Phenomenologists find themselves in the unusual position of attempting to describe non-sensuously phenomenal phenomena. Intentionality is one such oddity. It is not sensuously phenomenal, yet Husserl and Heidegger both purport to be able to “read off” its necessary features. Both were well aware that such an enterprise has its difficulties. The primary difficulty is how to make intentionality into an “object.” To do so, a method for directing our “phenomenological vision” is necessary. Heidegger, however, is unable to utilise Husserl’s methods for this purpose. Since the phenomenological method must “follow its matter,” and Heidegger’s matter is different from Husserl’s, Heidegger cannot merely adopt Husserl’s methods. Thus, Heidegger must develop a new method to investigate intentionality. In this paper, I show the ways in which Heidegger’s conception of intentionality diverged from Husserl’s while retaining its core sense, and why intentionality poses particularly difficult methodological problems. Finally, I investigate the new methods Heidegger develops (c. 1925–28) to deal with theseproblems—categorial intuition, a reformulated version of the reduction, and a form of objectification—and why each of these methods fails.

Late in his career, Sartre told us that “subjectivity (in Being and Nothingness) is not what it is for me now,” but I do not think that this should be understood as simple rejection. Rather, I think that his notion of the “spiral” best expresses his meaning. The development of his thought progressed through levels of integrating new experience with the past and, in the process, refigured the past. Sartre was, all along, a philosopher protective of subjectivity and freedom, but these notionsunderwent transformation over time, preserved and modified in their surpassing. Sartre’s philosophical itinerary follows the model of the spiral, and in that way, he is his own best commentator.

Religion has been a constant throughout human history. Evidence of it dates from the earliest times. Religious practice is also universal, appearing in every region of the globe. To judge from recorded history and contemporary accounts, religious intolerance is equally widespread. Yet all the major faiths proclaim the golden rule, namely, to “love your neighbour as yourself.” When Jesus was asked by a lawyer, “Who is my neighbour?” he replied with the story of the good Samaritan—the man who bound up the wounds and looked after the Israelite who was neither his co-religionist nor a member of his race. Jesus’ example has been rarely followed. What is it in religion—and not just in the Christian religion—that leads its members to limit their conception of their neighbour? How is it that, in preaching the universal brotherhood of mankind, religions so often practice the opposite? In my paper, I suggest some answers by focusing on the notions of faith, ethics and finitude.

This paper responds to Rancière’s reading of Lyotard’s analysis of the sublime by attempting to articulate what Lyotard would call a “differend” between the two. Sketching out Rancière’s criticisms, I show that Lyotard’s analysis of the Kantian sublime is more defensible than Rancière claims. I then provide an alternative reading, one that frees Lyotard’s sublime from Rancière’s central accusation that it signals nothing more than the mind’s perpetual enslavement to the lawof the Other. Reading the sublime through the figure of the “event,” I end by suggesting that it may have certain affinities with what Rancière calls “politics.”

Theodor W. Adorno claims that a philosophy that tried to imitate art would defeat itself, yet he seems to have based his own model for philosophical interpretation, which he compares to changing constellations, on Gustav Mahler’s musical montage (the first Ländler from the second movement of the Ninth Symphony.) The paper first examines two aspects of montage that Adorno mentions in his reading of the Ländler: (1) its reified working material and (2) its combinatory procedure. Next, these aspects are located within the interpretive model advanced in the inaugural lecture of 1931. The latter part of the paper makes a case for the philosophically binding force of constellations by drawing on the concepts of aesthetic semblance [ästhetischer Schein] and praxis.

This paper discusses Rancière’s attitude to Sartre through an examination of the two philosophers’ analyses of Flaubert, and especially of Madame Bovary. It argues that Rancière simplifies Sartre’s conception of literary commitment and seriously downplays the subtlety of his understanding of the relationship between literature and politics. Furthermore, by limiting his sources to Sartre’s Qu’est-ce que la littérature? (1948), and not considering L’Idiot de la famille (1971–72), Rancière fails to recognise the similarities between Sartre’s account and his own, with respect to both aesthetic theory and stylistic analysis.

This article explores the force and limitations of Jacques Rancière’s novel attempt to rethink the relationship between aesthetics and politics. In particular, it unravels the paradoxical threads of the fundamental contradiction between two of his steadfast claims: (1) art and politics are consubstantial, and (2) art and politics never truly merge. In taking Rancière to task on this point, the primary objective of this article is to work through the nuances of his project andforeground the problems inherent therein in order to break with the “talisman complex” and the “ontological illusion” of the politics of aesthetics in the name of a new understanding of the social politicity of artistic practices.