EpochPub Date : 2011-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE201015236
Jeffrey D. Gower
{"title":"The King of the Cosmos : Potentiality, Actuality, and the Logic of Sovereignty in Aristotle’s Metaphysics Λ","authors":"Jeffrey D. Gower","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE201015236","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE201015236","url":null,"abstract":"This paper offers a deconstructive reading of the pure actuality of the un- moved mover of Aristotle's Metaphysics Lambda.Aristotle describes this first, unmoved principle of movement as a divine sovereign-the king of the cosmos-and maintains that the good governance of the cosmos depends on its unmitigated unity and pure actuality. It is striking, then, when Giorgio Agamben claims that Aristotle bequeathed the paradigm of sovereignty to Western philosophy not through his arguments for the pure actuality of the unmoved mover but rather through his description of the essence of potentiality. An interpretation of Aristotle's account of potentiality in Metaphysics Theta therefore prepares the way for a deconstruction of the unity and pure actuality of the divine sovereign. I argue that the repetition of nous in Aristotle's description of the divine thinking of thinking betrays traces of division and difference at the heart of divine sovereignty. If this is the case, then actuality and potentiality become indiscernible at the level of the absolute and the sovereign corresponds to the bifurcated site of this indiscernibility.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130556142","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EpochPub Date : 2011-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE201015238
Thomas M. Tuozzo
{"title":"How Dynamic Is Aristotle’s Efficient Cause?","authors":"Thomas M. Tuozzo","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE201015238","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE201015238","url":null,"abstract":"Aristotle says that arts such as medicine, the soul, and the heavenly Unmoved Movers are all efficient causes. Because the arts do not seem to fit the model of an efficient cause that does something, scholars have posited two classes of efficient cause, \"energetic\" and \"non-energetic\" ones, and have classified the arts, the soul, and the Unmoved Movers as non-energetic. I argue that, once the way an Aristotelian efficient cause produces motion is properly understand, this distinction is not needed: all efficient causes are energetic. I end by proposing a new understanding of the efficient causality of the Unmoved Mover.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"155 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126201822","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EpochPub Date : 2011-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE201015228
Mark J. Thomas
{"title":"The Playful and the Serious: A Reading of Xenophon’s Symposium","authors":"Mark J. Thomas","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE201015228","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE201015228","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper I investigate the relationship between the serious and the playful elements in Socrates' character as these unfold within the context of Xenophon's Symposium. For the Greeks, the concept of value is attached to the meaning of seriousness, and this accounts for the natural preference for the serious over the playful. Despite the potential rivalry of the playful and philosophy, Socrates mixes the playful with the serious in such a way as to conceal their boundary. This mixing serves the purpose of education, by both attracting us to Socrates and placing us at a distance from the intended meaning of his words.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"45 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127367177","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EpochPub Date : 2011-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE201015230
Benjamin Frazer-Simser
{"title":"Whither and Whence We Go, Where We Stop Nobody Knows: Prophecy, Ἔρως, and Self-Knowledge in the Phaedrus","authors":"Benjamin Frazer-Simser","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE201015230","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE201015230","url":null,"abstract":"Beginning the Phaedrus, Socrates greets Phaedrus saying,\"Dear Phaedrus, whither and whence?\" This essay will unfold the salutation, exposing its power to disclose the erotic phenomena portrayed in the dialogue. Moreover, the erotic soul's incorporation of future and past, its implementation of memory and prophecy, its agency and passivity, and its relation to these ways of being reveals its ability to know itself. However, the temporality in which the soul reveals itself is neither chronological nor dialectical but ecstatic, characterized as prophetic, for\"the soul is somehow prophetic\" and Socrates is\"a kind of prophet.\" The essay delves into the prophetic nature of the soul and its significance in understanding Socratic erotic self-knowledge in the Phaedrus.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125393528","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EpochPub Date : 2010-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE20101425
David Webb
{"title":"The Structure of Praxis and the Time of Eudaimonia","authors":"David Webb","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE20101425","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE20101425","url":null,"abstract":"The conception of time presented in Aristotle's Physics IV has been supremely influential in the philosophical tradition. However, I shall argue that it proves to be inadequate to resolve a question arising from Aristotle's own ethics; namely, the relation of ethical action to eudaimonia.As one explores this issue, a sense of time begins to emerge that calls for a reconsideration of the concepts of magnitude or dimension (megethos) and continuity (suneches) that determine the account of time found in Physics IV This paper sets out the case for such a reconsideration and outlines the impact that it may have on the way we understand the temporal characteristics of eudaimonia.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122258759","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EpochPub Date : 2010-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE20101429
J. Powell
{"title":"The Abyss of Repetition","authors":"J. Powell","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE20101429","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE20101429","url":null,"abstract":"This essay concerns various difficulties encountered in the attempt to assess the relation between Heidegger and Nietzsche. More specifically, those difficulties are due to the notion and function of repetition in the texts of both Heidegger and Nietzsche. I attempt to provide an analysis of repetition in the Heidegger of Being and Time and surrounding texts (e.g.,Plato's Sophist and Gruitdbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie). Following this attempt, I then examine the transformed notion of repetition operative in the now famous text written at the time of the Nietzsche lectures, Beitrage zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), a repetition that goes by the name of crossing (Ubergang). In my presentation of crossing, I attempt to draw Heidegger and Nietzsche together through the repetition of crossing and that of eternal recurrence of the same. Finally, I argue that what draws Heidegger and Nietzsche together is also what prevents us from distinguishing them in any traditional way, a distinction that could then be followed by any number of judgments regarding historical influence. That is, that what draws the two to thinking is what both draws them together, which is abyssal repetition, and problematizes any attempt to distinguish them.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"89 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128386366","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EpochPub Date : 2010-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE20101424
C. Antonopoulos
{"title":"Static vs. Dynamic Paradoxes: In the End there Can Be Only One","authors":"C. Antonopoulos","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE20101424","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE20101424","url":null,"abstract":"There are two antithetical classes of Paradoxes, The Runner and the Stadium, impregnated with infinite divisibility, which show that motion conflicts with the world, and which I call Static. And the Arrow, impregnated with nothing, which shows that motion conflicts with itself, and which I call Dynamic. The Arrow is stationary, because it cannot move at a point; or move, and be at more points than one at the same time, so being where it is not. Despite their contrast, however, both groups can be evaded, if motion is conducted over discrete points: (a) If no two points touch, there will be a step ahead, for there will now be nextness. And (b) if they do not touch,\"here\" and \"there\" (=not-here) will no longer be sufficiently proximal to have the body be where it is not. They will be separate. So the body is only where it is. Hence, both groups, despite their contrast, presuppose, each in its own way, the infinite proximity of any point with any next. But the Dynamic group cannot survive what it needs. Suppose that \"here\" and \"not-here\" (i.e., \"there\"), are not discrete but infinitely proximal. Then Rest also would be self-contradictory. And it gets worse. For it takes two to make a contradiction, in this case, \"here,\" \"not-here,\" and their proximity. But, with regard to conditions of infinite proximity, \"in the end there can be only one\" (point), and hence no contradiction in the first place. The Dynamic paradoxes rest on a premise with which they are inconsistent. They need two of this, of which, in a different but just as equally vital connection, there can be only one. On the force of this remark, the Dynamic paradoxes, initially the stronger of the lot, actually turn out to be the weaker.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"64 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124841211","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EpochPub Date : 2010-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE201014213
David J. Kangas
{"title":"Luther and Modernity: Reiner Schürmann’s Topology of the Modern in Broken Hegemonies","authors":"David J. Kangas","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE201014213","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE201014213","url":null,"abstract":"Prevailing philosophical genealogies of modernity trace its origin to Descartes's metaphysics of representation. This is true of both Hegel and Heidegger. By contrast, Reiner Schurmann's Broken Hegemonies links modernity to the theological thinking of Martin Luther. I ask what is at stake philosophically in this difference. What Schurmann's reading shows is that, under the figure of a passive transcendentalism, Luther inaugurates the epoch in which self-consciousness reigns as an ultimate principle. The broader importance of Schurmann's reading is to identify a \"recessed\" and \"obedient\" side of modernity —a side tragically and covertly linked to its more familiar self-assertive side. Schurmann's re-situating of modernity allows a crucial corrective to many contemporary efforts at a critique of the modern. In particular, it suggests that to restrict one's critique of modernity to the critique of representational or egological consciousness (as happens for example in Heidegger, Levinas and Marion) is to run the risk of a repetition of its obedient, recessed side.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"42 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114054299","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EpochPub Date : 2010-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE201014210
G. Rae
{"title":"Marcuse, Aesthetics, and the Logic of Modernity","authors":"G. Rae","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE201014210","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE201014210","url":null,"abstract":"Herbert Marcuse is a thinker associated with one of the most radical and totalising critiques of modernity ever produced. Marcuse maintains that contemporary capitalist society is a one-dimensional prison that is capable of perpetuating itself by incorporating any criticism into its logic. Despite this totalisation, Marcuse insists that the realm of aesthetics is capable of escaping the logic of modern capitalism and establishing an alternative society that is grounded in an alternative non-repressive logic. However, it is argued that not only does Marcuse ground this transformation in a specific economic formation thereby ensuring that it is economics not aesthetics that grounds this social transformation, but his argument is based on a simplistic understanding of the relation between the aesthetic as a means of affecting individual transformation and the aesthetic affecting social transformation.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"57 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133349542","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}