Cover of Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy
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Displaying: 1-14 of 14 documents


1. Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
D. M. Spitzer Images in Archaic Thinking
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Images permeate and propel archaic thinking in diverse ways. How do philosophic texts from the Greek archaic period (ca. eighth through early-fifth centu­ries BCE) conceive of images and what do images accomplish in archaic philosophies? In what ways can attention to images in philosophic texts open perspectives onto the relations of myth, poetry, and philosophy in the archaic Greek period? With these questions guiding the inquiry, this paper explores texts from various traditions jointly related within the archaic Aegean cultural matrix. Texts from what might be termed philosophy’s prehistory, such as the ancient Egyptian Leiden Hymns and Odysseia, pro­vide important context for understanding the continuity and development of images.
2. Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Kalliopi Nikolopoulou Tragedy without Action?: Reading Sophocles after Loraux
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The essay focuses on a paradox in the modern reception of tragedy: modernity foregrounds the Sophoclean tragic hero, in particular, but undermines the significance of heroic agency as autonomous deliberation. This gesture could be traced back to Hölderlin’s reading of Antigone as “divine fool,” and culminates more recently in Loraux’s gendered theory of tragedy as the feminine mourning voice that opposes the masculine politics of rational deliberation and action. For Loraux, tragedy’s ethical thrust is to highlight the distorted temporality of the political logos, which gives us a false sense of infinity through power and action; in contrast, the tragic voice exposes that mortal beings’ only infinity is the infinity of suffering and mourning. First outlined in her essay on Antigone, this thesis is later expanded in a book on tragedy as dirge, focusing on Sophocles’s Electra. By rereading both Sophoclean plays as mirroring each other on the topics of mourning, action, and revenge, I submit that, not only is action indispensable for tragedy, but the heroines’ infinitization of mourning affirms their disregard for mortal time in pursuit of their own glory. Their “intransigence” in mourning—to use Bernard Knox’s term—is the feminine equivalent to the war glory pursued by their male counterparts, though Electra’s inactive revenge fantasies lessen her heroic stature. Contra modernity’s emphasis on time, history, and finitude, I insist that Sophoclean heroes/heroines contest and reject time and its limits.
3. Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Marta Heckel Parmenides’s Love of Honor and Lessons about How (Not) to Do Philosophy from Plato’s Parmenides
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In this paper, I show that the Parmenides provides important insight into how to properly engage in philosophical discussion—or, more accurately, how not to engage in it. From references to age, love-of-winning and love-of-honor, and a paral­lel to the Phaedo, I show that Parmenides is ruled by the spirited part of his soul in a way that compromises his ability to philosophize, and that the Parmenides is a warning about doing philosophy from a love of honor. Ideally, we should do philosophy from a love of wisdom. When we are honor-loving, we are not only motivated by the wrong kind of thing, but our love of honor can also blind us to the specific ways in which we might be falling short of ideal philosophical engagement, such as missing the potential dangers of engaging in philosophy with certain kinds of interlocutors.
4. Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Andrew Haas One One, or the Unity of Being in Plato’s Parmenides
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Being can no longer be thought, for Plato, in accordance with Parmenides’ either/or; rather, it is both/and, both present in and absent from things, which is how they can come-to-presence and go-out-into-absence. But as the Parmenides demonstrates, Greek grammar hints at a fundamental ontological truth: the expression, “one one,” ἓν ἕν, shows that being can be implied, neither present nor absent—for being is an implication. But then participating must be rethought in terms of implying: being is implied in everything that is and is one, which is how it is present in beings and absent therefrom. But this understanding of participation—as Aristotle insists—is contradictory. Luckily, there is another way: implication qua belonging—being no longer participates-in, but belongs-to things, which is how it is one with them, distinct but inseparable. But this too, betrays implication, fails to grasp being’s way of being, and the meaning of being qua implied, and so cannot illuminate how being and beings are and are one—for as the suspension of presence and/or absence, implying is irreducible to participating or belonging. Rather, if being is implied, it is because implication is suspension, which is why it is so suspenseful.
5. Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Marta Faustino, Paolo Stellino Leaving Life at the Right Time: The Stoics and Nietzsche on Voluntary Death
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This paper aims to discuss the coherence and consistency of the Stoic and the Nietzschean “art of dying at the right time”. Throughout this paper, we will use this expression to refer to the Stoics’ and Nietzsche’s treatment both of involuntary and voluntary death, inasmuch as both seem to be strongly connected to and grounded on the notion of timeliness. Taking this notion as a guiding thread, we will emphasize the several similarities that link their approach to suicide. Indeed, as will be shown, it is plausible to assume that Nietzsche’s understanding of voluntary death is particularly influenced by the Stoic tradition. At the same time, we will point out the relevant differences that make these two approaches differ. In dealing with the Stoic and the Nietzschean attitude towards suicide, the underlying question will be whether the legitimization and defense of voluntary death is compatible—and if so, to which extent—with their teachings, in particular, with their notions of happiness and affirmation of life, on the one hand, and their ideals of living in accordance with nature and amor fati, on the other.
6. Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
F. W. J. Schelling, Naomi Fisher Schelling’s Plato Notebooks, 1792–1794
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These notebooks were written during the years that F. W. J. Schelling spent as a student at the Tübinger Stift (1790–1795). From dates written by Schelling in the margins, we can surmise that the first portion (AA II/4: 15–28) was begun in August of 1792, and the latter portion (AA II/5: 133–142) was written in early 1794. To this latter portion is appended a substantial work, Schelling’s Timaeus-commentary, which is not included in the present translation. It appeared as “Timaeus (1794)” (translated by Adam Arola, Jena Jolissaint, Peter Warnek) in Epoché 12: 2. These notebooks offer a window into Schelling’s philosophical development and proclivities, in light of his engagement with various Platonic dialogues, most notably the Ion, Theaetetus, Meno, Timaeus, and Philebus. They include discussions of divine power, rapture, and genius, especially as these relate to poetry, prophecy, and ordinary forms of human knowledge. These topics are discussed in the first portion (AA II/4: 15–25). In the latter portion, Schelling discusses myth, its function and relation to human greatness, Socrates’s daimonion, and the authority of tradition (AA II/4: 25–28; II/5: 133–142).
7. Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Daniele Fulvi Schelling as a ‘Post-Heideggerian Thinker’: Luigi Pareyson’s Interpretation of Schelling
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In this paper, I focus on Luigi Pareyson’s interpretation of Schelling, arguing that it must be read in continuity with Pareyson’s early engagement with the philosophies of Heidegger and Jaspers. Firstly, I argue that Pareyson shapes his existentialism on Jaspers’s and Heidegger’s thoughts, and particularly in relation to that which he considers the fundamental question of philosophy, namely ‘why is there Being rather than nothingness?’ Secondly, I demonstrate how Pareyson reads Schelling’s philosophy in light of his interpretations of Jaspers and Heidegger, i.e., in relation to the ‘fundamental question of philosophy’. Finally, I show how Pareyson’s reading of Schelling is centered on the notion of ‘awe of reason’, and how he defines Schelling as a ‘post-Heideggerian thinker’, since Heidegger’s philosophy allows us to innovatively reinterpret Schelling’s philosophy in an existentialist way.
8. Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Magnus Ferguson Joycean Hermeneutics and the Tyranny of Hidden Prejudice
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In order to revise interpretive prejudgments, it is important to first recognize them for what they are. Problematically, the habitual overreliance on deficient prejudgments can make such recognition difficult. An impasse appears: How can one intervene on deficient interpretive resources if those very same resources conceal their deficiencies? I analyze James Joyce’s short story “The Dead,” in which the protagonist Gabriel is highly resistant to internalizing experiences that might otherwise prompt him to revise his interpretive projections. I argue that Gabriel only becomes aware of his interpretive shortcomings after an experience of profound hesitation that allows him to affectively sense the limitations of his prejudice. Drawing from Hans-Georg Gadamer, Kristie Dotson, and Alia Al-Saji, I argue that Gabriel’s experience of hesitation temporarily denaturalizes his deeply entrenched sexism, circumventing the hermeneutical impasse described above. Read in this way, “The Dead” illustrates the power of affective experiences to unsettle highly resilient ways of seeing the world.
9. Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Norman K. Swazo Heidegger, Aristotle, and Dasein’s Possibility of Being
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Heidegger’s thinking of the human way to be unavoidably concerns itself with a distinctive human possibility of being. It is argued here that the early Heidegger, who engaged Aristotle’s philosophy via what Heidegger calls “phenomenological interpretations,” learns from Aristotle’s method of definition but goes beyond it to conceive the idea of possibility—Dasein’s being-possible (Seinkönnen)—differently. It is reasonable to argue that the early Heidegger accomplishes a productive interpretation of Aristotle in this case while being indebted to Aristotle’s understanding of ‘definition’ as both “genuinely indicative” and “indeterminate.” Despite Aristotle’s ontological commitment to a metaphysics of presence (Anwesenheit) with its linkage of “possibility-actuality” (“dunamis-energeia/entelecheia”), Heidegger appreciates that there remains an important possibility of phenomenological interpretation in both Aristotle’s concept of zóon lógon echon and the expression ‘tò tí en einai’. This interpretive move is discussed here.
10. Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Joel Michael Reynolds Heidegger, Embodiment, and Disability
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Most interpreters of Heidegger’s reflections on the body maintain that—whether early, middle, or late in the Gesamtausgabe—Dasein’s or the mortal’s openness to being/beyng is the ground of the fleshly or bodily (das Leibliche), but not the reverse. In this paper, I argue that there is evidence from Heidegger’s own oeuvre demonstrating that this relationship is instead mutually reciprocal. That is to say, I contend that corporeal variability is constitutive of Dasein’s openness to being just as Dasein’s openness to being is constitutive of its corporeal variability. Understood in this way, Heidegger’s thinking puts forward what I call a corpoietic understanding of the body and of the meaning of ability. I show that, despite the ableist assumptions at play in much of Heidegger’s work, such an understanding is nevertheless grounded in the idea of access, a central concept in philosophy of disability and disability studies. After developing this idea of ability as access, I close by addressing the larger political stakes of using Heidegger’s work to think about embodiment and disability given the Third Reich’s mass slaughter of people with disabilities.
11. Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Niall Keane Polemos, Logos, Plurality: Hannah Arendt’s Phenomenological Reading of the Greeks
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The following examines Hannah Arendt’s interpretations of Greek thought, specifically her phenomenological reading of Homer and Socrates as proto-phenomenological thinkers of objectivity, plurality, and logos. Drawing inspiration from these thinkers, Arendt finds the means of preserving and actualizing plurality as the existential truthfulness that emerges from the conflict in speaking and acting with others. She does this by contrasting how, after the trial and death of Socrates, thinking became professional philosophy and shifted its focus from the reciprocal interdependence of thinking, speaking, and acting well in the polis and towards a reflection on truth, unity, and necessity that takes its start from an ontological order that is either prior to or beyond the world of appearances. Engaging with the literature, this article examines and assesses Arendt’s claims and focuses on the themes of plurality, conflict, and speaking, as set out in her interpretations of Homer and Socrates.
12. Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Mauro Senatore The Question of Regionalism: Derrida’s Early Reading of Heidegger
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In Of Grammatology (1967), Jacques Derrida explains that Western culture undergoes a transformation of knowledge and discourses that unfolds as the grammatization of experience. By resorting to the code of writing (grammē), as the elementary code of experience, modern sciences call into question ontological regionalism, that is, their traditional subordination to a fundamental ontology that assigns them the region of being corresponding to their field of investigation. Within this framework, Derrida develops a twofold schematic reading of Heidegger’s question of being in light of the question posed by scientific research to ontological regionalism. In this article, I focus on this reading, which has been overlooked by scholarship and yet undergirds Derrida’s later engagements with Heidegger, and I show that it draws on the overall interpretation of Heidegger’s thought developed by Derrida in his 1964–65 lecture course.
13. Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Cynthia R. Nielsen, David Liakos Music and Time: A Philosophical Postscript (1988) by Hans-Georg Gadamer
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This is a translation of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s 1988 essay, “Musik und Zeit: Ein philosophisches Postscriptum.” The essay, although brief, is noteworthy in that it contains Gadamer’s philosophical reflections on music—reflections which are largely absent in his masterwork, Truth and Method. In the essay, one finds several important Gadamerian hermeneutical themes such as the notion of art as performance or enactment (Vollzug), the linguisticality of understanding, the importance of lingering with an artwork or text, and how our absorption in the work gives rise to a particular experience of time.
14. Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Joe Balay “Wal-Mart and the Heavens”: A Dialogue with Charles Scott on the Importance of Seeing Stars
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In his chapter “Wal-Mart and the Heavens” from Living with Indifference, Charles Scott compares the experience of gazing at the starry heavens to the glow of Walmart at night. In this remarkable analogy, Scott suggests that one encounters an experience of sublime indifference that interrupts our usual judgments about the life-world and invites an appreciation for the sheer appearing of things. Scott concludes his study, however, by reminding us that we must be careful to observe the limits between such appearances, raising a longstanding question about our ability to discern such boundaries. Following a close re-reading of Scott’s reverie then, I attempt to explicate the hermeneutic limit underlying this agonistic relationship between Walmart and the starry heavens, τέχνη and Θαυμάζειν, in order to demonstrate just what its violation might look like for human understanding today. In doing so, however, I also attempt to show just what is so significant about our ability to see the stars.