This study examines the ritualized character of crimes against humanity in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Encompassing a victim, a victimizer, and a witness, degradation ceremonies structured the activity of what is euphemistically called ethnic cleansing. The observing world played the role of witness, which became a perpetuating component of the ritual.The discussion leads to the formulation of evil as the degradation of not only an individual human being but also humanity itself.

This essay is a philosophical reading of Don DeLillo’s novel, The Body Artist, and his essay, “In the Ruins of the Future.” Focusing on the issues of loss, mourning, and terror after the attacks of September the 11th, I argue that DeLillo gives a picture of mourning as something that occurs through a loss of language. This loss does not end language; instead, it occurs through language.

It may be considered a rather oblique move to convene a discussion of the Hydra and Heracles in relation to our larger initiative to ground a conceptual typology of polemics, but it serves as perhaps the most effective analogy in the spirit of poststructuralist and deconstructive critique. That is, we invoke these two “styles” of critique with their preoccupation with language and the Other: two key components to elucidate upon the notion of polemics, and more specifically, take our cues from Derrida’s idea of hydratext and Deleuze’s clarion call for concept creation. If the polemicist is considered monstrous, then it behooves us to commit considerable study to the polemicist’s monstrosity.

This article begins with a response to Habermas’ critique of Bataille. Habermas argues that the realm of heterogeneity/transgression is only opened up in moments of shock which overwhelm the subject. The rational categories of thought which maintain a useful relationship with the outside (i.e., with anything construed as unfamiliar) are fragmented in the excess and horror of Bataille’s communication. Hence it is impossible to bring together under one theoretical umbrella the antitheses of subjectivity and its excluded other: by definition the other ought to be marginalized in its very objectification by the subject, normativity, rationality, etc. My response is that the two opposed terms/antitheses are indeed opposed, but they are not therefore abstract opposites. That is to say, the subject is always already an equivocation of terms, a kind of sacrilege which cannot be assimilated to an ideal completion. The law is itself a transgression.

With the 1999 film The Martix as its point of departure, this work explores the meaning of ‘reality’ outside the scope of empirical positivism. Drawing on the phenomenological epistemology of the interplay of noetic and noematic dimensions of experience postulated by Husserl, and on the works of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, this work considers how the reality of our experience derives not from some correspondence to a universal ‘objective’ point of view, but from our concernful involvement with our lived world as the horizon of our lived and known projects. Finally, in light of Ricoeur’s work on imagination and productive reference, this work considers whether and on what grounds the distinction between so called ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ experiences is meaningful.

The starting point of my essay is a paradoxical claim that the Spanish philosopher, poet and novelist Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) makes—in his essay “Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho” (1905)—that Don Quixote, Cervantes’ character, is more real and authentic than Miguel de Cervantes himself. Then, after discussing this claim and analyzing the implications of an ingenious literary device that Unamuno employed in his fiction “Niebla” (1914), I will sketch some of the possible philosophical consequences that Unamuno’s literary concepts might have on understanding the ultimate identity of the self, and of the nature of human condition in general. The paper is in three parts: 1) the first part is dedicated to discussing the above mentioned paradoxical claim in “Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho”; 2) the second part deals mainly with Chapter XXXI of Unamuno’s “Niebla”; and 3) in the final part I will deal with Unamuno’s insight that the relationship between the self and God is, properly speaking, of the same nature as the relationship between a literary author and the fictional beings he creates. In addition, I will be trying to place Unamuno’s insight within a broader context of history of ideas, and to point to some of its far-reaching philosophical implications.

The present essay questions at the same time it acknowledges the historical and logical conditions of existence of painting as an expanded field. The expanded field of painting is presented using a Greimas rectangle that incorporates the notions of uniqueness/reproducibility, multidimensional affine spaces, and history. The essay provides an understanding of the discipline and of the art-works that make it possible to locate different artistic manifestations taking place today in society.