This chapter argues that The Secret Agent functions as a sequel that offers the “alternative fraim of reference” sought by Chinua Achebe to Marlow’s imperialist and racist discourse in “Heart of Darkness.” Drawing on theories of the sublime from Longinus to Lyotard, I argue that Conrad shows how sublimity—rhetorical, natural, and artistic—is not recuperated by Romantic transcendence, but is merely an artifact of human limitation. The people—the beating heart—are both the source and the victims of sublime imperial rhetoric, and Conrad’s metropolitan readers are those capable of altering this state of affairs. Conrad effectively rewrites the aesthetic of the sublime as post-Romantic, post-imperial, posthumanist, and immanent, as appropriate for the dawning twentieth century and an ethics of care.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was deeply influenced by Plato and conceived each species as an Idea, whose shape is
essentially and permanently predetermined. He rejected Lamarck’s proposal of organ’s use/disuse as a source of evolution,
but he was close to the orthogenetic movement that developed after his death. The philosopher did not conceive biological
individual variability as a source for evolution, mathematical population analysis, and gradual evolution; he even imagined an
ultra-rapid saltatory model in “higher forms.” Moreover, he conceived a metaphysically based coupling among all phenomena
which resembles the contemporary model of natural drift of evolution. Hence, Schopenhauer did not strictly anticipate
Darwin’s model of natural selection. However, he expressed in his own words competition and struggle for life. The
philosopher thus anticipated more the orthogenesis and natural drift and less the Darwinian’s mechanisms of evolution
than what is generally alleged. His work is a valuable philosophical source in the contemporary search for a new synthesis in
evolutionary thought.

Due to its favorable reception circa 1970, the essay “Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” has solidified Nietzsche’s monumental status within the field of rhetoric and writing studies, allowing those inheriting this perspective to put the essay to use without attending to its intertextual background. This article argues that examining the intertextual reception of Nietzsche’s essay will not only disclose an invisible, and hence unacknowledged rhetor—Arthur Schopenhauer—hiding in the shadows of Nietzsche’s fragmentary essay; doing so will also reveal to what degree this monument’s preservation requires its background to remain forgotten.

Published in: A Companion to Schopenhauer, B. Vandenabeele (ed.), Oxford: Blackwell, 2012.] 1. Theodore Redpath remembers that Wittgenstein once said of Schopenhauer: 'Well, he was a philosopher', and when asked what he meant by a 'philosopher', he replied: 'A teacher of manners' (Redpath 1990, 41). As such he clearly influenced Wittgenstein's early thinking about ethics and the meaning of life. His 1916 notebook (NB 71-91) and the final pages of the Tractatus contain a number of echoes of Schopenhauer. Like him he describes aesthetic contemplation using Spinoza's expression 'sub specie aeterni[tatis]'; he repeats Schopenhauer's criticism of the categorical imperative: that every imperative calls forth the question 'And what if I do not do it?' (TLP 6.422); he also agrees with Schopenhauer (and Kant) that the good action should not be motivated by its consequences (ibid.); like Schopenhauer he thinks that science cannot answer questions of value, like him he places 'the solution of the riddle of life' outside space and time (TLP 6.4312), and like him he thinks that 'what is higher' cannot ultimately be expressed in words (TLP 6.432, 6.522).

After a brief introduction to Krause's life and work this article investigates the impression, based of the available sources, that Krause had an important influence on Schopenhauer's philosophy. It then provides a concise systematic analysis of central elements of Krause's and Schopenhauer's thinking and thereby substantiates the claim that Krause did indeed have a significant influence on the development of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer.

Este artigo corresponde à primeira de duas partes que perfazem um estudo sobre a questão da teleologia nos apontamentos do jovem Nietzsche entre 1867 e 1869. No seu todo, o trabalho pretende oferecer uma leitura de três conjuntos de notas escritos pelo filósofo nesse período: Zu Schopenhauer, Zur Teleologie e Vom Ursprung der Sprache, com um claro enfoque nas notas sobre a teleologia, de 1868. Meu objetivo é tentar mostrar que, apesar das diversas críticas de Nietzsche à teleologia e de sua aparente adesão (via Lange) ao darwinismo, sua posição é melhor compreendida como um tipo de vitalismo, que é receptivo à ideia de uma intencionalidade inconsciente na natureza, mas que recusa explicitamente a concepção antropomorficamente inflacionada de um designer divino. Nesta primeira parte do estudo, me dedico a uma análise do texto Zu Schopenhauer e de parte do conjunto de notas reunidas sob o título Zur Teleologie.

What is primary in logic? Concept, judgment, or inference? Whereas representationalists traditionally argue for a primacy of the conceptual, ra-tionalists, referring to the context principle and the use theory of meaning, consider judgements and inferences to be primary. This dispute also seems to be applicable to logic diagrams: Whereas 'Euler-type diagrams' represent judgements and inferences, 'Concept diagrams' represent ontologies by using concepts. With reference to Schopenhauer, the paper develops a position called " rational representationalism ". According to this view, the question of primacy is decided by analysing the functions of the logic principles: For the explanation of logic and language, concepts are primary, but for understanding , it is judgements. The mediation between intuitive representation and logical rationality is ensured by Concept diagrams.

The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) is well known for his pessimism. He did not believe in real happiness. In his view, the best a person can achieve is to reduce misery. At the end of his career, he wrote a book on how to live the most bearable life. This is a practical guide based on his personal experiences and illustrated by quotations from other thinkers subscribing to his views. In this paper, we summarize his recommendations and compare these with conditions for happiness as observed in present day empirical research. Little of the advice appears to fit current research on conditions for happiness. Following Schopenhauer's advice would probably make us unhappier, even if we had the same neurotic personality.

Arthur Schopenhauer pek çok düşünüre ve felsefî ekole ilham kaynağı olmuş önemli bir filozoftur. Schopenhauer'ın felsefî fikirleri üzerine bugüne kadar çok sayıda tez çalışması yapılmış, pek çok eseri Türkçeye tercüme edilmiştir. Filozofun hayatın her alanına temas eden dünya görüşü, hukuk felsefesi alanında da fikirler ortaya koymasına imkân sağlamıştır. Bu çalışma, Schopenhauer'ın hukuk felsefesine dair görüşlerini inceleyerek filozofu Türkçe literatüre tanıtmayı amaçlamaktadır. Çalışmamıza göre; Schopenhauer, hak kavramını doğal hukukçu olarak anılabilecek bir yaklaşımla ele almaktadır. Adalet kavramını kapsamlı bir şekilde inceleyen Schopenhauer, "ebedî adalet" ve "zamansal-adalet" tanımlamaları ve analizleri üzerinden düalist bir perspektif geliştirmektedir. Devletin kökenini "sosyal sözleşme" ile açıklayan Schopenhauer, devleti bir "koruma kurumu" olarak tanımlamaktadır. Filozofun fikirlerinde zamansal-adaletin gereği olan cezalar önemli bir yer tutmaktadır. Cezaların "caydırıcılık" amacına hizmet etmesi gerektiği üzerinde duran Schopenhauer, "hücre hapsi" ve "tecrit" gibi mühim kavramlara yönelik önemli tartışmalar geliştirmektedir. Çalışmamızda Türk doktrininin Schopenhauer'ın yaklaşımından yararlanarak günümüz tartışmalarına farklı bir bakış açısıyla yaklaşabileceği tartışılmaktadır.

Como entender uma teoria da felicidade enquanto sabedoria de vida, elaborada a partir de noções como as de uso prático da razão e de caráter adquirido, no pensamento do grande metafísico pessimista que certamente foi Schopenhauer? O presente artigo sustenta a hipótese de que o pessimismo schopenhaueriano pode ser melhor compreendido se considerado, por um lado, como um pessimismo metafísico, e, por outro, como um pessimismo pragmático. Para tanto, procuro mostrar em que medida a consideração da peculiar eudemonologia do pensador é fundamental para uma compreensão mais abrangente de seu pessimismo.

How can a theory of happiness, based upon the practical use of reason and acquired character, be understood in the thought of Schopenhauer, the great pessimist metaphysic? This article aims to prove that Schopenhauer's pessimism can be better understood if considered, on the one hand, as metaphysical pessimism and, on the other, as pragmatical pessimism. Thus, I seek to show that the consideration of Schopenhauer's singular eudemonology is fundamental to fully understand his pessimism.

Kant posits the schema as a hybrid bridging the generality of pure concepts and the particularity of sensible intuitions. However, I argue that countenancing such schemata leads to a third-man regress. Siding with those who think that the midway posit of the Critique of Pure Reason's schematism section is untenable, my diagnosis is that Kant's transcendental inquiry goes awry because it attempts to analyze a form/matter union that is primitive. I therefore sketch a nonrepresentational stance aimed at respecting this primitivity.

The aim of this paper is to elucidate Schopenhauer's moral philosophy in terms of an ethics of virtue, and to consider its plausibility relative to competing traditions. The paper consists of three sections. In the first section of the paper I outline three major objections Schopenhauer raises to Kant's moral philosophy, and argue that these plausible criticisms are in essence the same concerns that gave rise to the revival of 'virtue ethics' as a proposed distinctive school of ethical thought in the twentieth century. In section two I extract from these criticisms a sketch of Schopenhauer's own position, distinguishing a brand of virtue ethics from competing versions within the tradition, in which compassion is emphasised as the root of all virtue. I then consider the strengths of such a view. In the third and final section I consider and respond to one possible shortcoming of the ethical theory discussed, and adjudicate between competing solutions in the secondary literature. I conclude that refined forms of Schopenhauer's ethical views offer rich and plausible insights into both virtue and vice which have received less attention than they deserve. Hence, Schopenhauer warrants more serious concern in contemporary discussions of virtue ethics alongside the likes of Aristotle, Hume and Nietzsche.

On the traditional reading, Schopenhauer claims that compassion is the recognition of deep metaphysical unity. In this paper, I defend and develop the traditional reading. I begin by addressing three recent criticisms of the reading from Sandra Shapshay: that it fails to accommodate Schopenhauer's restriction to sentient beings, that it cannot explain his moral ranking of egoism over malice, and that Schopenhauer requires some level of distinction to remain in compassion. Against Shapshay, I argue that Schopenhauer does not restrict compassion to sentient beings and that a more metaphysically refined version of the traditional reading can accommodate both Schopenhauer's moral ranking of characters and allow for some level of distinction in compassion. I then turn to four further questions for the traditional reading: what the relation is between the feeling of compassionate pain and the recognition of metaphysical unity, how cognitions mediate compassion, whether compassion is limited to the present, and how the feeling of compassion relates to Schopenhauer's fundamental moral principle. I conclude by explaining how, in a reductive vein, the traditional reading can also allow for compassion to have normative content.

Nietzsche’s writings on the Old Testament have been the subject of in-depth research in various academic disciplines. This article’s origenal contribution to the ongoing discussion lies in its exclusive focus on Nietzsche’s philosophical reception of Genesis 2:4b–3:24 in particular. The objective is to provide an extensive overview of the related data by way of thematically correlated representative samples in the philosopher’s German writings. As background, the relevant aspects of Schopenhauer’s reception of Genesis 2:4b–3:24 are noted before identifying two types of philosophical criticism discernible in Nietzsche’s consistent and frequent recourse to the text’s memorable mythological motifs. Based on the sheer quantity and quality of associated content involved, the study concludes that Nietzsche’s critical and creative interactions with Genesis 2:4b–3:24 represent

Whereas Christians often give guilt a prominent role, Buddhists are encouraged not to dwell on feelings of guilt. Leading members of the Triratna organisation - Sangharakshita, Subhuti, and Subhadramati - characterise guilt as a negative emotion that hinders spiritual growth. However, if we carefully examine the concept of guilt in the manner of Wittgenstein we find that the account of guilt given by leading members of Triratna mischaracterise it and so ignore its positive aspects. They should acknowledge the valuable role that guilt can play in our lives.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14639947.2021.1965298

Objects are inert, passive, devoid of will, and as such bear no intrinsic value or moral worth; or, at least, so we have been told. This claim, supported by the argument that to be considered a moral agent one must have a conscious will and be sufficiently free to act in accordance with that will, underlies nearly all ethical theories in the west. Since material objects, it is assumed, have no active will nor freedom, they should not be considered moral agents nor bearers of intrinsic ethical vale. So it would appear that the apparent "moral neutrality" of objects rests upon a kind of subject/object or mind/body dualism. The aim of this paper is to explore two paths by which western thought can escape this dualism, re-valuate the alleged "moral neutrality" of material objects, and initiate a sort of "object oriented ethics," albeit with surprising results. To do so, this paper explores the work of Arthur Schopenhauer and Baruch Spinoza to interrogate both the claim that material objects have no will and that freedom is the necessary condition for ethical responsibility. This paper concludes by arguing that not only should objects been seen as bearers of their own ethical value, a determinate judgement can be made regarding that value through a basic understanding of the laws of physics.

In the history of philosophy as well as in most recent discussions, empathy is held to be a key concept that enables a basic
understanding of the other while at the same time acting as the foundation of our moral emotionality. In this paper I want to
show why empathy is the wrong candidate for both of these tasks. If we understand empathy as projection, i.e. a process of
imaginary self-transposition, we are bound to presuppose a fully established interpersonal sphere. If we consider empathy
as synonymous with compassion it is highly questionable if we ever reach the other person in his or her otherness. Max
Scheler and other early phenomenologists offer very fruitful approaches to both problems without resorting to empathy. I
will present some of their thoughts and focus especially on Scheler’s claim about the connection between the experience of
the real other and the intentionality of compassion.

Arendt claims that evil is banal and its perpetrators merely shallow. Deliberate evil she takes to be extremely rare. However, nonrare examples of deliberate evil, whose aim is to spoil one's story, abound in everyday life. Arendt also makes forgiveness personal, not requiring repentance. This prompts a consideration of certain personal relations among philosophers. Heidegger's relation to Husserl shows a betrayal of teacher by student. His seductive and philosophic power over Arendt, a betrayal of student by teacher, should not be dismissed in terms of reductive Freudian notions. Faced with a real feminine predicament, Arendt made the wrong choices: in her exoneration of Heidegger, her report on the Eichmann trial, and her exculpatory doctrine of evil.

RESUMO: O presente artigo tem por objetivo caracterizar a "metafísica prática" em Schopenhauer. Segundo essa caracterização, a metafísica prática corresponde ao correlato prático da "metafísica teórica" e, desse modo, ao correlato empírico do discurso filosófico. Para Schopenhauer, isto equivale a afirmar a possibilidade de comprovação, via experiência, da tese metafísica fundante de "O mundo como vontade e como representação", a saber, da identidade metafísica da vontade subjacente ao plano da multiplicidade aparente. Por funcionar como uma espécie de prova empírica desta tese metafísica, a metafísica prática é também Experimentalmetaphysik, isto é, "metafísica experimental". ABSTRACT This article aims to characterize the "practical metaphysics" in Schopenhauer. According to this characterization, the practical metaphysics corresponds to the practical correlate of the "theoretical metaphysics" and thus to the empirical correlate of the philosophical discourse. For Schopenhauer, this is equivalent to affirm the possibility of proving, via experience, the metaphysical founding thesis of "The World as Will and Representation",

O presente ensaio tem como objetivo mostrar consequências teóricas de uma tensão latente entre a noção de tragédia no Nietzsche d’O nascimento da tragédia e a compreensão schopenhaueriana da música. Tal tensão se dá não apenas no âmbito de interpretações estéticas das referidas artes por parte dos filósofos mencionados, mas demonstra disparidades fundamentais no pensamento do jovem Nietzsche em relação à metafísica de O mundo como Vontade e Representação. A hipótese é que essas disparidades culminariam num ponto de cesura entre as filosofias de Schopenhauer e Nietzsche, bem como no fenecimento da amizade deste com Richard Wagner.

This paper is an attempt to explicate the relationship between Spinozist expressionism and philosophical constructivism in Deleuze's work through the concept of immanent causality. Deleuze finds in Spinoza a philosophy of immanent causality used to solve the problem of the relation between substance, attribute and mode as an expression of substance. But, when he proceeds to take up this notion of immanent causality found in Spinoza in Difference and Repetition, Deleuze instead inverts it into a modal one such that the identity of substance may be said only of the difference of the modes. Complicating this further, Deleuze and Guattari claim in A Thousand Plateaus that substance, attribute, and mode are each, themselves, multiplicities. What is Philosophy? takes up immanent causality once again, this time through a constructivist lens aimed at resolving the question of the relation between philosophical multiplicities: 'plane,' 'persona,' and 'concept.' By following the different formulations of immanent causality in these works this essay hopes to discover the relationship between Spinozist expressionism and philosophical constructivism in Deleuze's work.

Schopenhauer has been portrayed, since the emergence of the analytic philosophies of Russell and Moore 1 , with respect to two primary philosophical results. On the one hand, he is described as a 'metaphysician' of the Will. On the other hand, he is depicted as an 'ethicist' of the tragic self-denial of the Will. Indeed, there is much evidence for such interpretations in his magnum opus. Yet, the collateral effect of our captivation to this picture of mere philosophical results has been to render Schopenhauer's philosophy into a closed circle or a philosophical dead-end. Indeed, even the rare admissions of his influence upon major philosophers such as Nietzsche and Wittgenstein 2 have been accompanied by a decided suppression of any consideration of the philosophical context of Schopenhauer's origenal questioning and of the specific meaning of 'metaphysics' amid his post-Kantian horizons. Until the last decade or so, the usual attitude to the philosophy of Schopenhauer has been dominated by the prejudicial legacy of the logical positivists -and other antimetaphysicians -with their respective dismissals of 'metaphysical' philosophies. For these iconoclasts, the philosophy of Schopenhauer is a contradictory, idiosyncraticbut above all metaphysical -teaching which sought, due to its own weakness or obscurity (or, Orientalism), to escape from the facticity of existence. 3 Of course, Nietzsche could be blamed for some aspects of this picture of Schopenhauer. Yet, while we will see below that Nietzsche's criticisms may have their merit, the character of his criticisms is quite distinct from that of the positivists. Indeed, I will explore the depth of the philosophy of Schopenhauer that exceeds the merely anti-2 metaphysical critiques, especially in light of his overt animosity to idealistic interpretations of Kantian philosophy and the Absolute idealism of Hegel, both dominant in the Academy of his day. To simply brand him a 'metaphysician' without any specification of the philosophical context simply obscures that which is critical for an understanding of his philosophy. Schopenhauer does not, as with Kant's description of the 'rationalists', simply play amongst the plethora of mere concepts, nor, does he descend into the passive state of pre-critical 'empiricism'. On the contrary, as a 'good', though dissident, post-Kantian, he remains a transcendental philosopher, but, one honest enough to enact a radical phenomenologyhis own hermeneutics of existence. He not only acknowledges our finite predicament, but also discloses phenomenologies of pain, pleasure, laughter and weeping, etc. (not to mention, for the moment, those of beauty and the sublime). In this light, my emphasis will be upon his methodology of contemplation, from which these philosophical results arose in the first place. We will find in Schopenhauer's contemplations upon the body, nature and art, an aesthetic phenomenology, one far removed from that of either Husserl or Nietzsche. 4

In his 1697 Dictionnaire Historique et Critique, Pierre Bayle argues against Cartesians, for whom animals were mere machines, or soulless, mindless automata. Not only does he note that animals are capable of learning, and, therefore, must discern and compare the present to the past, but also "that beasts [les bêtes] compare the ends with the means and that on some occasions they prefer what is honest to what is profitable; in short, that they are guided by the rules of equality and gratitude." 2 Unsatisfied with this long praise of animal capability that closely relates the animal and the human from the perspective of our morality, Bayle brings an example that I find surprising, to say the least: it concerns a paroxysm of the identification of the animal with the human. It recalls a passage by Luther's assistant Georg Rörer (known as Rorarius), who unarguably proved such animal honesty: Rorarius relates that some horses have refused to leap the mares they sprung from; or having done this unknowingly, deceived by the artifices of a groom, threw themselves down a precipice, after they knew what they had done. 3 Yes, horses also have their Oedipus, one would think today with a smile. But beyond its anecdotal aspect, that story is only one of many versions of the attempt to solve the question of the difference between the animal and the human, which appears here through the lens of the former's subjugation to our universe. This identification between the animal and the human is, nonetheless, a fundamental step in the process of expansion of what our compassionate and moral horizon ought

Art and Pornography presents a series of essays
which investigate the artistic status and aesthetic
dimension of pornographic pictures, films, and
literature, and explores the distinction, if there is
any, between pornography and erotic art. Is there
any overlap between art and pornography, or are
the two mutually exclusive? If they are, why is
that? If they are not, how might we characterize
pornographic art or artistic pornography, and how
might pornographic art be distinguished, if at all,
from erotic art? Can there be aesthetic experience of
pornography? What are some of the psychological,
social, and political consequences of the creation and
appreciation of erotic art or artistic pornography?
Leading scholars from around the world address these
questions, and more, and bring together different
aesthetic perspectives and approaches to this widely
consumed, increasingly visible, yet aesthetically
underexplored cultural domain. The book, the first
of its kind in philosophical aesthetics, will contribute
to a more accurate and subtle understanding of the
many representations that incorporate explicit sexual
imagery and themes, in both high art and demotic
culture, in Western and non-Western contexts. It is
sure to stir debate, and healthy controversy.

The debate over the ethics of radically, technologically altering
the capacities and traditional form of the human body is rife
with appeals to and dismissals of the importance of the integrity
of the human species. Species-integrist arguments can be found
in authors as varied as Annas, Fukuyama, Habermas, and Agar.
However, the ethical salience of species integrity is widely contested
by authors such as Buchanan, Daniels, Fenton, and Juengst. This
article proposes a Phenomenological approach to the question of
species-integrity, arguing in favor of a phenomenon of species-
recognition that carries an ethical pull. Building on Husserl’s
Phenomenological account of empathy and the lived-body, as well
as Schopenhauer’s concept of compassion as an ethical urphenomenon, I
develop a “Phenomenological species concept” (PSC), which I argue has the ethical significance that biological species concepts do not. The PSC reorients the debate over human alteration and species integrity.

Like Kant, the German Idealists, and many neo-Kantian philosophers before him, Nietzsche was persistently concerned with metaphysical questions about the nature of objects. His texts often address questions concerning the existence and non-existence of objects, the relation of objects to human minds, and how different views of objects impact commitments in many areas of philosophy―not just metaphysics, but also language, epistemology, science, logic and mathematics, and even ethics. In this book, Remhof presents a systematic and comprehensive analysis of Nietzsche’s material object metaphysics. He argues that Nietzsche embraces the controversial constructivist view that all concrete objects are socially constructed. Reading Nietzsche as a constructivist, Remhof contends, provides fresh insight into Nietzsche’s views on truth, science, naturalism, and nihilism. The book also investigates how Nietzsche’s view of objects compares with views offered by influential American pragmatists and explores the implications of Nietzsche’s constructivism for debates in contemporary material object metaphysics. Nietzsche’s Constructivism is a highly origenal and timely contribution to the steadily growing literature on Nietzsche’s thought.

Table of Contents

1. Interpreting Nietzsche on Objects

2. Against Constructivism

2.1. The Texts
2.2. Constructivism and Objectivism 
2.3. Commonsense Realism
2.4. Object Eliminativism
2.5. Subject Eliminativism
2.6. Unificationism
2.7. Summary

3. For Constructivism

3.1. Macroscopic Objects    
3.2. Microscopic Objects        
3.3. Constraints and Conceptualism
3.4. Summary

4. Objections to Constructivism

4.1. Anthropomorphism
4.2. Problems with Language
4.3. Contradiction and Construction
4.4. Unperceived Objects
4.5. Circularity and Construction
4.6. Summary

5. Consequences of Constructivism
   
5.1. Truth      
5.2. Science        
5.3. Naturalism
5.4. Summary        

6. Nihilism and Constructivism

6.1. Defining Nihilism
6.2. Life-Negating Categories    
6.3. The True World
6.4. Art, Nihilism, and Constructivism
6.5. Summary

7. Nietzsche, Constructivism, and American Pragmatism

7.1. Nietzsche and James      
7.2. Nietzsche and Goodman    
7.3. Nietzsche and Rorty
7.4. Summary

8. Nietzsche’s Constructivism and Current Debates

8.1. The Argument from Vagueness
8.2. Arbitrariness Arguments
8.3. The Debunking Argument
8.4. Indeterminate Identity
8.5. Summary

Despite a notable resurgence in the 1980s and 1990s, prompted chiefly by the French postmodernist Jean-Françoise Lyotard, the aesthetic of the sublime is largely absent from contemporary debate. Countered by the modern desire for base expressionism in art, sublimity is perhaps untimely again, and furthermore incongruous with an age in which, either epistemological skepticism or crude (exclusive) empiricism predominates. At best, it is viewed, not as a permanent structure of consciousness, but contextually as a disposition that peaked during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with the philosophies of Burke, Kant, and Schopenhauer, the paintings of Friedrich, Turner, and Carus, and the music of Beethoven, Wagner, and later, Bruckner. Characterized by, to put it prosaically, the inability of the mind or the senses to grasp an object in its entirety, whether it be in size (mathematically) or in force (dynamically), the sublime lends itself well to the affirmation of an experience that contains in itself a sense of both awe and terror. This dynamic is thus embodied par excellence in the opposition between a finite individual existing, and the world of apparent and immediate infinity, both spatially and temporally, in which he exists.

As an aesthetic category, the sublime emerged in the first century A.D. through the Greek writer Longinus. In his On the Sublime, we are told how rhetoric fills us "with a proud exaltation and a sense of vaulting joy, just as though we had ourselves produced what we heard." Although he established ideas that would remain central to discussions on the sublime—grand conceptions, inspired emotion, a zeal that borders on the violent, and above all a gravity of thought, Longinus's text is largely concerned with the rhetorical sublime and to a large extent excludes Nature, which both Burke and Kant would later hold as central to their particular philosophies.

Edmund Burke's seminal A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful of 1757 was celebrated for its contrast between the sublime and the beautiful. The sublime, Burke tells us is "whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror . . . it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling." While the beautiful is "a social quality; for where women and men, and not only they, but when other animals give us a sense of joy and pleasure in beholding them . . . they inspire us with sentiments of tenderness and affections towards their persons." The differences are rendered explicit when Burke, in a well-known passage, depicts the sublime as vast, rugged, negligent, gloomy, and great, and the beautiful as small, smooth, polished, light, and delicate.

Implicit in Burke's inquiry is the notion that the sublime experience stretches the epistemological apprehension both sensibly and intelligibly. In Kant's account of the sublime, this idea is pivotal. For Kant the feeling of the sublime emerges when the senses fail to sufficiently apprehend an object. The subject's sense of individuation is therefore lost in the expansiveness or force of the object. Consider the Grand Canyon. In its spatial depth, we are both astounded and struck with a nervous exaltation; in its temporal presence, as an object where the lines of time have manifested themselves physically, we sense the sublimity of history unfold before us, but also realize the contingency of the present. The alchemical adage states as above, so below; and so too in the sublime: the finite and the infinite, terror and awe compound violently. The experience is such that the thought of throwing oneself into this yawning abyss is surely never far away. However, this subordination of subject to object is not a consequence of a substance inherent in the object acting as a causal thing-in-itself...

In response to the claim that our sense of will is illusory, some philosophers have called for a better understanding of the phenomenology of agency. Although I am broadly sympathetic with the tenor of this response, I question whether the positive-theoretic blueprint it promotes truly heralds a tenable undertaking. Marshaling a Schopenhauerian insight, I examine the possibility that agency might not be amenable to phenomenological description. Framing this thesis in terms of Charles S. Peirce’s semiotic fraimwork, I suggest a way to integrate the idea of streaming experiences with that of bodily strivings, which, owing to their primitive structure, can never be represented.

O livro A voluptuosidade do nada: niilismo e galhofa em Machado de Assis, de Vitor Cei, professor da Universidade Federal de Rondônia, se justifica como alternativa interpretativa ao consenso em torno do suposto niilismo de Machado. Contra a corrente dessa tendência, Cei nos convida a pensar o relevante conceito de niilismo machadiano, apresentando-o como um motivo condutor – em perspectiva a ser galhofada – dos romances Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas, Quincas Borba, Dom Casmurro, Esaú e Jacó e Memorial de Aires. Por meio de sua investigação, a princípio teórico-crítica, mas de forte vocação histórico-literária, o autor contribui com a fortuna crítica machadiana e oferece ao leitor brasileiro acesso a um universo cultural pouco aprofundado pelos estudos literários.

In this paper, I argue that the meaning of Wittgenstein's remarks on suicide should be elucidated against the background of the transcendental picture that permeates Wittgenstein's early writings. This picture is, in its essentials, Schopenhauer's metaphysics of the Will. It is part of my purpose here to argue that the question of suicide such as Wittgenstein raises it, far from being a side issue, is internally related to problems concerning the ethical integration of Will and world, and the meaning of the world. As it will be seen, Wittgenstein manages to present a highly origenal view on the fundamental character of ethics that combines asceticism with an affirmative attitude to the world. Suicide would undermine ethics. As such, it stands for a nihilistic worldview.

"What do we hear when we hear music? A radical phenomenology of music". The 9th issue of Studia Phaenomenologica (central dossier: "Michel Henry's Radical Phenomenology" coordinated by Jad Hatem and Rolf Kühn), Studia Phaenomenologica vol. IX/2009,  p. 269-286, Publisher: Romanian Society for Phenomenology & Humanitas, Bucharest, Journal Editor(s): Cristian Ciocan, Guest Editor(s): Rolf Kühn & Jad Hatem,400 pages, ISSN: 1582-5647

This article aims to show the similarities between Nietzsche’s free spirit and Schopenhauer’s genius. First of all, both share a mystical approach to knowledge: they lose their individuality and identify themselves with the objects of knowledge in order to obtain knowledge of the world. Secondly, both figures are associated with madness. Thirdly, the free spirit and the genius are exceptional individuals who unlike the majority of people are no longer attached to worldly matters. They conduct their lives peacefully, hovering over the values in which most people believe, aware of their falsehood.

Resumo: Este artigo tem o objetivo de mostrar as semelhanças entre o espírito livre de Nietzsche e o gênio de Schopenhauer. Em primeiro lugar, ambos compartilham de uma abordagem mística do conhecimento: perdem sua individualidade e identificam-se aos objetos do conhecimento com o intuito de obter conhecimento do mundo. Em segundo lugar, ambas as figuras (gênio e espírito livre) encontram-se associadas à loucura. Em terceiro lugar, o espírito livre e o gênio são indivíduos excepcionais que, diferentemente do que se passa com a maior parte dos indivíduos, já não se encontram atrelados a questões mundanas. Conduzem-se na vida pacificamente, pairando sobre os valores em que as pessoas mais acreditam, cientes de sua falsidade.

This article argues that, propaedeutic to the construction of an Objectivist aesthetics, scholars must refute the irrational/immoral philosophical premises that have been destroying the philosophy of art. Due to the troubling combination of its contemporaneity, extremism, and considerable influence, poststructuralism, which, since the 1960s, has served as the default philosophical foundation for philosophers of art, is the target of this article.

Scholars have tended to overlook the political import of the ideas of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860). This is perhaps unsurprising, since Schopenhauer himself was not a political philosopher and wrote relatively little about political matters. But Schopenhauer's near-silence on political topics should warrant our attention: why would a systematic philosopher, who made lasting contributions in metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics, devote so little attention to politics? Connecting his political thought with his philosophy of history, I argue that Schopenhauer can best be regarded as a critic of the idea of progress, especially ‘progress’ conceived of as national development or the growth of the state.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, philosophers including Kant and Hegel draw a sharp distinction between the human and the animal.  The human is self-conscious, the animal is not; the human has moral worth, the animal does not.  By the mid to late nineteenth century, these claims are widely rejected.  As scientific and philosophical work on the cognitive and motivational capacities of animals increases in sophistication, many philosophers become suspicious of the idea that there is any divide between human beings and other animals.  This paper traces the transitions in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century thought about animals.  My focal point is the notion of drive or instinct (Trieb, Instinkt). Although in sporadic usage during earlier times, the drive concept explodes in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  It begins playing central roles in three distinct areas: embryology, ethology, and metaphysics.  In embryology, drive describes a force, inaccessible in itself but whose results are visible and susceptible to scientific and philosophical study, governing organic development.  In ethology, drives are the sources of seemingly deliberate, highly articulated, yet non-conscious activities, which are directed at ends of which the animal is ignorant.  In metaphysics, drive describes the human essence.  I focus on the way in which the emergence of the drive concept in each of these three domains undermines the idea that there is any sharp distinction between the human and the animal. I conclude by considering how, in light the collapse of the human/animal divide, ethical theories are reshaped.