Eli Kramer
Dr. Eli Kramer is Associate Director of the Cassirer Center for International Scholarship and Cooperation and University Professor at the Institute of Philosophy, University of Wrocław. His work is devoted to fostering enclaves for global liberal arts/humane learning education across the globe. He connects this work to his activities in the philosophy of culture and the philosophy of higher education. Alongside field leaders Michael Chase an Matthew Sharpe, he co-edits the Brill book series, “Philosophy as a Way of Life: Text and Studies,” which organizes new translations, as well as putting out new studies. Most recently they have edited and published two critical translations of one of the founding figures of the PWL field, Juliusz Domański: Philosophy, Theory or Way of Life? (Brill 2024), and Erasmus and Philosophy (Brill 2024). They also closely work with Marta Faustino on a number of projects to foster human learning research and practice inside and out of the academy. His first single authored monograph is on the nature and role of the associated philosophical life (as distinct from philosophy as a discipline): Intercultural Modes of Philosophy, Volume One: Principles to Guide Philosophical Community (Brill 2021). He has also co-edited and contributed to collections such as Living According to Nature, 2 vols (Brill, forthcoming), Hadot and Foucault on Ancient Philosophy: Critical Assessments (Brill, 2024), Philosophy of Culture as Theory, Method, and Way of Life: Contemporary Reflections and Applications (Brill, 2022), Rorty and Beyond (Lexington Books, 2020), and Contemporary Philosophical Proposals for the University: Toward a Philosophy of Higher Education (Palgrave Macmillan 2018). His work has appeared (or will appear) in journals such as Metaphilosophy, Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture, Contemporary Pragmatism, Dewey Studies, Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education, Studies in Pedagogy, and Syndicate Philosophy.
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This normative and pedagogic component is a crucial aspect of Hadot’s account of PWL. Indeed, Hadot is not just describing what philosophy was in the past, but also evaluating what it is in the present and considering what it could become beyond his (and our) time. This is one of the reasons that made his approach so popular and led to so many fruitful developments in the field of PWL. Inspired by Hadot’s account, which was complemented by the late Foucault’s own reflections on philosophy’s practical and performative potential, recent scholarship has characterized PWL as a metaphilosophical model that can be fruitfully used to criticize current academic practices and to develop innovative methodological approaches to the study, research, and teaching of philosophy, which in turn might enable a transformation of philosophical practices in the context of modern universities.
explore the dangers and affordances of this rapid movement of human populations. I then turn very briefly to a Deweyan account of surface and deep democracy. I conclude by showing how Dewey provided us a roadmap for the deepening of democratic habits and resiliency for our times of anthropogenic crises.
The role of philosophy in today’s urban studies cannot mirror the ancient one, which was much more foundational, as in Protagoras, Plato, Aristotle, or Zeno. But it does resemble it. A philosopher cannot pretend to be an architect, urbanist, or city planner. But he or she is particularly qualified to address the problems of how contemporary cities allow their inhabitants to satisfy their needs and ambitions; in other words, to what extent the city is an environment in which human life may flourish. Such questions may profitably be addressed by moral and political philosophy, as well as philosophical anthropology.
SS: It’s a story about the modern international order. Despite its imperfections, it needs to be defended now more than ever. The central argument of the book is that the origens of the modern international order can be traced to a specific date in history. Namely August 27th, 1928, when the great leaders of the world gathered in Paris to outlaw war. The treaty that was signed on that day is sometimes called the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the Peace Pact, or the Paris Peace Pact. Its actual formal designation was “The General Treaty for the Renunciation of War,” basically saying it all was an attempt to outlaw war. Now, of course most people have never heard of it. It’s amazing that basically all the countries in the world decide to outlaw war, which in itself is initially a strange thing to do, but then nobody knows about it.
T.H. White e alla filosofia di John Dewey, cerco di suggerire che la democrazia è un potenziale latente all'interno dell'evoluzione biopolitica della vita, come un modo per affrontare al meglio la nostra condizione cosmica lavorando insieme attraverso le differenze. Da questa matrice biologico-culturale vedremo che due caratteristiche essenziali di questa profonda democrazia sono l'inclusività e il multiculturalismo. In questa concezione, includere gli altri emarginati nelle nostre classi e comunità non è un atto di carità, ma un’esigenza epistemica critica, poiché diverse Weltanschauung esperienziali di individui e comunità sono essenziali per aiutarci ad affrontare e ricostruire progressivamente la nostra esperienza. Concludo suggerendo alcune lezioni che si possono trarre dal mio accenno estremamente
preliminare di inclusività e multiculturalismo come elementi di profonda
democrazia.
or be the full meaning of living a life in relation to wisdom, and lived philosophies that cannot do away with discourses to deepen a lived experience beyond them: that philosophy as “an embodied way of life” is
a sub-creation that emerges from the tension between them. This paper uses several different moments and ideas from Philosophy and the Art of Writing as points of departure for further inquiry. Some “memories,” repurposed, reorganized, and manipulated, take up these starting points to further the investigation. The present work was a spiritual exercise for the author and, one hopes, will be for the reader in what it means to practice philosophy as a way of life. By doing so, we may find more forgiveness and appreciation for our philosophical vocation that creates something more than what we say or are now.
What implications, after all, does understanding the history of PWL, and the predominance of this metaphilosophical conception in the history of Western thought, have for how we understand the practice(s) of philosophy today? Does recovering the alternative understandings of philosophy as a practice in history necessarily lead to a criticism of contemporary, solely academic or theoretical modes of philosophizing, or is the idea of PWL one which has only historiographical force?
philosophy departments and institutions. In the first section of the article, we highlight some lasting criticisms to academic philosophy and explore one particular nasty thorn in the side of philosophers doing the kind of work that might speak to broad audiences facing a crisis of meaning and living: the rush to publish instead of “perishing” without a secure academic position. In the next section, we discuss philosophy as a way of life (PWL) as an alternative nascent field in academic philosophy that, while garnering respect and recognition within the academy, has regained connections with a broader public desperate for ways to chart their own paths of
meaningful living, especially when facing a deeply challenged and fractured world. PWL helps address the crises of meaning many in the academy face (both teachers and students) and the absence of rich philosophical reflection and communities in the broader public, which otherwise
all too easily fall prey to hucksters, con-artists, and authoritarian and conspiratorial forces. We argue that this kind of wholistic critical development of PWL from the ancient world is designed
to enact a prefigurative or eutopian politics. We conclude by situating our recommendations into a broader reconstruction of professional philosophy needed at this critical cultural moment.
This normative and pedagogic component is a crucial aspect of Hadot’s account of PWL. Indeed, Hadot is not just describing what philosophy was in the past, but also evaluating what it is in the present and considering what it could become beyond his (and our) time. This is one of the reasons that made his approach so popular and led to so many fruitful developments in the field of PWL. Inspired by Hadot’s account, which was complemented by the late Foucault’s own reflections on philosophy’s practical and performative potential, recent scholarship has characterized PWL as a metaphilosophical model that can be fruitfully used to criticize current academic practices and to develop innovative methodological approaches to the study, research, and teaching of philosophy, which in turn might enable a transformation of philosophical practices in the context of modern universities.
explore the dangers and affordances of this rapid movement of human populations. I then turn very briefly to a Deweyan account of surface and deep democracy. I conclude by showing how Dewey provided us a roadmap for the deepening of democratic habits and resiliency for our times of anthropogenic crises.
The role of philosophy in today’s urban studies cannot mirror the ancient one, which was much more foundational, as in Protagoras, Plato, Aristotle, or Zeno. But it does resemble it. A philosopher cannot pretend to be an architect, urbanist, or city planner. But he or she is particularly qualified to address the problems of how contemporary cities allow their inhabitants to satisfy their needs and ambitions; in other words, to what extent the city is an environment in which human life may flourish. Such questions may profitably be addressed by moral and political philosophy, as well as philosophical anthropology.
SS: It’s a story about the modern international order. Despite its imperfections, it needs to be defended now more than ever. The central argument of the book is that the origens of the modern international order can be traced to a specific date in history. Namely August 27th, 1928, when the great leaders of the world gathered in Paris to outlaw war. The treaty that was signed on that day is sometimes called the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the Peace Pact, or the Paris Peace Pact. Its actual formal designation was “The General Treaty for the Renunciation of War,” basically saying it all was an attempt to outlaw war. Now, of course most people have never heard of it. It’s amazing that basically all the countries in the world decide to outlaw war, which in itself is initially a strange thing to do, but then nobody knows about it.
T.H. White e alla filosofia di John Dewey, cerco di suggerire che la democrazia è un potenziale latente all'interno dell'evoluzione biopolitica della vita, come un modo per affrontare al meglio la nostra condizione cosmica lavorando insieme attraverso le differenze. Da questa matrice biologico-culturale vedremo che due caratteristiche essenziali di questa profonda democrazia sono l'inclusività e il multiculturalismo. In questa concezione, includere gli altri emarginati nelle nostre classi e comunità non è un atto di carità, ma un’esigenza epistemica critica, poiché diverse Weltanschauung esperienziali di individui e comunità sono essenziali per aiutarci ad affrontare e ricostruire progressivamente la nostra esperienza. Concludo suggerendo alcune lezioni che si possono trarre dal mio accenno estremamente
preliminare di inclusività e multiculturalismo come elementi di profonda
democrazia.
or be the full meaning of living a life in relation to wisdom, and lived philosophies that cannot do away with discourses to deepen a lived experience beyond them: that philosophy as “an embodied way of life” is
a sub-creation that emerges from the tension between them. This paper uses several different moments and ideas from Philosophy and the Art of Writing as points of departure for further inquiry. Some “memories,” repurposed, reorganized, and manipulated, take up these starting points to further the investigation. The present work was a spiritual exercise for the author and, one hopes, will be for the reader in what it means to practice philosophy as a way of life. By doing so, we may find more forgiveness and appreciation for our philosophical vocation that creates something more than what we say or are now.
What implications, after all, does understanding the history of PWL, and the predominance of this metaphilosophical conception in the history of Western thought, have for how we understand the practice(s) of philosophy today? Does recovering the alternative understandings of philosophy as a practice in history necessarily lead to a criticism of contemporary, solely academic or theoretical modes of philosophizing, or is the idea of PWL one which has only historiographical force?
philosophy departments and institutions. In the first section of the article, we highlight some lasting criticisms to academic philosophy and explore one particular nasty thorn in the side of philosophers doing the kind of work that might speak to broad audiences facing a crisis of meaning and living: the rush to publish instead of “perishing” without a secure academic position. In the next section, we discuss philosophy as a way of life (PWL) as an alternative nascent field in academic philosophy that, while garnering respect and recognition within the academy, has regained connections with a broader public desperate for ways to chart their own paths of
meaningful living, especially when facing a deeply challenged and fractured world. PWL helps address the crises of meaning many in the academy face (both teachers and students) and the absence of rich philosophical reflection and communities in the broader public, which otherwise
all too easily fall prey to hucksters, con-artists, and authoritarian and conspiratorial forces. We argue that this kind of wholistic critical development of PWL from the ancient world is designed
to enact a prefigurative or eutopian politics. We conclude by situating our recommendations into a broader reconstruction of professional philosophy needed at this critical cultural moment.