2020-02Discussion Papers, Comments, Book Reviews
How to Move Beyond Rorty?

Preview: /Review: Randall Auxier, Eli Kramer, and Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński, eds. Rorty and Beyond (Lanham, Md, Lexington Books, 2019), 314 pages./ Richard Rorty (1931 – 2007) became a highly controversial figure, both within and without the ranks of academic philosophy upon publication of his 1979 book, Philosophy and the Mirror of…

2020-02Discussion Papers, Comments, Book Reviews
Animal Polis, or, Why Ethics Cannot Rule Politics

Preview: /Review: Martha Nussbaum, The Cosmopolitan Tradition: A Noble but Flawed Ideal (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019), 310 pages./ For decades Martha Nussbaum allied herself whole-heartedly with cosmopolitanism. No longer. She appealed at length to the righteousness of Stoic cosmopolitanism in past publications such as Cultivating Humanity in 1997. Now, according to The Cosmopolitan Tradition, that founding…

2020-02Discussion Papers, Comments, Book Reviews
Agency in an AI Avalanche: Education for Citizen Empowerment

Preview: In this essay, drawing on the case of Australia in particular, we develop the argument of “schools for democracy” as part of communities that prioritize developing people’s civic agency for human flourishing. We begin with the concept of social capital – norms, values, and practices of trust and reciprocity essential to vibrant civic life and healthy…

2020-02Discussion Papers, Comments, Book Reviews
The Status of Experts in Psychiatry

Preview: Where should we look for an answer to the question whether a psychiatrist is an expert? In analyses of the concept of “expert”? In sociological studies? Or perhaps in opinions formulated by psychiatrists themselves? The subject is not as simple as it might first seem and the answer cannot be obvious. Certainly, psychiatrists are considered to be experts when they are called…

2020-01Discussion Papers, Comments, Book Reviews
Eco on Interpreting the Sign: The Limits of Narrating that which Cannot Be Theorized

Abstract: Eco says that which cannot be theorized must be narrated. What about that which cannot be narrated? What must we do about (and at) the limits of interpretation, especially as (performative) narration. This review essay takes a method from Giambattista Vico and applies it to the interpretation of Laurent Binet’s portrayal of Umberto Eco in his novel The Seventh…

2020-01Discussion Papers, Comments, Book Reviews
Presentism and Beyond

Preview: /François Hartog interviewed by Marcin Rychter/ We have these three categories: past, present and future, and I think we can acknowledge these categories and that they contend against each other as universal. The ways they are being experienced, organized, linked vary in different places and in different times. Regimes of historicity is the concept that helps us to look…

2020-01Discussion Papers, Comments, Book Reviews
The Broken Promise of Philosophy?

Preview: /Review: Paulina Sosnowska, Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger: Philosophy, Modernity, and Education (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019), 251 pages./ What is the vocation of philosophy? Should it be defined in terms of political or economic needs, or rather should philosophy autonomously establish its own goals and norms? One might say that philosophy began…

2019-04Discussion Papers, Comments, Book Reviews
Hadotian Considerations on Buddhist Spiritual Practices

Preview: /Review: David Fiordalis ed., Buddhist Spiritual Practices: Thinking with Pierre Hadot on Buddhism, Philosophy, and the Path (Berkeley, CA: Mangalam Press, 2018), 333 pages./ David Fiordalis’ collection Buddhist Spiritual Practices: Thinking with Pierre Hadot on Buddhism, Philosophy and the Path (hereafter BSP) represents an invaluable contribution in what promises to be a fruitful emerging research…

2019-04Discussion Papers, Comments, Book Reviews
Towards a Cure for Lunacy

Preview: /Review: Katarzyna Kremplewska, Life as Insinuation: George Santayana’s Hermeneutics of Finite Life and Human Self (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2019), 269 pages./ George Santayana was a man in-between. He worked in-between philosophy, literature, and cultural criticism. He lived in-between American and European cultures. While he has always held a unique place in the…

2019-04Discussion Papers, Comments, Book Reviews
The Devil Wears Damask: Twilled Teaching as Apprenticeships in Creativity

Abstract: My guiding quest-ion is how to convey, speak of, and prepare apprenticeships in creativity. This study emerges from experiences and reflections on the vocation of teaching courses in philosophy, and from having lived through an apprenticeship in my formative years. In an apprenticeship, one draws upon one’s own horizon of entrance, to inhabit an embrasure. The space of…