Touching on issues of power, authority, and domination,Manhuntstakes an in-depth look at the hunting of humans in the West, from ancient Sparta, through the Middle Ages, to the modern practices of ...chasing undocumented migrants. Incorporating historical events and philosophical reflection, Grégoire Chamayou examines the systematic and organized search for individuals and small groups on the run because they have defied authority, committed crimes, seemed dangerous simply for existing, or been categorized as subhuman or dispensable.
Chamayou begins in ancient Greece, where young Spartans hunted and killed Helots (Sparta's serfs) as an initiation rite, and where Aristotle and other philosophers helped to justify raids to capture and enslave foreigners by creating the concept of natural slaves. He discusses the hunt for heretics in the Middle Ages; New World natives in the early modern period; vagrants, Jews, criminals, and runaway slaves in other eras; and illegal immigrants today. Exploring evolving ideas about the human and the subhuman, what we owe to enemies and people on the margins of society, and the supposed legitimacy of domination, Chamayou shows that the hunting of humans should not be treated ahistorically, and that manhunting has varied as widely in its justifications and aims as in its practices. He investigates the psychology of manhunting, noting that many people, from bounty hunters to Balzac, have written about the thrill of hunting when the prey is equally intelligent and cunning.
An unconventional history on an unconventional subject,Manhuntsis an in-depth consideration of the dynamics of an age-old form of violence.
Nous disons volontiers de certaines choses qu’elles sont gracieuses, tristes, harmonieuses, belles, ou élégantes. Selon de nombreux philosophes, de telles assertions réfèrent à des propriétés ...esthétiques. Mais que sont ces propriétés ? Sont-elles des caractéristiques objectives des choses, ou bien le reflet de la sensibilité de ceux qui les contemplent ? Y a-t-il différents types de propriétés esthétiques ? Faut-il différencier propriétés esthétiques et propriétés artistiques ? Quelle relation les propriétés esthétiques entretiennent-elles à d'autres types de propriétés ? Quelle métaphysique des propriétés doit sous-tendre une théorie des propriétés esthétiques ? Voici quelques-unes des questions abordées dans ce volume, qui se donne pour objectif d'éclairer un concept fondamental de l'esthétique, en croisant philosophie de l'art et métaphysique.
If politics is about how we perceive and relate to the world, then how the world is constructed, disclosed and disrupted are matters of politics. By exploring the force of aesthetic experience and ...the role of space, Mustafa Dikeç offers an understanding of politics based on apprehension and revelation. Dikeç's theory rests on a particular relationship between space and politics. Here, space is not the background for relations between things; rather, space implies a capacity for things to appear and exhibit relations of simultaneity and order. Space is a form of appearance and a mode of actuality, and its disruption is the sublime element in politics.
This open access book is a superb collection of some fifteen chapters inspired by Schroeder-Heister's groundbreaking work, written by leading experts in the field, plus an extensive autobiography and ...comments on the various contributions by Schroeder-Heister himself. For several decades, Peter Schroeder-Heister has been a central figure in proof-theoretic semantics, a field of study situated at the interface of logic, theoretical computer science, natural-language semantics, and the philosophy of language. The chapters of which this book is composed discuss the subject from a rich variety of angles, including the history of logic, the proper interpretation of logical validity, natural deduction rules, the notions of harmony and of synonymy, the structure of proofs, the logical status of equality, intentional phenomena, and the proof theory of second-order arithmetic. All chapters relate directly to questions that have driven Schroeder-Heister's own research agenda and to which he has made seminal contributions. The extensive autobiographical chapter not only provides a fascinating overview of Schroeder-Heister's career and the evolution of his academic interests but also constitutes a contribution to the recent history of logic in its own right, painting an intriguing picture of the philosophical, logical, and mathematical institutional landscape in Germany and elsewhere since the early 1970s. The papers collected in this book are illuminatingly put into a unified perspective by Schroeder-Heister's comments at the end of the book. Both graduate students and established researchers in the field will find this book an excellent resource for future work in proof-theoretic semantics and related areas.
An argument for putting sentiment aside and maximizing the practical impact of our donated dollars: "Powerful, provocative" (Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times ). Peter Singer's books and ideas ...have been disturbing our complacency ever since the appearance of Animal Liberation. Now he directs our attention to a challenging new movement in which his own ideas have played a crucial role: effective altruism. Effective altruism is built upon the simple but profoundly unsettling idea that living a fully ethical life involves doing the "most good you can do." Such a life requires a rigorously unsentimental view of charitable giving: to be a worthy recipient of our support, an organization must be able to demonstrate that it will do more good with our money or our time than other options open to us. Singer introduces us to an array of remarkable people who are restructuring their lives in accordance with these ideas, and shows how, paradoxically, living altruistically often leads to greater personal fulfillment than living for oneself. Doing the Most Good develops the challenges Singer has made, in the New York Times and Washington Post, to those who donate to the arts, and to charities focused on helping our fellow citizens, rather than those for whom we can do the most good. Effective altruists are extending our knowledge of the possibilities of living less selfishly, and of allowing reason, rather than emotion, to determine how we live. Doing the Most Good offers new hope for our ability to tackle the world's most pressing problems.
L’originalità dell’opera sta nell’aver riletto Kant dopo le critiche di Heidegger e Levinas all’ontoteologia. Tra i risultati principali, l’aver messo in discussione l’interpretazione dominante che ...ha visto in Kant colui che ha dichiarato la fine della metafisica e di ogni forma di “ontoteologia”. Vi si mostra, infatti, che Kant, inventore del termine, considera l’“ontoteologia” come il frutto supremo della ragione umana e le attribuisce un importante compito anche nei confronti della teologia. Quanto alla metafisica, si mette in luce come egli critichi bensì la metafisica “dommatica” del razionalismo moderno, ma proponga a sua volta un singolare modello di metafisica, capace di portare la ragione fino ai suoi “confini/limiti” (Grenze), aprendola così a ciò che l’oltrepassa: il mondo della libertà proprio dell’etica e della religione. Questo modello di “ragione ai confini” costituisce la chiave di volta di tutta la riflessione kantiana. Rileggere Kant alla luce dei rapporti tra ontologia e teologia risulta così indispensabile per la comprensione del suo intero pensiero, compresa la sua posizione su natura e limiti del sapere scientifico.
Appassionante e lucido commento di un unico aforisma, quello in cui Nietzsche fa annunciare all’uomo folle «l’enorme avvenimento» costituito dalla morte di Dio, a quasi cinquant’anni dalla sua prima ...pubblicazione la monografia di Cristoph Türcke non ha perso nulla del suo smalto e della sua rilevanza, offrendo ai lettori un’interpretazione persuasiva e originale di Nietzsche. Se in Al di là del bene e del male Nietzsche considerava ogni grande filosofia come «l’autoconfessione del suo autore», per Türcke l’aforisma di La gaia scienza «L’uomo folle» costituisce un’autoconfessione in misura anche più grande di quanto Nietzsche abbia mai potuto immaginare. Ai suoi occhi, tra le schegge aforistiche, «L’uomo folle» è la scheggia che si rapporta all’opera complessiva come il microcosmo al macrocosmo: quella che mostra come in un bagliore quell’intero che sarebbe «pena d’amor perduto» tentaredi ricostruire filologicamente. In esplicita polemica con le diffuse interpretazioni proposte da Heidegger, Deleuze, Derrida, Habermas, Vattimo, Türcke, ricostruendo lo sviluppo del pensiero nietzschiano, rivela l’inconsistenza dei «fragili bastioni» – i filosofemi della volontà di potenza, dell’eterno ritorno, del superuomo – con cui Nietzsche ha tentato di fronteggiare il crollo costituito dalla consapevolezza della morte di Dio in un universo che, a partire da Copernico, ha cessato di essere geocentrico e tolemaico. Un libro indispensabile per chi voglia affrontare con sobrietà e rigore le ambiguità e i dilemmi dell’opera di Nietzsche.
Redécouvrir le projet de recherche collectif, interdisciplinaire et fondamentalement ouvert que Nietzsche a présenté dans la Généalogie de la morale en 1887 constitue la visée de ce livre. ...Paradoxalement, la généalogie nietzschéenne a en effet été méconnue par les premiers interprètes qui en ont fait un philosophème à part entière : en particulier par Gilles Deleuze, dont le Nietzsche et la philosophie, paru en 1962, a présenté à tort la généalogie de la morale comme un concept propre à Nietzsche. Ce n’est pas ce que nous dit Nietzsche et il est essentiel de l’entendre. Car non seulement Nietzsche se reconnaît des prédécesseurs en matière de généalogie, comme l’Allemand Paul Rée et l’Anglais Herbert Spencer, mais son intervention personnelle dans ce champ consiste bien souvent à corriger des hypothèses antérieures trop « azurées ». Il faut donc lire les auteurs que Nietzsche a lus pour mesurer ses dettes, discerner ses originalités et saisir les enjeux de son travail. On mesure ainsi le sérieux philologique de son entreprise, qui en accroît à vrai dire la portée philosophique, y compris dans une perspective contemporaine.
Computing systems are everywhere today. Even the brain is thought to be a sort of computing system. But what does it mean to say that a given organ or system computes? What is it about laptops, ...smartphones, and nervous systems that they are deemed to compute, and why does it seldom occur to us to describe stomachs, hurricanes, rocks, or chairs that way? The book provides an extended argument for the semantic view of computation, which states that semantic properties are involved in the nature of computing systems. Laptops, smartphones, and nervous systems compute because they are accompanied by representations. Stomachs, hurricanes, and rocks, for instance, which do not have semantic properties, do not compute. The first part of the book argues that the linkage between the mathematical theory of computability and the notion of physical computation is weak. Theoretical notions such as algorithms, effective procedure, program, and automaton play only a minor role in identifying physical computation. The second part of the book reviews three influential accounts of physical computation and argues that while none of these accounts is satisfactory, each of them highlights certain key features of physical computation. The final part of the book develops and argues for a semantic account of physical computation and offers a characterization of computational explanations.
