sees the play of differences as crucially constitutive of a system of positive terms.

The fourth issue of “Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies”, which explores Cavell’s philosophic interest in literature, an oft-repeated and rehashed thematic prism and vantage point from which to address Cavell’s work. However, it is our feeling that, at times anyhow, Cavell’s interest in Wittgenstein and film dwarfs slightly his liter…[Read more]

For the inaugural issue of “Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies”, we solicited papers discussing Stanley’s autobiographical writings. To mirror types of conversations, we asked for both short and long (though we received mostly the latter).

Annotations on V. N. Voloshinov’s study “Marxism and the Philosophy of Language” (1929), on topics such as reflexion vs. refraction, consciousness and signs, language and ideology, Saussurean structuralism, verbal interaction, and theme vs. meaning.

This is a note on Walter Benjamin’s essay on collecting, “Unpacking My Library” (orig. published in German in 1931). Benjamin’s reflections on collecting are analyzed with reference to Modernist themes in Baudelaire and Proust, and to the Modernist concern with memory in the structuring of the self. The essay is held to be a half-ironic…[Read more]

Slides for an Introduction to Philosophy course at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada. These give an introduction to Mill’s utilitarianism as well as to consequentialism generally. Then they discuss intellectual and sensual pleasures, the argument Mill gives for why the Greatest Happiness Principle should be how we…[Read more]

The Public Philosophy Journal’s 2018 New Engaged Scholars Digital Pilot Program, which officially kicks off on February 7th, is designed for doctoral students seeking guided, collaborative opportunities to develop early drafts into publishable content. This is the program agenda.

Slides for an Introduction to Philosophy course at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada. These are about Thomas Nagel’s text called “Death,” which is a chapter in his book called Mortal Questions. They connect Nagel’s view to Epicurus’ view of death, and discuss some of the main points about Nagel’s view.

A set of slides introducing the Chinese philosopher Mozi and his view of “impartial caring.” These are for an introduction to philosophy course at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada. They were created in January 2018.

These slides are for Introduction to Philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

There are also two videos that students watched, to accompany the class on this material:

Slides for an Introduction to Philosophy course at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver BC, Canada.

These slides are about Epicureanism, focusing on texts by Epicurus and Cicero.

It is commonly assumed that Aristotle thinks that his claim that being exhibits a category-based pros hen structure, which he introduces to obviate the problem of categorial heterogeneity, is sufficient to defend the possibility of a science of being qua being. We, on the contrary, argue that Aristotle thinks that the pros hen structure is…[Read more]

Introduction to The Late Voice: Time, Age and Experience in Popular Music.

Popular music artists, as performers in the public eye, offer a privileged site for the witnessing and analysis of ageing and its mediation. The Late Voice undertakes such an analysis by considering issues of time, age, memory, innocence and experience in modern popular…[Read more]

In today’s academic philosophy, we have “philosophy of biology,” which deals with creatures’ biological phenomena, “philosophy of
death,” which concentrates on the concept of human death, and “philosophy of meaning of life,” which investigates difficult problems concerning the meaning of life and living, but we do not have “philosophy of…[Read more]

“Confessions of a Frigid Man: A Philosopher’s Journey into the Hidden Layers of Men’s Sexuality” is the translation of a Japanese 2005 bestseller. Soon after the publication, this book stirred controversy over the nature of male sexuality, male “frigidity,” and its connection to the “Lolita complex.” Today, this work is considered a classic in…[Read more]