Although Nietzsche scholars have paid close attention to his aphoristic and rhetorical style, few have focused on his practice of writing prefaces. In this paper, I engage in a close reading of Nietzsche’s prefaces and identify five themes present in his earlier and later prefaces: (1) he speaks directly to his readers, (2) he stresses the necessity of slow and careful reading, (3) he encourages readers to trust themselves, (4) he refers to himself as a herald, and (5) he uses combative and polemical language to describe his work. Given these themes, I conclude that Nietzsche’s preface writing project constitutes a practice of self-care as described by Foucault in “Technologies of the Self” and “The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom.”

Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations constitutes an important source and subject for Michel Foucault’s 1981 lectures at the Collège de France, translated into English as Hermeneutics of the Subject. One recurring theme in these lectures is the deployment by Hellenistic/Roman philosophers such as Aurelius of the practice and figure of dance. Inspired by this discussion, the present essay offers a close reading of dance in the Meditations, followed by a survey of the secondary literature on this subject. Overall, I will attempt to show that, despite Aurelius’s self-consciously critical comportment toward dance, dance nevertheless performs a critical function in the construction of what I will term his “political ethics.” This political ethics, I will argue, is composed of an ethics of patient tolerance funded by the generosity that flows from the micro-political power generated by cultivating the god (or daemon) that Aurelius identifies within each of us.

This essay discusses Immanuel Kant’s project of perpetual peace. Kant runs into several difficulties in this undertaking, a series of “political antinomies” such as the opposing goals of nature or providence and of individuals, and the competing models of a federation of states or a world state to enforce perpetual peace. I argue that cosmopolitan right is Kant’s answer to the inconsistencies of his political philosophy and of his philosophy of history. Cosmopolitanism brings the individual back into historical development by merging the political rights each person enjoys within a state with the relentless progress of the human race as a whole. Further, it provides a transition from a federation of states to a global political system of rights. I contend that cosmopolitanism can be regarded as the political supplement to the categorical imperative that applies universally to all rational beings.

This paper argues that Socrates’s baffling digression on Spartan philosophy, just before he interprets Simonides’s ode, gives a key to the whole of Plato’s Protagoras. It undermines simple distinctions between competition and cooperation in philosophy, and thus in the discussions throughout the dialogue. It also prepares for Socrates’s interpretation of Simonides’s ode as a questionable critique of Pittacus’s sage wisdom “Hard it is to be good.” This critique stands as a figure for the dialogue’s contrast between Protagoras’s and Socrates’s pedagogical methods. Protagoras advances an emulative view of education against Socrates’s self-knowledge model. The paper concludes with some thoughts on Protagoras’s claim that talking about poetry is as much about virtue as the earlier back-and-forth exchange about virtue’s unity and teachability.

This essay attempts to further the Heideggerian reading of the transcendental imagination in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, by substantiating Heidegger’s contested claims, that (1.) the imagination is identical to “original time,” (2.) the imagination generates secondary, successive time, and (3.) therefore categories of the understanding are formal abstractions from a more primordial temporal horizon. I argue that Heidegger’s reading of Kant remains completely tenable based on A 142-143, by first examining Heidegger's thesis, and then defending it by analyzing the above-mentioned section. Finally, I comment on the implications of the Heideggerian reading, in terms of both the role of the transcendental imagination in the Kantian system, as well as the implications of Heidegger’s overall deconstruction of reason itself.

The aim of the paper is to investigate the role of allegory in Philo and spe­cifically in his text On the Migration of Abraham. This involves the twofold move of arguing that even though Philo remains a Platonist and that his language is Platonic in orientation what occurs is a transformation of seeing, which is an immediate activity, into reading, which is always mediate. The second elements stems from this insistence on mediation. It results in freeing allegory from the hold of the allegorical/literal op­position. Allegory is transformed as a result in the name of an ineliminable allegoresis.

Jacques Derrida’s “question of the animal” was arguably the central philosophical axis of his last decade. In this paper, I argue that Derrida’s discussion of animals and animality started much earlier than is typically thought and that the sources and origins of this question can be traced all the way back to his earliest deconstructive texts. In addition, while it is true that the central vein of Derrida’s “question of the animal” was his deconstruction of Martin Heidegger’s onto-theological definition of the human Dasein, by exposing and exploring the animalistic and non-anthropocentric tones of Derrida’s earliest critiques of both structuralism and phenomenology, this paper also widens and deepens the significance of this question by revealing its origins and implications to be not exclusively Heideggerian.

In this work I defend, not the content, but, rather, the logical coherence of Descartes’s system by insisting on the ontological priority of substance over attributes in spite of the fact that Descartes seems, on occasion, to suggest otherwise. This, in turn, however, allows us to better grasp the nature of Descartes’ Augustinian conception of the soul, and what it might resemble should it be granted God’s concurrence, and, thus, eternal life. At the same time, I demonstrate, by means of his Thomistic inheritance, the philosophically sound reasons why Descartes leaves these issues somewhat opaque. Finally, these reflections lead us to Nietzsche, and by contrasting the latter’s thoughts on science and freedom to those of Descartes we are led to what, for Nietzsche, would be the ultimate desideratum of such Cartesian longings for the ‘tranquility’ and ‘happiness’ of life-everlasting: a ‘will to nothingness.’

According to Immanuel Kant, the objective validity of obligation is given as a fact of reason, which forces itself upon us and which requires no deduction of the kind that he had provided for the categories in the Critique of Pure Reason. This fact grounds a moral philosophy that treats obligation as a good that trumps all others and that presents the moral subject as radically responsible, singled out by an imperatival address. Based on conceptions of indifference and facticity that Charles Scott has articulated in his recent work, I argue that these broadly Kantian commitments are mistaken. More specifically, I argue that the fact of obligation is given along with a dimension of indifference that disrupts the hierarchical relation between moral and non-moral goods and that renders questionable the unconditional character of responsibility.

Spinoza studies have paid little attention to the concept of justice for centuries. However, he refers to it quite often in different contexts, especially in his mature texts. More specifically, he defines it as synonymous with suum cuique tribuere, even though he fails to provide a reasonable account of how this traditional legal expression fits into his philosophical system. This article shows that there is a relevant philosophical dimension in Spinoza’s treatment of the suum cuique that emerges out of his notion of equality. The main section identifies the connection between Spinoza’s references on justice as suum cuique and the different conceptions of equality that are inherent in his system (an ontological, a metaphysical, a productive (ethical), a legal, and a political equality). The conclusion tries to answer the question of whether such an understanding of the suum cuique as equality constitutes a theory of justice or not.

Plato’s Charmides suggests that there are really four notions that are deeply connected with one another, and in order to understand sôphrosunê we need to get a proper hold on them and their relation: these four notions are Knowledge of Ignorance, Self-Knowledge, Knowledge of the Good, and Knowledge of the Whole. My aim is to explore these four notions in two stages. First, I will try to explain Socrates’s notion of knowledge of ignorance, so that the nature and coherence of this Socratic idea will come into focus, and shed some light on its connection to self-knowledge and knowledge of the good. Second, I will turn to explain what I call the origin (archê) or even “truth” of Socrates’s conception of sôphrosunê by examining the idea of the physician of the soul in Plato’s Charmides and Plato’s use of the dialogue form, and thereby make a connection to knowledge of the whole. I will show that seeing sôphrosunê as “whole-mindedness,” connects to Socrates’s description of our in-between state as human beings, and that the study of this “in-between-ness,” is the supremely insightful glimpse into Socrates and his philosophical activity (perhaps the very definition of it).

Interpreters of Theaetetus are prone to endorse the view that a god gave Socrates maieutic skill. This paper challenges that view. It provides a different account of the skill’s origins, and reconstructs a genealogy of Socratic philosophy that begins and has its end in human experience. Three distinct origins coordinate to bring forth a radically new conception of philosophy in the image of female midwifery: the state of wonder (1. efficient origin), the exercise of producing, examining and disavowing beliefs in the gradual cultivation of human nature’s lack of skill (2. material origin), and Socrates’ understanding of god’s assistance as an endorsement of his mental infertility and the benefit of a particular form of dialectical training (3. formal origin). The paper concludes by arguing that Socrates transforms philosophy into a pursuit of wisdom that has its telos in becoming like a woman.

This paper considers how Plato can account for the fact that pain features prominently in the intellectual pleasures of philosophers, given that in his view pleasures mixed with pain are ontologically deficient and inferior to ‘pure,’ painless pleasures. After ruling out the view that Plato does not believe intellectual pleasures are actually painful, I argue that he provides a coherent and overlooked account of pleasure in the Phaedrus, where purity does not factor into the philosopher’s judgment of pleasures at all; what matters instead is the extent to which a given pleasure fosters the philosophical life. I show that to argue, as James Warren has recently done, that Plato thinks intellectual pleasures are not per se painful is less successful than the Phaedrus account at explaining philosophers’ lived experiences of pleasure, which often involve pain.

Rudolf Steiner’s work contains many different claims about human freedom spread out in over three hundred books. A basic challenge for the research on Steiner is to create an overview of his idea of freedom, but also to consider potential conflicting claims. One of the main tensions in Steiner’s work is the one between his early philosophical and later anthroposophical accounts of freedom. The former focuses on individual freedom while the latter puts the emphasis on the greater whole in which the human being exists. Hegel’s idea of freedom can be used to create a comprehensive and coherent understanding of Steiner’s different perspectives on freedom. In particular, using Hegel’s notion of being-with-oneself in otherness, the freedom that the individual can experience within the whole can be seen as an immanent development of the individual itself.

Drawing on the texts of Martin Heidegger, at times interpreted against the grain, I tackle the relation between ecology and economy in our era of rampant economism. I begin by outlining the ecological and economic variations on ethics and politics, with the view to the logos and nomos of dwelling (oikos). Thereafter, I consider the rise of a worldless, homeless world from the undue emphasis placed on nomos, which is but the active (actively gathering) dimension of logos. This lopsidedness, I argue, coincides with and is reinforced by the deterioration of ontological rank to valuation and, ultimately, to numeric orderability. Further, I focus on the excesses of a purely economist comportment that, emboldened by the inflation of nomos, devastates “economy” itself from within by converting the elemental fold for dwelling first into a manageable territory and finally into an empire. I conclude with the thesis that things, sharply contrasted to objects, maintain the possibility of an ecological existence, recalling us to the lost dwelling.

In this article I address Schiller’s first response in his Kallias Briefe or Concerning the Beautiful, Letters to Gottfried Körner to Kant’s analysis of the beautiful in the first part of the Critique of Judgment. My main intention in the paper is to investigate Schiller’s emphasis on the notion of resistance (Widerstand) in his reading of Kant’s concept of beauty, and to ask how does this relate to Schiller’s own approach to aesthetics as an ethico-political realm. I am particularly interested in the turn, in Schiller’s case, from Kant’s critique of aesthetics to the idea of aesthetics as critique.

This paper demonstrates that an ethical justification for political resistance can be found in Spinoza’s writings. It establishes that important elements of his ethical analysis of politics entail an ethical imperative to actively resist any attempt on the part of the sovereign to abolish or unduly curtail freedom of thought and expression. It shows that, under such circumstances, active resistance will be in accord with reason: (1) the less it is motivated by any species of hatred; and (2) the more it serves to empower people. Since freedom of thought and expression necessarily involves the freedom to engage in the philosophical critique of prejudices, and the latter can itself function as a form of political resistance, the ethical imperative to preserve libertas philosophandi amounts to an enjoinder to preserve a form of perpetual resistance within the normal functioning of the rationally-ordered state.

Al-Farabi understands politically useful images to be good imitations of essences, and also effective means of persuasion for geographically and historically situated communities. Such images, moreover, are what constitute the virtuous religions of virtuous cities. At play in al-Farabi’s account of images is thus a relationship between image, religion, truth, and history, and one that brings with it certain implications for how we understand the nature of the human being. We are creatures of truth, of the grasping of essences, and hence of universals, and yet we are differently persuaded by images depending upon our geography and our history. And since historically diverse images can imitate the same universal essences, many different religions can nevertheless be “true,” and hence can function in such a way as to orient geographically and historically specific people toward happiness. Al-Farabi’s account of images is thus at the heart of his political theory of religion, and provides the basis for his affirmation of religious pluralism in relation to the virtuous city. The following essay considers the relationship between images and religious pluralism in al-Farabi’s political writings, and shows as well that it implies a correlating theory of the human being.

The goddess’s speech in Parmenides’s fragments is framed by the opinions of mortals in at least two ways. First, the journey of the proem starts in the world described by mortals’ opinions, and the second part of the goddess’s speech explores those opinions. Second, throughout her speech, the goddess invokes features of the world according to mortals’ opinions—negation, coming-to-be, destruction—even when she is arguing for a road of inquiry that excludes those features. Further, we study the fragments by means of the definitions and claims regarding what-is that we use to function and communicate in our mortal lives. This paper proposes to approach the fragments with an awareness of this framing. A result is that the logical conclusion of accepting mortals’ opinions is that mortals’ opinions are flawed; and that result is based on flawed opinions. The goddess’s account thus presents something like a Liar Paradox.

Can the Euthydemus illuminate the philosophical significance of sophistry? In answering this question, I ask why the most direct and sustained confrontations between Socrates and the two brothers should all center on time and the soul. The Euthydemus, I argue, is a not primarily a polemic against eristic manipulation of language, but a diagnosis of the soul’s ambiguous unity. It shows that sophistic speech emerges from the soul’s way of relating to its own temporal character and to logos. Stated differently, a central theme of this dialogue is one which, we are repeatedly told, the Greeks had not yet thematized--the nature of interiority.