This article discusses the Mekrijärvi boreal lake system in North Karelia, Finland, and the Koitajoki river. It traces historico-cultural interactions with the lake, from its role as an epicenter of Karelian rune singing and traditional practices, to the natural and cultural disruptions caused by large-scale natural resource extraction that shattered forests, peatlands, and waterbodies, and on into a new era of restoration. In the 2000s a community-driven NGO began to document oral histories and scientific evidence of the lake’s condition. In the 2020s, this effort evolved into a landscape-scale eco-cultural revitalization effort. Habitat for endangered whitefish and degraded peatlands are being restored and traditional knowledge has become a central force in rebuilding and re-imagining traditional northern societies. Snippets of personal memories and oral poetry offer a window into a unique boreal world which, though once thought to be lost, is in a state of re-discovery and healing.

Building upon recent studies in new materialisms and feminist critical posthumanism with a focus on human and more-than-human relationships, this paper examines how the posthuman paradigm, by postulating the queering of identit(ies) via entanglement with the more-than-human (including technology), and by offering a critical examination of diverse modes of existence within a broader ecological context, can foster more inclusive and ethically sound ways of being in the world. Although posthumanism encompasses a wide range of perspectives and theories, including transhumanism, at its core, it challenges traditional notions of humanism, blurring the boundaries between what is human and what is more-than-human, while calling for a revaluation of anthropocentric, onto-epistemological, and ethical frameworks. This paper mobilises the framework and methodology of composting-with-care as an analytical tool to foster epistemic diversity, from quantum field theory to speculative fabulation, in the examination of the issue concerning human identity. It concludes by proposing a view where the self is not confined to the individual human but emerges through interactions (and intra-actions) with the world(s) of which the human is part, acknowledging the agency and influence of actors beyond the human on identity formation.

The paper re-examines the work of Jakob Böhme (1575–1624) through the lens of environmental ethics. Specifically, it delves into the concept of dwelling (wohnen) as articulated in Six Theosophic Points (1620), The Six Mystical Points (1620), and On the Early and Heavenly Mystery (1620). To illuminate the significance of this concept for environmental ethics, the paper will juxtapose it with Martin Heidegger’s idea of dwelling. This comparative approach not only sheds light on the environmental-ethical implications, but also allows for a broader exploration of methodological considerations inherent in such a scholarly endeavor. The paper raises questions about the potential constraints in reinterpreting the intellectual legacy of past thinkers, that is, their identity over the course of the history of philosophy.

Humans tend to seek their identity as entities existing over a period of time by making narratives. The paper argues that seeking diachronic self-identity through narratives or stories results in the self-experience being one of separation or alienation from the real world. This happens because language is primarily a form of secondary representation, and the means by which we attempt to find identity often appear in the form of narratives. The dominance of the metaphor of life as a journey shows this. The remedy is to reduce the hold of narrativity by making self-experience fundamentally episodic.

I propose a reconsideration of the role that ‘interpellations’ play in the dynamic process of identity construction. ‘Interpellation’ is a quasi-technical term introduced by Louis Althusser (1969) that I reinterpret using the lens of contemporary social ontology. I therefore look at it as an identity proposal that the individual can either accept, reject, negotiate, or outright ignore. In the original text, Althusser mentions the fact that the individual’s acceptance is the essential moment of an interpellation, but he does not elaborate on the other options available to the individual. I believe it is important to analyze the individual’s options and the factors that may influence whether the individual’s freedom of choice is fully exercised in such contexts. I further discuss the human vulnerabilities that cause ‘interpellations’ to be adopted without much reflection, even in the absence of a repressive system that would try to enforce a mainstream ideology.

This paper aims to examine what is called “diasporic identity.” The complexity related to this research arises due to the inherent uncertainty and indefinability of identity itself, which is further compounded by the additional layer of uncertainty introduced by the concept of diaspora. The diaspora is not a ready-made, indisputable reality; establishing its existence demands substantiating the claim that it possesses a distinct identity. However, merely demonstrating a shared geographical distance from the homeland raises pertinent questions: Why should the negative circumstance of being distanced from one’s homeland serve as a unifying factor, and does this dispersion give rise to an identity transcending national boundaries? Answering these questions involves looking at the historical context of identity and diaspora and introducing concepts that help understand them. The central thesis posited herein asserts that the manifestation of diasporic identity primarily assumes a narrative form, elucidated through both disciplinary discourse and literary works. With specific reference to the Armenian Diaspora, this exposition contends that, in certain instances, reliance solely on academic discourse proves insufficient in establishing a comprehensive comprehension of diasporic identity. It is asserted that literature, with its metaphoric language, emerges as an essential instrument, providing access to the profound layers inherent to the domain, thereby facilitating a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of diasporic identity.

The main objective of this article is to analyze the reasons behind Thomas Ligotti’s recognition of Peter Wessel Zapffe as an anti-natalist. Specifically, I argue that Ligotti’s focus on Zapffe’s early essay The Last Messiah (1933) alone results in some misunderstandings of Zapffe’s views, which make room for coining him an antinatalist. These misunderstandings ground associated dichotomies of the type, Ligotti’s misinterpretation versus Zapffe’s theory, such as the dichotomy of self-deception versus heterotelic metaphysical activity of phantasy, as embedded in that of illusions versus fixations, and the dichotomy tragedy versus necessary tragic. Comparing and contrasting Ligotti’s analysis of three examples of Zapffe’s works including The Last Messiah and Fragments of an Interview (1959), as well as choosing one more example – that of Zapffe’s monograph On the Tragic (1941) – I aim to demonstrate why reducing Zapffe’s ideas of the necessary tragic and multifrontal conflicts to anti-natalism per se simplifies the unique philosophical background in which these ideas occur.

I contrast two construals of the thesis that truth is independent of verifiability in principle: a modal one and a non modal one. I argue in favor of the modal construal and then, on that basis, that independence holds across the board, i.e., even for statements that are verifiable by us relative to familiar, customary, non-skeptical standards.

Benjamin Constant and Jean-Jacques Rousseau were both Swiss-French political thinkers who had a significant influence on the subsequent development of political thought. Constant is known not only as a political philosopher but also as an active politician, who today is considered one of the founding fathers of liberalism. Rousseau, in turn, is considered one of the most controversial thinkers of the Enlightenment, who has been accused of laying the foundation for many revolutionary political movements and repressive regimes. The main objective of this work is to illustrate Benjamin Constant’s liberal objections to the political philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. First, it is important to focus on Rousseau’s main ideas for the full disclosure of the topic. Likewise, it is also crucial to take into account the historical context, which will be useful for understanding the motives for the formation of Constant’s liberal views. Thus, in the first part of the work, we will briefly consider the main concepts developed by Rousseau in his book, The Social Contract, such as popular sovereignty, the state of nature, and direct democracy. In the second part, we will analyze the main political concepts of Constant and his critique of Rousseau, based on his books The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns and Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments.

Spinoza’s Ethics is one of the most important works in Western philosophy. Unfortunately, aside from the Vatican manuscript, which is very close to the final printed version, no drafts have been preserved. In this article I shed some new light on the composition of the early draft of Ethics. I argue that there are significant reasons to believe that propositions Ip9 and Ip10 in Spinoza’s Ethics were added to the deductive argument later than the other first propositions: Ip1-Ip8 and Ip11.

From Antiquity to the Postmodern world, the approaches of philosophical and literary thought to death have changed but also remained similar from philosopher to philosopher and from writer to writer. Many of these approaches emphasize the dualities of life/death and soul/body, relying on the argument that everything arises from its opposite through the continuous process of reproduction, just as everything dies. This paper will deal with the concept of death in the work of three authors, Ndre Mjedja, Lasgush Poradeci, and Mitrush Kuteli, who are the main writers and cultural personalities in Albanian literature of the 20th century. The selected authors conceive, create, and promote a plurality of discourses and themes, highlighting the theme of death, through which they reveal the philosophical power of the literary text and the possibilities implicit to literature itself. Their views provide a poetic and cultural background for a theoretical discussion of literary and cultural facets of death. A prelude exploring the concept of death generally will be followed by a discussion of the authors’ works, and finally, a theoretical analysis of these works will round off the investigation of death as a literary and philosophical theme in Albanian letters.

Tracing the themes of political economy in Nietzsche’s thought, this article has two main purposes. The first of these is to problematize some narratives such as eternal return, will to power, and revaluation of values, which are the crucial concepts of Nietzsche’s thought, in the critique of political economy. The second is to re-read Nietzsche’s themes of political economy in conjunction with the concept of the virtual political economy of life, to link Nietzsche’s ‘grand politics’ with the overshadowed concept of ‘grand economy’ by making the move that put Nietzsche’s hammer on the idols of the established grammar of political economy. All of these themes are part of an economy of power that goes against the grasp of economics and political economy by grammatical thought. I call this political economy the virtual political economy of life.

What makes the paper relevant is modern strategies of neoliberal politics, according to which the political life of citizens is replaced by everyday politics of individuals. It has been established that the modern concepts of everyday politics of homo sacer and homo sucker contain the limit of ideas about the political life of citizens. The paper considers an ontological model of the political life of citizens built on the basis of thinking as form-of-life (Agamben). The return to the ontological level of research can be explained by the fact that in modern conditions, the survival of a person depends directly on the person’s ability to think. Thinking as the form-of-life of a community is seen as a force that allows citizens to resist not only the inertia of social existence, but also the life watched carefully by the authorities. The paper presents two interpretations of political life based on the following statements: ‘I think, therefore I resist’ (Badiou) and ‘I resist, therefore I think’ (Arendt).

The relevance and theoretical weight of the mentioned topic of research consists in the definition of the phenomenon metamodernism, which, in modern humanitarian knowledge and in literary and artistic practice, determines the need to distinguish and analyse segments of European humanism as means of in-depth reproduction, nuance and personalisation of historical and cultural stages, in the context of the specified systematisation of the movement of segments from the middle of the 19th to the first two decades of the 21st century. The main goal of this study, considering the creative and research potential of segments that contributed to the gradual layering of specific features of European humanism, is the reconstruction of arguments for and against those processes that caused the development of a single cultural space. The basis of the methodological approach in this study is the principles of historicism with the assignment of analytical, comparative, and chronological approaches to the determination of a wide range of issues that are of significant importance in the context of the stated topic. In the course of carrying out this research, results were obtained that have significant theoretical and practical significance, because they contribute to the further scientific and theoretical understanding of the dynamics of the European humanistic movement from the second half of the 19th to the first two decades of the 21st century, and can be used in lectures on aesthetics, philosophy, cultural studies, history and the theory of art for students of humanitarian and artistic creative universities. The results obtained during the implementation of this research, and the conclusions formulated on their basis, are of significant importance in the context of determining the key trends in the recognition of the creative and searching tendencies of European humanism, which play an important role in the process of forming a single cultural space.

The following paper aims to re-examine the nature of the moral self as expounded by the Care Ethicists with the prime objective of understanding its ontological potential. It will be argued that this philosophical endeavor of examining the nature of the moral self in light of the Care Ethics theory echoes ontological thoughts and ideas that orbit around themes such as relationality, emotionality, and contextuality. The paper seeks to exhaustively explore the moral significance of these detected ontological standards of the Ethics of Care project. Through this engagement, an affinity between the moral and the ontological aspects of Care Ethics shall be identified. Discussing the proposed ontological significance and implication of the care theory, we shall determine if there is a possibility for developing a dialogue between the domain of ethics and ontology, and if so, then consider what the ontological roots of feminist Care Ethics are. Consequently, through this project, we shall present a revised narrative of morality altogether.

Quine has been charged with eliminating the normative dimension from his naturalized epistemology. The aim of the paper is to look at the role of empathy in Quine’s language learning situation, which in its simplest form is constituted by the parent-child relation. We will explore the normativity of the role of empathy thereof by exploiting the sociality of the language learning situation. Since the sociality of Quine’s notion of empathy is implicit, to explore the normativity expression thereof, we will examine the explicit sociality of Wittgenstein’s language learning situation–also constituted in its simplest form by the master-novice relation–and the normative character of it. By explicating the normativity of the calibrating role of the master and of rule following generally, we will parse the moral dimensions of the empathizing role of the linguist in Quine’s language learning situation. Finally, by examining the nature of normativity in empathizing, we will establish that the normativity of empathizing involved in Quine’s language learning situation is socially grounded without denying its individual dimension. We will conclude that the normativity objection against Quine’s naturalism thus stands refuted.