Post-modernism's use and abuse of Nietzsche

I focus on Nietzsche's architectural metaphor of self-construction in arguing for the claim that postmodern readings of Nietzsche misunderstand his various attacks on dogmatic philosophy as paving the way for acceptance of a self characterized by fundamental disunity. Nietzsche's attack on essentialist dogmatic metaphysics is a call to engage in a purposive self-creation under a unifying will, a will that possesses the strength to reinterpret history as a pathway to "the problem that we are". Nietzsche agrees with the postmodernists that unity is not a pre-given, however he would disavow their rejection of unity as a goal. Where the postmodernists celebrate "the death of the subject" Nietzsche rejects this valorization of disunity as a form of Nihilism and prescribes the creation of a genuine unified subjectivity to those few capable of such a goal. Postmodernists are nearer Nietzsche's idea of the Last Man than his idea of the Overman.Articl

A Dodecalogue of Basic Didactics from Applications of Abstract Differential Geometry to Quantum Gravity

We summarize the twelve most important in our view novel concepts that have arisen, based on results that have been obtained, from various applications of Abstract Differential Geometry (ADG) to Quantum Gravity (QG). The present document may be used as a concise, yet informal, discursive and peripatetic conceptual guide-cum-terminological glossary to the voluminous technical research literature on the subject. In a bonus section at the end, we dwell on the significance of introducing new conceptual terminology in future QG research by means of `poetic language'Comment: 16 pages, preliminary versio

The unacknowledged legacy

This paper presents a critical discussion of the treatment of mimetic art, and particularly poetry and the theatre, in the work of the Athenian philosopher Plato (427-347 BC). It centres on Plato's discussion of the corrupting powers of the arts in the Republic, and the implications that his fierce attack on poetry and theatre have for his construction of the ideal polity. The legacy of Platonic ideas in later elaborations of the corrupting power of the arts is discussed. Furthermore, the paper investigates the relationship between current debates on cultural policy and the Platonic idea that the transformative powers of the arts ought to be harnessed by the state to promote a just society. The conclusion thus reached is that “instrumental cultural policy”, rather then being a modern invention, was in fact first theorized precisely in Plato's Republic

Nietzsche or Aristotle: The implications for social psychology

YesIn this article, I argue that there is a divide in social psychology between a mainstream paradigm for investigating the flow of power in a largely competitive social life (such as social cognition, social identity theory, and discourse analysis) and a fringe paradigm for investigating the experience of flourishing in conditions of social learning (such as ‘the community of practice metaphor’, ‘dialogical theory’, ‘phenomenological analysis’). Assumptions of power and flourishing demand different conceptions of the self and the social world (e.g. a strategic subject or motivated tactician in a social group versus a reflective learner/artist in a community of practice). The first goal of this article is to reveal the assumptions that lead to this new classification. The second goal is to draw dotted lines to the blind-spots within these paradigms that each reveals. These blind spots are: 1) internal goods could be useful to consider for the power paradigm and external goods for the flourishing paradigm; 2) communicative rationality is underplayed within the power paradigm; while instrumental rationality is underplayed for the flourishing paradigm; 3) judgements and skill are underplayed in the power paradigm; self-interested motivations are underplayed in the flourishing paradigm

Safeguarding against failure in intellectual character education:The case of the eristic agent

The vast majority of contemporary scholars working in intellectual character education endeavor to identify those elements that render an educational program reliably successful at fostering the growth of intellectual excellences in students. In this article, I adopt an opposite perspective: I examine potential reasons as to why virtue-based approaches to education might fail to enable students to acquire intellectual virtues. Given the scarcity of accounts of educational failure in contemporary intellectual character education, I search for such accounts in the philosophical roots of the concept of intellectual virtues. In this article, I focus on Plato’s discussion of the eristic agent, namely, an individual who has developed epistemically valuable cognitive abilities but, due to insufficient moral character education, results in misusing them to pursue non-epistemic and quite often also non-moral ends. I argue that Plato’s account of the eristic practice has much to offer to intellectual character education today. It strongly indicates that intellectual virtues cannot be fostered in isolation from moral virtues and that the development of the students’ (1) epistemic emotions and (2) moral virtues should take place prior to the fostering of intellectual excellences in them

Aesthetic sense and social cognition: : a story from the Early Stone Age

Human aesthetic practices show a sensitivity to the ways that the appearance of an artefact manifests skills and other qualities of the maker. We investigate a possible origin for this kind of sensibility, locating it in the need for co-ordination of skill-transmission in the Acheulean stone tool culture. We argue that our narrative supports the idea that Acheulean agents were aesthetic agents. In line with this we offer what may seem an absurd comparison: between the Acheulean and the Quattrocento. In making it we display some hidden complexity in human aesthetic responses to an artefact. We conclude with a brief review of rival explanations—biological and/or cultural—of how this skills-based sensibility became a regular feature of human aesthetic practices

Silly Questions and Arguments for the Implicit, Cinematic Narrator

My chapter aims to advance the debate on a problem often raised by philosophers who are skeptical of implied narrators in movies. This is the concern that positing such elusive narrators gives rise to absurd imaginings (Gaut 2004: 242; Carroll 2006: 179-180). Friends of the implied cinematic narrator reply that the questions critics raise about the workings of the implied cinematic narrator are "silly ones" to ask. I examine how the "absurd imaginings" problem arises for all the central arguments for the elusive cinematic narrator and discuss why the questions critics pose about this narrator are legitimate ones to ask

Analytic Aesthetics

Peer reviewe