Open PhilosophyPub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2022-0234
Georgie Newson
{"title":"Between the Void and Emptiness: Ontological Paradox and Spectres of Nihilism in Alain Badiou’s Being and Event and Graham Priest’s One","authors":"Georgie Newson","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2022-0234","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2022-0234","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this study, I reconstruct and compare Alain Badiou’s Being and Event (2005) and Graham Priest’s One (2014), arguing that the ontologies pursued within the two texts are intriguingly analogous in a number of ways. Both Badiou and Priest are committed to thinking through classically ontological problems without denying the validity of the paradoxes they raise; both regard Plato’s Parmenides as an early and formative account of these paradoxes; both establish conclusions to the effect that unity – or “oneness” – is indeed a contradictory phenomenon; and both, as a corollary of this conclusion, develop frameworks which confer ontological prominence upon the void and emptiness respectively, thereby arriving at what appears to be a shared ontological nihilism. In this comparative study, I not only enquire whether the frameworks adopted by Badiou and Priest really do lead to nihilist conclusions, but also attempt to clearly outline their trajectories of thought for the benefit of those who might be tempted to dismiss their seemingly outlandish theses out of hand.","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47531706","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}
Open PhilosophyPub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2022-0226
H. Hester
{"title":"Anti-Work Architecture: Domestic Labour, Speculative Design, and Automated Plenty","authors":"H. Hester","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2022-0226","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2022-0226","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article presents a partial history of visions of technodomesticity in the global north, concentrating on dwellings which seek to problematize, challenge, or reorganize unpaid household labour. It is structured around three case studies, primarily drawn from the United States in the 1950s and 1960s: the single-family suburban dream house, the bachelor pad, and the fully automated future home. While these chosen examples may lend us certain resources for thinking about how best to mitigate the challenges of reproductive labour via living arrangements, they also possess a number of clear drawbacks or limitations. The article will argue that contesting these imaginaries (as much as learning from them) is likely to prove necessary in unpicking the connections between an inequitable distribution of unpaid intrafamilial domestic labour and the house itself as both a concrete site and an ideological formation – necessary, that is to say, in terms of building a meaningfully feminist conception of anti-work architecture.","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49545727","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}
Open PhilosophyPub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2022-0265
Erika Natalia Molina Garcia
{"title":"Society Bites: Phenomenological Aesthetics of the Ordinary and the Ordinary Cannibal","authors":"Erika Natalia Molina Garcia","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2022-0265","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2022-0265","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Drawing on phenomenological aesthetics and on the haptic aesthetics of eating as a form of everyday aesthetics, I examine the phenomenon of eating our own as meaningful in three dimensions: vital/natural, somatic/individual, and cross-cultural. Usually conceived as a concrete, rare, and foreign practice, I show how cannibalism is present in our daily lives, both symbolically and as a liminal possibility towards which – as Freud noticed in 1913 – we all tended as children. Cannibalism is present not only in cinematic, literary, or visual art, and in anthropological research that situates it far from “us,” but through narratives and carnal dispositifs of differentiation/assimilation of the Same and the Other, fundamental for our subjective constitution. I conclude with a reflection on how the classical aesthetics of the sovereign subject develops towards alternative models like Pelluchon’s gourmet ego that re-establish the connexion and moral engagement lost by solipsism by means of alimentary metaphors, but also romanticizing them, failing to address the problem of voracity and overconsumption, both at a social and at an individual level. This is more suitably addressed by Viveiros de Castro’s idea of a cannibal cogito, but even better understood by Emmanuel Levinas’ enjoyment-contact model of subjectivity.","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":"48 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135802002","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}
Open PhilosophyPub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2022-0259
Veronica Cibotaru
{"title":"Banal Evil – Radical Goodness. Reflection on the 60th Anniversary of “Eichmann in Jerusalem”","authors":"Veronica Cibotaru","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2022-0259","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2022-0259","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The starting point of this article lies in the idea, defended by Hannah Arendt, according to which only goodness can be radical, while evil is merely banal. The idea of a banality of evil is present in Arendt’s work Eichmann in Jerusalem , although it is explicitly not presented as a general theory on evil as such – it is more particularly in her correspondence with Gershom Scholem that one can find this specific distinction between evil and goodness mentioned. How is this distinction to be understood? This article proposes the idea that such a distinction has to be construed on an ontological level: evil is ontologically deficient, since it does not take hold in a specific capacity of human beings, which would be what Hannah Arendt calls the demonic evil, but in the absence of thinking, i.e. in the absence of a specific human faculty. Conversely, only goodness expresses a creative human faculty, which is precisely thinking, and which, following Hannah Arendt, can be fully realized only through a political, collective dimension.","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136207580","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}
Open PhilosophyPub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2022-0246
Provides Ng
{"title":"Transitional Domesticity: Collectivisation and Fractionalisation in Peer-to-Peer Digital Citizenry Learning from Socio-Innovations of Chinese-Asian Historical Contexts","authors":"Provides Ng","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2022-0246","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2022-0246","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Collectivisation, as a socio-innovation, is an incremental part of history that has much to teach on questions of asset commoning. Such notions can provide renewed perspectives in understanding today’s peer-to-peer (p2p) economy and its influence on housing ownership models, which are constituting new forms of domesticity. This study understands domesticity as processes of collectivisation and de-collectivisation, and questions its conceptualisation as universal and invariant. It compares the transitioning moments by which a new governing body is instituted within recent-historical Chinese-Asian contexts, including mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. These moments were often postcolonial, full of changes, uncertainty, crisis, and anticipation; these contexts were unprecedented in scale, density, and cultural collision; in common, these were junctures of socio-innovation in land distribution that fashioned different forms of citizenry. By looking at these instances of innovation with situated thinking and against their historical–cultural backgrounds, the findings in this study reflect on the design of socio-technological systems, the potential consequences of our design interventions, and what “innovation” may mean given the complexity of transitional challenges. Putting together cosmopolitan and vernacular histories, the historiography presented is a collage of card game narratives, archived posters, news headlines, statistical figures, and literature. This journey through events of socio-innovation from the twentieth century till recent decades reveals how the history of governance has always been a question of cultivating collective actions, one way or another, and today’s p2p economy is simultaneously collectivising and fractionalising such socio-economic exchanges in digital citizenry.","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48053454","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}
Open PhilosophyPub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2022-0238
Patrick Gamez
{"title":"Being Truly Wrong: Enlightened Nihilism or Unbound Naturalism?","authors":"Patrick Gamez","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2022-0238","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2022-0238","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract I present an account of nihilism, following Foucault and Nietzsche, as a sort of colonization of our thinking by a religious form of normativity, grounded in our submission to truth as correspondence, in the idea that the facts themselves could be binding upon us. I then present Brassier’s radicalization of nihilism and showed how it remains subservient to this religious ideal of truth. I argue, further, that far than showing how a commitment to Enlightenment reason and science demands a cold metaphysics of death, in dismissing the irreducibly plural ways in which what is determines thought, Brassier’s attempt to secure a fit between thought and disenchanted world suggests that the view is an expression of the unliveable condition of nihilism, rather than its proof. Finally, I present a form of naturalism that makes legitimate claim to the legacy of Enlightenment, drawing from French historical epistemology, and dispenses with the problems animating Brassier’s nihilism by radically transforming the concept of truth and how we relate to it.","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48682100","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}
Open PhilosophyPub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2022-0255
Tomaso Pignocchi
{"title":"Ordinary Aesthetics and Ethics in the Haiku Poetry of Matsuo Bashō: A Wittgensteinian Perspective","authors":"Tomaso Pignocchi","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2022-0255","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2022-0255","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article explores how the notion of ordinary aesthetics can stem, as well as the one of ordinary ethics, from that revolution of the ordinary started by Wittgenstein and further developed by philosophers like Cavell and Diamond. The idea of ordinary ethics emphasizes the importance of everyday life and the particular details of our experiences. This concept can be extended to aesthetics, forming the basis of a modality of aesthetic appreciation that recognize values and importance in the details and nuances of everyday experience. One example of such ordinary aesthetics can be found in the haiku poetry of Bashō. Bashō’s poetry often focuses on the ordinary and mundane aspects of life, such as the changing of seasons, the sound of rain, or the sight of a bird in flight, but also on that lower world made of insects, rotten foliage, and excrements. Bashō conveys in poetry the core of Zen philosophy, emphasizing the interconnectedness of all things and the value of living in the present moment. This approach to aesthetics offers an alternative to more traditional modes of aesthetic appreciation, which tend to prioritize grandeur, spectacle, and formal perfection. Ultimately, the concept of ordinary aesthetics invites us to find the intrinsic importance in the simple things that surround us and to cultivate a deeper appreciation for the richness of our everyday lives.","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46095639","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}
Open PhilosophyPub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2022-0270
Halit Evrim Bayındır
{"title":"Introduction to the Topical Issue “Nihilism through a Contemporary Lens: Post-Continental and Other Perspectives”","authors":"Halit Evrim Bayındır","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2022-0270","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2022-0270","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135261366","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}
Open PhilosophyPub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2022-0257
Jeroen Gerrits
{"title":"“Normal Is What We Make It, Right?” Ordinary Aesthetics and Uncanny Twists in Contemporary TV Series","authors":"Jeroen Gerrits","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2022-0257","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2022-0257","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Contemporary TV shows, characterized by their complex narrative form, are designed to reveal the simple. They enable characters and viewers alike to discover the ordinary by coupling the everyday to an underworld populated by criminals, demons, vampires, and other kinds of “lowlifes.” I will argue here that the structure of the Möbius strip, or Escher twist, draws a particular aesthetic appeal at the intersection of these worlds. I call these twists uncanny in the Cavellian sense that the underworld, looking strangely familiar, has the capacity of making the ordinary look unfamiliar, inherently strange, and unstable. Rather than allowing us to judge the demonic or illegal, they disclose what is normally inaccessible to us precisely because it is so ordinary and simple, so familiar and in plain sight. I will support this idea of Escher-twisting from one world to another by analyzing examples from Twin Peaks (ABC 1990-2, Showtime 2017), The Sopranos (HBO 1999-2007), Awake (NBC 2012), and Ozark (Netflix 2017–2022).","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":"52 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135441634","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}
Open PhilosophyPub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2022-0264
David R. Charles
{"title":"The Place of Action in the Landscape of Aesthetic Experience","authors":"David R. Charles","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2022-0264","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2022-0264","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Advocates of ordinary aesthetics argue that aesthetic experiences found in everyday life can have an impact on our ethical being. This raises the question of how, specifically, action arises from aesthetic experience. Although this matter affects both Aesthetics and Ethics, the current literature provides few details on potential mechanisms. Using neurophysiological evidence, this article proposes specific action profiles and associated mechanisms for aesthetic experiences. To achieve this, it is argued that aesthetic experience originates within the mind and that ordinary aesthetic experiences are logically permissible. Subsequently, a proposed landscape of aesthetic experience is derived. Mechanisms for pathways from experience to action are provided for each category of aesthetic experience. In sum, this provides a tangible bridge between Aesthetics and Ethics, enabling a better understanding of how one’s ethical being is influenced by certain experiences.","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135839425","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}