EpochPub Date : 2010-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE20101428
Anthony K. Jensen
{"title":"Nietzsche's Interpretation of Heraclitus in Its Historical Context","authors":"Anthony K. Jensen","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE20101428","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE20101428","url":null,"abstract":"This paper aims to reexamine Nietzsche's early interpretation of Heraclitus in an attempt to resolve some longstanding scholarly misconceptions. Rather than articulate similarities or delineate the lines of influence, this study engages Nietzsche's interpretation itself in its historical setting, for the first time acknowledging the contextual framework in which he was working. This framework necessarily combines Nietzsche's reading in philology, post-Kantian scientific naturalism, and of the romantic worldviews of Schopenhauer and Wagner. What emerges is not the acceptance of the metaphysical- flux doctrine so much as a natal form of his physiognomic theory of perspectivism, a naturalistic and anti-teleological conception of flux, and a theory of justice as cosmodicy.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"127 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":"130178918","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/EPOCHE20101427
P. Hanly
{"title":"Strange Lands: Hölderlin, Kant, and the Language of the Beautiful","authors":"P. Hanly","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE20101427","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE20101427","url":null,"abstract":"A gradual intertwinement of beauty and concept can be seen to determine, in no small measure, the direction of the first half of the Critique of Judgment. This paper considers the decisive influence of this intertwinement on the work of Holderlin. Links are forged between the productive indeterminacy of the \"aesthetic ideas\" and the development of Holderlin's poetics, particularly in regard to his understanding of the relation between the natural world and its naming. The focus of attention will be on certain passages of the novel Hyperion, and later, too, on the emergence of the figure of Empedocles.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"14 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":"126379674","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/EPOCHE201014211
M. Kelly
{"title":"A Phenomenological (Husserlian) Defense of Bergson’s “Idealistic Concession”","authors":"M. Kelly","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE201014211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE201014211","url":null,"abstract":"When summarizing the findings of his 1896 Matter and Memory, Bergson claims: \"That every reality has ... a relation with consciousness -this is what we concede to idealism\". Yet Bergson's 1896 text presents the theory of \"pure perception\", which, since it accounts for perception according to the brain's mechanical transmissions, apparently leaves no room for subjective consciousness. Bergson's theory of pure perception would appear to render his idealistic concession absurd. In this paper, I attempt to defend Bergson's idealistic concession. I argue that Bergson's account of cerebral transmissions at the level of pure perception necessarily entails a theory of temporality, an appeal to a theory of time-consciousness that justifies his idealistic concession.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"31 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":"123293908","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 : 2010-04-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE201015123
T. Sparrow
{"title":"A Physiology of Encounters: Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Strange Alliances","authors":"T. Sparrow","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE201015123","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE201015123","url":null,"abstract":"The body is central to the philosophies of Spinoza and Nietzsche. Both thinkers are concerned with the composition of the body, its potential relations with other bodies, and the modifications which a body can undergo. Gilles Deleuze has contributed significantly to the relatively sparse literature which draws out the affinities between Spinoza and Nietzsche. Deleuze's reconceptualization of the field of ethology enables us to bring Spinoza and Nietzsche together as ethologists of the body and to elaborate their common, physiological perspective on ethico-political composition. This is accomplished by reading the concepts of force, power, and affect as they are mobilized in their discussions of corporeity and intercorporeity. What emerges is a metaphysics of bodies that can simultaneously be regarded as a physiology of encounters, one which renders the friend/enemy distinction indiscernible and opens the door for a rethinking of the nature of political alliances. Both Spinoza and Nietzsche are shown to be invaluable resources for helping us imagine the potential of the individual's body and the body politic.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"77 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115145683","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 : 2010-04-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE201015126
J. Wood
{"title":"Contra Heidegger: A Defense of Plato’s “Productionist Metaphysics”","authors":"J. Wood","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE201015126","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE201015126","url":null,"abstract":"This paper confronts Heidegger's critique of Platonism and defends Plato as a productionist metaphysician. Heidegger misunderstands and abuses Platonic metaphysics. Rather than initiating the reification of being (Sein) in beings (das Seiende) and the subordination of nature to human control, as Heidegger accuses, Plato offers us a non-dogmatic metaphysics of human possibility oriented by and subordinated to being, conceived equally as the good and the beautiful. The relevant production constitutes the ethical counterpart of Platonic metaphysics: it is the responsible bringing of ourselves to \"presence\" in accordance with the measures given in nature, a process that is erotic, progressive, and always on-the-way.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115342851","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 : 2010-04-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE201015118
D. Roochnik
{"title":"Ronna Burger’s Talmudic Reading of the Nicomachean Ethics","authors":"D. Roochnik","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE201015118","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE201015118","url":null,"abstract":"Ronna Burger's Aristotle's Dialogue with Socrates argues that the Nicomachean Ethics is a unified whole. Her reading runs against the tide of most contemporary scholarship. In particular, Book X.7-8, Aristotle's valorization and near apotheosis of the \"contemplative life,\" has been taken to be a Platonic intrusion in a work otherwise characterized by a resolute \"anthropocentrism,\" as Nussbaum puts it. To account for such an apparent fracture commentators have attributed both chronological development and later editorship to the corpus. Burger, by contrast, offers a \"Talmudic reading.\" She treats the Nicomachean Ethics as a work of integrity that dialectically culminates in, rather than is interrupted by, X.7-8. This essay situates her argument in a larger context that explores the nature of philosophical reading as such.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"66 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124491411","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 : 2010-04-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE201015125
N. Ross
{"title":"The Debt of Philosophical Hermeneutics to Schiller's Letters on Aesthetic Education","authors":"N. Ross","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE201015125","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE201015125","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines the relation of Schiller's Letters on Aesthetic Education to Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, particularly by examining the connection between the concepts of\"play\" and \"appearance\" in Schiller's thought. The paper points out parallels between the two thinkers which remain unacknowledged in Gadamer's critique of Schiller. The first main section of the paper examines the notion of play in Schiller, pointing out that Schiller conceives of play in a medial voice, much as Gadamer does. The second section directly takes on Gadamer's claim that Schiller's notion of aesthetic appearance sunders art from truth, by arguing that Schiller conceives of appearance as a mode of truth.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132059792","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 : 2010-04-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE201015124
Brett A. Fulkerson-Smith
{"title":"Experimentation, Temptation, and Nietzsche’s Philosopher of the Future","authors":"Brett A. Fulkerson-Smith","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE201015124","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE201015124","url":null,"abstract":"The method of the philosophers of the future that Nietzsche heralds, but does not self-identify with, has not received the attention it deserves in the secondary literature. In this essay, I address this lacuna with an interpretation of the roles of the philosophers of the future that explains in what sense they are and are not (at)tempters. As free spirits, cultural physicians, and legislators, the philosophers of the future undertake experiments to acquire knowledge; hence, the philosophers of the future are attempters. Nevertheless, it is also wrong to call them attempters; as educators, the philosophers of the future are tempters.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121509828","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 : 2010-04-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE201015116
J. Kress
{"title":"Pleasure Unlimited: Philebus and the Drama of the Unlimited","authors":"J. Kress","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE201015116","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE201015116","url":null,"abstract":"The Philebus is a difficult dialogue, often criticized for treating obscure ontological questions while neglecting the dramatic aspect characteristic of the Platonic dialogue. In this paper, I argue that,while subtle, the dramatic dimension is essential in understanding the ontological inquiries pursued and the dialogue as a whole. I argue that the Philebus should be read as an agon, a dramatic contest, between Socrates, the advocate of nous, and Philebus, the silent advocate of hedone. I show that this contest about the nature of the Good must be executed dramatically because, as Plato brings to light, hedone belongs to the Unlimited, and as such, always and necessarily resists reduction to logos, which, as dianoia, is necessarily connected with nous and Limit.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125796932","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 : 2010-04-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE201015117
Vijay Mascarenhas
{"title":"God and the Good in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics","authors":"Vijay Mascarenhas","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE201015117","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE201015117","url":null,"abstract":"By examining the systematic integration of theology, ethics, and teleology in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, I address four key interpretational aporiai: the apparently illogicality of the opening lines, the apparent contradiction between practical virtue and contemplation being the highest good, the \"dominant\" v. \"inclusivist\" views of eudaimonia, and the immanence v. transcendence of God. I show how proper attention to the link between Aristotle's conception of the Good as \"that at which all things aim\" and God as the prime unmoved mover, as well as an appreciation of the overall \"aristocratic\" context of Aristotelian philosophy, provides a new way of dealing with these aporiai that renders them less perplexing and problematic, while avoiding un-Aristotelian, anachronistic readings.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130965752","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}