Kant: Notes And Fragments (.pdf)

Even though I know this is very likely a violation of the copyright, but since I didn’t create or upload the file myself, I feel as if I am simply informing those who might be interested in this particular volume: Kant’s Notes and Fragments that is currently out of print and the cheapest copy on amazon.com is $165. This is the only volume from this particular edition of Kant’s works that I do not have. Now the beauty of this particular .pdf file is that it is, unlike the paper copy, searchable - so if you want to see what Kant writes about say Leibniz, no need to go to the index, just search the document - Aces!

Michel Henry: Radicalizing Phenomenology?

I’ve been reading through Mullarkey’s Post-Continental Philosophy. While I’m not sure Mullarkey is being completely fair with his problematization of Deleuze in the first chapter– he accuses Deleuze of maintaining a “two-world ontology” that effectively undoes his commitment to immanence (my knee jerk reaction is that this seems to conflate/confuse possibility with virtuality, but I’d have to go back into Deleuze to be sure)–I’ve found the discussion on Michel Henry to be rather interesting. Not least is the continual rethinking and critique of phenomenology throughout, but I have some naive questions about all of this, especially since I know very little about Henry.

Generally, phenomenology was thought to have taken transcendental subjectivity as the condition for the possibility of manifestation and that this condition doesn’t manifest itself. If it did, we’d have the problem of the condition being conditioned. Levinas got around this in an interesting way vis a vis his rethinking of notions like affectivity, alterity, and passivity in Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being, Mullarkey pitches Henry’s criticism of “traditional” phenomenology as Levinasian affectivity meeting Bergsonian cosmology:

Phenomenology is oblivious to its own how by thinking of itself as an objective method transcending and observing its datum, and so failing to see itself as part of the phenomenon, the ‘method’ as immanent to its world. More radically still, the matter can be formulated as the question of whether phenomenology was ever possible at all–how can we acquire a pure view of the cogitatio when operating by necessity within the confines of the cogito? This question is not new: it was the motivation behind Heidegger’s ontologization of phenomenology as well as the constant criticism of structuralists and poststructuralists alike. But Henry’s answer to it is extreme in its novel simplicity. Phenomenology is only possible through a primitive, immanent reflexivity: it is living itself which carries within it a primitive knowledge of living–each property of the lived originally carries with it an “initial knowledge’ of that which it is–and it is this that phenomenology clarifies (emphasis mine-SO, 55).

Bush’s Semiorrhea

From J Street (I’ve added some links):

Speaking to Israel’s Parliament, President Bush accused those who believe in diplomacy to make America and Israel safe of indulging in a “foolish delusion” and the “false comfort of appeasement.”

Even more offensive, he likened us to those who favored talking to rather than defeating Adolf Hitler on the eve of World War II. How dare he invoke the memory of the Holocaust to justify his disastruous policies.

For seven and a half years, this President’s policies have fueled the fires of extremism rather than dampening them. His delusions led us into a disastrous war in Iraq. His disdain for diplomacy has alienated friends and emboldened enemies.

And the results? The forces of extremism are stronger than ever. Al Qaeda is on the move - into Iraq and elsewhere. Moderates are on the defensive from Lebanon to the Palestinian territories and elsewhere. And the United States and Israel are less secure.

This is Bush’s legacy. And he has the nerve to accuse us of indulging in “foolish delusions”?

This, Mr. President, is not what we want to hear on the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel. Real friends of Israel know that only a US-led diplomatic offensive in the region will resolve the Israeli-Palestinian and Arab-Israel conflicts and ensure Israel’s security for another 60 years.

I don’t know if I’d go so far to say “only a US-led” diplomatic offensive will help move towards a resolution, but Bush’s speech in front of the Knesset was um…pretty silly. I wonder if Bush really thinks that Obama is to Iran or Palestine as Neville Chamberlian was to Germany, but I suspect that remark was also directed to many of the European countries that favor a diplomatic tack (instead of brute force) as well, especially in their criticisms of Bush’s debacle in Iraq, as well as the ongoing ravings of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

There was an interesting op-ed in the Buenos Aires Herald about 60 years of Israel here. Here is an excerpt:

Reading Catherine Malabou: Les Nouveaux blessés (2007)

Malabou’s recent book - Les nouveaux blessés (The New Wounded) - finally made its way from my shelf to the area of my immediate interest, so here are some remarks as I begin reading this book - these are meant just as observations that I hope could be useful to others who are interested in Malabou’s work. This book comes out of Malabou’s personal experience with her grandmother’s Alzheimer’s disease and, as Malabou reveals in the Preamble, her own rethinking of the role of philosophy and its relationship to neuroscience - via her engagement with the concept of “plasticity” Malabou came to be more and more interested in the study of the brain: its functions, organization and pathologies:

Cette extension de mon champ de recherche a eu de réelle répercussions sur ma pensée, au point qu’il y a aujourd’hui pour moi an ‘avant’ et un ‘après’ mon incursion dans le domaine des neurosciences. (11)

This “before” includes mainly works on “plasticity” beginning with Malabou’s doctoral dissertation and then book on Hegel (L’Avenir de Hegel: Plasticité, temporalité, dialectique) - the only work presently available in English - Sebastian Rand is working on the translation of Que faire de notre cerveau? for Fordham Press - already announced in the catalog as What Should We Do With Our Brain? - coming out in October) - then comes (after a book with Derrida and a short book on “plasticity”) a volume on Heidegger (Le change Heidegger : Du fantastique en philosophie). The “after” is the book on the brain Que faire de notre cerveau? and the present volume Les nouveaux blessés.

“Зенит” увозит из Манчестера Кубок УЕФА!

Репортаж со Взгляда.Ру:

Футболисты питерского «Зенита» в решающем матче за Кубок УЕФА выиграли в Манчестере у шотландского «Глазго Рейнджерс». На трибунах стадиона «Сити оф Манчестер» за российский клуб яростно болели 12 тыс. его болельщиков, которые перекричали 35 тыс. шотландских фанатов. В России же за «Зенит» переживала вся страна. И Питер выиграл Кубок УЕФА! 2:0 после голов Игоря Денисова и Константина Зырянова.

ВСЕ!!! «Зенит» выиграл Кубок УЕФА!!!!! 2:0, и шотландцы плачут в центре поля.

92.56 ЗЫРЯНОВ!!! Второй! Это победа! Текке сделал голевой пас, и Константин забил в пустые ворота.

92.41 Ким Дон Чжин на поле вместо Файзулина.

90.11 Три минуты добавлено. Даршевиль рвется вперед, а Начо Ново с 8 метров ударил выше ворот. Уфф.

88.27 Не может «Рейнджерс» перейти в атаку. Питерцы контролируют мяч и ведут игру к победе.

86.36 Денисов получает травму, а у шотландцев выходит нападающий Бойд вместо защитника Уитакера.

83.53 Активно вошел в игру Начо Ново, но внимательны Широков и Крижанац.

New Record: Russian Circles, Station (May 6th, 2008)

Clearly I have lots of free time on my hands today - just a little break I’m taking to reward myself for all the successful molding of the young impressionable minds that took place during the last 15 weeks - check out this new record by Russian Circles, an instrumental trio (occasionally a duo), called Station:

Pitchfork Review: Genre names are often as lazy and reductive as those who use them. Post-rock, in particular, is now so abused and misused that it somehow covers Tortoise, Stereolab, Mogwai, and Mono. In the 90s, the term originally described rock’s subversion through its own tools. Thus, guitars didn’t have to rock or define riffs. Vocals, if present, weren’t the focus. Songs didn’t rely on verses and choruses. Over time, this open system became a closed one. Now post-rock is very much defined: instrumental rock with long songs. If it’s heavier, then the equally unhelpful “post-metal” applies. Destruction of rock’s template has only created another one; now hordes of sound- and look-alikes have ditched vocals and grown beards.

Nonelouder: Have you ever had a certain feeling about an album, it comes out of nowhere and attacks all of your senses and emotions and makes you get that small chill on your spine that allows you to remember the joy of discovering new music. With the Internet, blogs, chatrooms and all of that music is usually served up to you, you rarely find it by accident. I was lucky enough to have that happened to me a few days ago when I received the album “Station” from the band Russian Circles, an outfit I’d never heard of. When I cracked open the CD I was instantly impressed. No ridiculous logo or artwork, a simple photo of what looks like 40s army soldiers dressed up for a company photo. The layout was sparse, no photo of the band, it was as if they had forgone the fancy album artwork so you would instantly drawn to the CD itself.

Here’s a live video of the second track - Harper Lewis:

McGill Strikers Are Told To “Grow Up and Take Responsibility”

McGill strikers write a letter the Provost (PDF file here) but things are not looking all that promising - from AGSEM website:

(May 12) In a shocking statement made at the Bargaining Table on Monday morning, the Administration’s bargaining team told TAs to “Grow Up and Take Responsibility.” In fact, we ARE taking responsibility: for our work and our duties, for our members, and for a democratic voice in the workplace. Now we know how the Administration really feels about Teaching Assistants, in particular, and graduate students, in general. This ageist remark is an affront to graduate students everywhere.

I am not sure what it means since there aren’t too many details about the actual meeting, but it sounds as if the administration bargaining team isn’t really taking this affair seriously, and why would they? it’s just a bunch of grad students, right? who takes them seriously? I don’t know if it’s really an “ageist” remark, but it certainly is an affront to “graduate students everywhere” - it seems to me that with all the attention to “corporate responsibility” and “business ethics” our universities (by “our” I mean North American) somehow are getting away without much scrutiny. Graduate students and junior faculty are dependent on the university’s “good will” and are thus very easy to exploit - isn’t it time for a new category of “educational harassment”?

More information from CTV (Montreal):

McGill, TAs nowhere near resolution

For students trying to graduate from McGill’s education department this could be a make or break week. Teaching assistants have been on strike for five weeks, which has resulted in the cancellation of many courses.

The university says it is strictly obeying the Quebec Labour Code, which prevents it from hiring striking teaching assistants to do other, non-union work, such as invigilating exams. “The labour code obliges us not to hire striking TAs in any employument in the university and unfortunately that’s one of the consequences of the strike,” said deputy provost Morton Mendelson. The TA union disagrees. “They’re acually taking a small section of the labour code that’s to prevent scabbing and to prevent undermining and strike breaking,” said Natalie Kouri-Towe. Even if the two sides can come to an agreement, there are more labour woes on the horizon for McGill. Support staff at the university is poised to stike in the fall. Watch the video.

Meme: Passion Quilt

Ack. Both Carl of Dead Voles and Sinthome over at Larval Subjects tagged us here at Perverse Egalitarianism with a meme. I’m particularly irritated today because even while all the grades for my five courses were turned in on Monday morning, I have been–predictably enough–inundated with student complaints, or rather, weak petitions/pleas to “reconsider” or “further discuss” the grade I gave them (I had two emails that started with, “I don’t mean to disrespect you, but…”–if only I could send emails to students in that respect). Is this a practice limited to my institution or is it a generational thing? Anyway, sometimes this stems from a simple misunderstanding, no complete ignorance, of the concept of averages. So, some of my students just don’t understand that even though they may have earned a B on the midterm, but an F on the Final–their average is a C, not a B. Yet, most of these complaints take two forms: (1) I can’t get this grade because I will lose my scholarship (not my problem, do the work) or (2) Here’s a bunch of family/life drama that I didn’t want to tell you about, but now since you gave me a lousy grade, I’m telling you so naturally you will be compelled to change it. (Why tell me all this now?) Yes, I understand that many of my students are dealing with difficult problems (single mothers, broken homes, working two jobs) and I’m often very sympathetic (when they aren’t giving me bullshit cliches), but they made the choice to enroll in the class which means doing the work and showing up regularly (I had one student that missed 14 classes and wondered why he failed the final). I’m sorry, but some people just shouldn’t go to college. In fact, I had a student living in a homeless shelter that earned outstanding grades this semester so I’m rather wary of the two excuses I noted above.

I don’t know, it’s not that many of my students can’t do it, they can, but more often than not they lack the will, or much more frequently, they lack the intellectual skills (which I end up teaching throughout the semester, almost constantly) to succeed in the class, but really, I can’t believe that some of my students actually passed high school. It’s a problem, indeed. I try different things in the classroom, I’m aware of different learning types, I make myself accessible, but very often my students simply want me to tell them the answers, they don’t want to be bothered with any of the philosophical work, if it smells complex, it’s immediately suspect or worse, not worthy of their attention. I know this is cynical, but I always feel conflicted at the end of each semester. On the one hand, I got a few very nice emails from students thanking me (one to the effect of “I always thought of my courses as hoops to jump through for the grade, but your class really made me think differently about things” Aces!!!), but on the other hand, I have to take it up the ass after the fact from a bunch of ingrates that didn’t bother to do the work who are all trying to appeal to my pity so I’ll give them a passing grade (for some reason my students think D is not passing, it’s not great, but it’s passing I always say). Sometimes I’m Pollyana enough to just think to myself “I reached someone, very cool,” but it’s far more depressing when I think of the bulk of my students that are willfully ignorant, uncritical, and who simply refuse to think.

Enough of my ranting and raging, here is the meme:

Is Philosophy Irrelevant? Some People Talk About It.

Since this is an ongoing conversation here, I thought I’d point out an interesting conversation about the similar topics over at Eurozine:

Jonathan Barnes, Myles Fredric Burnyeat, Raymond Geuss, Barry Stroud

Modes of philosophizing

A round table debate

Should philosophy have something to say to non-philosophers? Should philosophy be pursued only by those trained in philosophy? Should academic teachers of philosophy consider themselves philosophers in virtue of the fact that they teach philosophy? And should analytic philosophers deny that continental philosophers are philosophers at all, or acknowledge that they represent different modes of philosophizing? Cogito poses some big questions to four prominent British and US philosophers.

Cogito: Do you think that philosophy as pursued by philosophers has something to say which is, or should be, of some relevance to the way non-philosophers think about the world and their life? Is it desirable that philosophers make an effort to make those aspects of philosophy which are relevant in this way available to non-philosophers?

Read the rest of the “round table debate” and think really hard.

Some Recent Discussions of the Situation in Zimbabwe

R. W. Johnson, who presently lives in South Arfice, writes a piece for London Review of Books:

The sequence of events that produced the current deadlock in Zimbabwe began on 11 March last year when Morgan Tsvangirai and a number of other members of the Movement for Democratic Change were arrested, tortured and beaten. Robert Mugabe had banned all MDC meetings and rallies in the hope of suppressing the MDC completely before this year’s elections. The local churches entered the fray and organised a prayer meeting in Highfield, a suburb of Harare. Tsvangirai drove to the meeting, but found that the area had been cordoned off by riot police and the meeting closed down on presidential orders. Informed a little later that a large number of civic leaders and MDC activists had been arrested and were being held at Machipisa police station in Highfield, he drove there straightaway. As soon as he arrived, he was pulled from his car and his head repeatedly slammed against the wall by police. Inside, the police used rifle butts, army belts, whips and sjamboks. ‘They were mostly targeting my head and my face,’ Tsvangirai recalled. He passed out three times and was revived with buckets of cold water so that the beatings could continue, the most determined assailant being a woman with an army belt. The rest is here.

Zimbabwe’s “Electoral Commission” warns that the run-off election could be delayed: