MULTITUDE OF BLOGS None of the PDFs are my own productions. I've collected them from web (e-mule, avax, libreremo, socialist bros, cross-x, gigapedia..) What I did was thematizing. This blog's project is to create an e-library for a Heideggerian philosophy and Bourdieuan sociology Φ market-created inequalities must be overthrown in order to close knowledge gap. this is an uprising, do ya punk?

Sunday, December 30, 2007

Cassirer - Language and Myth


Language and Myth
by Ernst Cassirer

Paperback: 103 pages
Publisher: Dover Publications

here is a review

listen
[cy twombly - apollo; regarding Cassirer ". . . it is [the work of naming] which transforms the world of sense impressions, which animals also possess, into a mental world, a world of ideas and meaning." (p. 28)]

Unquiet Understanding: Gadamer's Philosophical Hermeneutics



Unquiet Understanding:
Gadamer's Philosophical Hermeneutics
(Suny Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy)
by Nicholas Davey

Paperback: 291 pages
Publisher: State University of New York Press

From the Back Cover
"This is the most enlightening introduction available to Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. It redefines transcendence and translation in hermeneutical terms, but it goes substantially beyond this to offer an introduction to many other topics in philosophical hermeneutics." — Richard E. Palmer, coeditor of Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter

In Unquiet Understanding, Nicholas Davey reappropriates the radical content of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics to reveal that it offers a powerful critique of Nietzsche’s philosophy of language, nihilism, and post-structuralist deconstructions of meaning. By critically engaging with the practical and ethical implications of philosophical hermeneutics, Davey asserts that the importance of philosophical hermeneutics resides in a formidable double claim that strikes at the heart of both traditional philosophy and deconstruction. He shows that to seek control over the fluid nature of linguistic meaning with rigid conceptual regimes or to despair of such fluidity because it frustrates hope for stable meaning is to succumb to nihilism. Both are indicative of a failure to appreciate that understanding depends upon the vital instability of the "word." This innovative book demonstrates that Gadamer’s thought merits a radical reappraisal and that it is more provocative than commonly supposed.

"Elegantly written, this book provides an engaging, original, and challenging reading of Gadamer’s hermeneutics. Davey offers an insightful clarification of the nature and specific contribution of hermeneutics as well as a revealing description of the wantonness of understanding." — Jean Grondin, author of Sources of Hermeneutics

here we have a problem. I don't know what happened but even my copy isn't working. but I found a way to open it. first download the file. then mail it to yourself. then open it in gmail as "view as html". it opens page by page. fully quotable. if I found a new clear copy I'll upload it. bye

Foti - Vision's Invisibles: Philosophical Explorations


Vision's Invisibles:
Philosophical Explorations
(Suny Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy)
by Veronique M. Foti

Paperback: 160 pages
Publisher: State University of New York Press

From the Back Cover
"Although philosophy today has abandoned its former fascination with transcendent invisibles, it has largely unexamined the historical articulations of the divide between 'the visible' and 'the invisible.' Vision's Invisibles argues that such a self-examination is necessary for the sensitization of philosophical sight, as well as for engagements with visuality in other domains. To this end, it investigates a range of challenging understandings of visuality in its relation to invisibles, as articulated in the texts of key historical thinkers-Heraclitus, Plato, and Descartes-and of twentieth-century philosophers, including Foucault, Merleau-Ponty, Nancy, Derrida, and Heidegger."

al sana

[cy twombly - wilder]

is there a sabbath for thought ?


[gustave doré - the enigma]

Is There a Sabbath for Thought?:
Between Religion and Philosophy
(Perspectives in Continental Philosophy)
by William Desmond


Paperback: 380 pages
Publisher: Fordham University Press (June 1, 2005)

Seeking to renew an ancient companionship between the philosophical and the religious, this book’s meditative chapters dwell on certain elemental experiences or happenings that keep the soul alive to the enigma of the divine. William Desmond engages the philosophical work of Pascal, Kant, Hegel,Nietzsche, Shestov, and Soloviev, among others, and pursues with a philosophical mindfulness what is most intimate in us, yet most universal: sleep, poverty, imagination, courage and witness, reverence, hatred and love, peace and war. Being religious has to do with that intimate universal, beyond arbitrarysubjectivism and reductionist objectivism.

In this book, he attempts to look at religion with a fresh and open mind,asking how philosophy might itself stand up to some of the questions posed to it by religion, not just how religion might stand up to the questions posed to it by philosophy. Desmond tries to pursue a new and different policy, one faithful to the light of this dialogue.

"world: ...lost in subtle metaphor, retreats" Sylvia Plath

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Derrida - Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression


In Archive Fever, Jacques Derrida deftly guides us through an extended meditation on remembrance, religion, time, and technology—fruitfully occasioned by a deconstructive analysis of the notion of archiving. Intrigued by the evocative relationship between technologies of inscription and psychic processes, Derrida offers for the first time a major statement on the pervasive impact of electronic media, particularly e-mail, which threaten to transform the entire public and private space of humanity. Plying this rich material with characteristic virtuosity, Derrida constructs a synergistic reading of archives and archiving, both provocative and compelling.

"Judaic mythos, Freudian psychoanalysis, and e-mail all get fused into another staggeringly dense, brilliant slab of scholarship and suggestion."—The Guardian

"[Derrida] convincingly argues that, although the archive is a public entity, it nevertheless is the repository of the private and personal, including even intimate details."—Choice

parallel campaign

Deleuze - Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life


Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life
by Gilles Deleuze

Hardcover: 100 pages
Publisher: Zone Books (June 1, 2001)

From Publishers Weekly
Scholars and dabblers in philosophy will appreciate this brief posthumous collection of Gilles Deleuze's writings, Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life. Deleuze (Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza), a noted and controversial professor of philosophy at the University of Paris VIII, here variously writes on "a transcendental empiricism in contrast to everything that makes up the world of the subject and the object"; Dickens, Wagner and other artists; aesthetics, particularly cinema; and communication and information-machines. There are essays on Hume and Nietzsche, a discussion of the "plane of immanence," his final work before his death in 1995. Trans. by Anne Boyman; intro. by John Rajchman. ( May

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Deleuze (1925-95) worked through his career as a philosopher by exploring what he identified as a connection, rather than a disconnection, between phenomenology and analytical philosophy. Brought together in this small volume are three essays "Immanence: A Life," "Hume," and "Nietzsche" that illustrate his work well. Boyman's translation gives English readers the opportunity to understand how Deleuze demonstrated the validity of the connection both ably and engagingly. The first essay serves as a kind of coda against which any of Deleuze's other work can be read: here he limns the empirical differences between a life and this (one's) life. The following two essays are his reports on the relevance of how earlier philosophers conceptualized this kind of logic, allowing us to understand both their philosophies and our contemporary world. In "Hume," he concentrates on the idea of identity, while in "Nietzsche" he concerns himself and his reader with the move from identity to evaluation. Scholars and graduate students will welcome this volume, while some informed lay readers will find these tastes of the philosopher tantalizing. Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley P.L., CA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

hard-cover

Friday, December 14, 2007

Heidegger Reexamined - H. Dreyfus (ed.)



Heidegger Reexamined
by Hubert L. Dreyfus (Editor), Mark Wrathall (Editor)
thank you Routledge

1408 pages

This collection of facsimile reprints brings together the most important recent scholarship examining the major stages in Heidegger's philosophical career. The first volume focuses on Heidegger's major work, Being and Time , as well as Heidegger's essays and lecture courses produced during the genesis of Being and Time, and shortly after its publication. The second volume covers the period from shortly after the publication of Being and Time up to the Letter on Humanism - that is, the period of Heidegger's notorious 'turn'. Volume three addresses the 'late' Heidegger: his thought from the 1940s until his death in 1976. It focuses on language and poetry, his renewed encounter with pre-Socratic philosophy, his development of the doctrine of the fourfold of earth, sky, mortals, and divinities, and his repeated attempts to radicalize his earlier accounts of Being and unconcealment. The fourth and final volume focuses on Heidegger's significance for contemporary issues in philosophy. Articles in this volume explore Heidegger's relevance to particular areas such as philosophy of mind and language, and relate Heidegger's thought to the philosophy of other contemporary philosophers like Wittgenstein, Searle, Davidson, Rorty, Levinas and Derrida.

to begin with being with-in
Fearless yet, if he must, man stands, and lonely vol 1
Before God, simplicity protects him, vol 2
No weapon does he need nor subterfuge vol 3
Until God's being "not there" helps him. vol 4
Hölderlin

Kant's Critique, Radical Evil, and the Destiny of Humankind



The Social Authority of Reason: Kant's Critique, Radical Evil, and the Destiny of Humankind
(SUNY Series in Philosophy)
by Philip J. Rossi

In "The Social Authority of Reason, Philip J. Rossi, SJ argues that the current cultural milieu of globalization is strikingly reflective of the human condition appraised by kant, in which mutual social interaction for human good is hamstrung by our contentious "unsociable sociability." He situates the paradoxical nature of contemporary society--"its opportunities for deepening the bonds of our common human mutuality along with its potential for enlarging the fissures that arise from our human differences--"in the context of Kant's notion of radical evil. As a corrective, Rossi proposes that we draw upon the social charcater of Kant's critique of reason, which offers a communal trajectory for human moral effort and action. This trajectory still has power to open the path to what Kant called "the highest political good"--"lasting peace among nations.

categorical imperative, still (a distilling one), touchs

Art, Origins, Otherness: Between Philosophy and Art



Art, Origins, Otherness: Between Philosophy and Art by William Desmond
* Publisher: State University of New York Press
* Pub. Date: August 2003
* ISBN-13: 9780791457450
* 336pp

Though our time is often said to be post-religious and post-metaphysical, many continue to seek some encounter with otherness and transcendence in art. This book deals diversely with the issues of art, origins, and otherness, both in themselves and in philosophical engagements with the works of Plato, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. Addressing themes such as eros and mania, genius and sublime, transcendence and the saving power of art, William Desmond tries to make sense of the paradox that too much has been asked of art that now almost nothing is asked of it. He argues that there is more to be said philosophically of art, and claims that art has the power to open up mindfulness beyond objectifying knowledge, as well as beyond thinking that claims to be entirely self-determining.

kral çalışma

Sunday, December 9, 2007

Sociometry Archive



here is a Sociometry Archive, composed by Eyüp (eyüp abi biliyon gavurcada ağabey denilmiyor yoksa canım ciğerimsin). It contains most of the central articles and many articles on sociometry's usage in/realtion to other fields.

once upon a time sociometry was sth like this [thanks for the comment which reminded me of the article's age (actually ice age). they are about the early phase of sociometry ]

just a minute what is sociometry?
sociometry assoc.

Saturday, December 8, 2007

wake up, libraries are under attack


here is the news (I am disgusted)

Libraries to be 'new channel' for direct marketing


Richard Lea
Monday November 5, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

A scheme to put thousands of advertisements into library books will find borrowers taking home a little more than they had bargained for.

Up to 500,000 inserts a month are due to be handed out by libraries in Essex, Somerset, Bromley, Leeds and Southend.

The plan is being run by the direct marketing company Howse Jackson, whose business development director Mark Jackson said the company was "very proud" of what he described as "a brand new channel" for direct marketing.


damn you "the very proud" I don't want to see Microsoft ad when reading Question Concerning Technology

full article

National Safety Council - records from ice age



NATIONAL SAFETY COUNCIL in colloboration with UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR presents


via beware of the blog :
Six scratchy pop-filled 33 1/3 rpm records (to accompany a filmstrip or slides?) from the National Safety Council (in collaboration with the United States Department of Labor on 5 of the discs) from well over 50 years ago.

I think these are interesting pieces to see how the mind/body is being shaped by pre-visual technologies. there are 6 headlines: follow the leader; stop,look and listen; right dress; principles and interests; open for infection; production with safety. they need a psychoanalytic study. how judgment is done and what are "the techniques of listener"? how the medium is constructed? what is the "listening" culture? how reliability is constructed? of course there are studies on this. if u know any please comment. thanks.

go, download

Friday, December 7, 2007

McDonald's Farmer Game



Making industrial food has never been so fun.
See if you can keep your customers happy by
keeping the cheap burgers flowing.

here is a wonderful game which covers the multidimensionality of exploitation structures. how industry operates in relation to the state and society.
"a must play"Fark Yaraları

Acknowledgements: thanks to simit for this contribution
to play

Monday, December 3, 2007

French Art Songs of the 19th-Century


French Art Songs of the Nineteenth-Century:
Thirty-Nine Works from Berlioz to Debussy
compiled by Philip Hale


GEORGES BIZET
Vieille chanson (words by Charles Millevoye)
Pastorale (words by Jean-François Regnard)
CÉCILE CHAMINADE
Si j'étais jardinier (words by Roger Miles)
Tu me dirais (words by Rosemond Gérard)
ERNEST CHAUSSON
"Les morts (No. 1 of Chansons de Miarka, Op. 17, words by Jean Richepin)"
CLAUDE DEBUSSY
"Les cloches (No. 2 of Deux romances, words by Paul Bourget)"
"Il pleure dans mon coeur (No. 2 of Ariettes oubliées, words by Paul Verlaine)"
"Haromonie du soir (No. 2 of Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire, words by Charles Baudelaire)"
La mort des amants (No. 5 of Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire)
Romance (No. 1 of Deux romances to words by Bourget)
L'ombre des arbres (No. 3 of Ariettes oubliées to words by Verlaine)
LÉO DELIBES
Les filles de Cadix (words by Alfred de Musset)
Jours passés (words by Armand Silvestre)
HENRI DUPARC
Extase (words by Jean Lahor)
Soupir (words by Armand Sully-Prudhomme)
CÉSAR FRANCK
Le mariage des roses (words by Eugène David)
Lied (words by Lucien Paté)
BENJAMIN GODARD
Te souviens-tu? (words by composer)
Embarquez-vous! (words by Ulrich Guttinguer)
L'amour (words by Rose Harel)
CHARLES GOUNOD
Au printemps (words by Jules Barbier)
Medjé: chanson arabe (words by Jules Barbier)
Le vallon (words by Alphonse de Lamartine)
REYNALDO HAHN
"L'heure exquise (No. 5 of Chansons grises, words by Paul Verlaine)"
Si mes vers avaient des ailes! (words by Victor Hugo)
VINCENT D'INDY
"Madrigal dans le style ancien (Op. 4, words by Robert de Bonnières)"
"Lied maritime (Op. 43, words by composer)"
JULES MASSENET
Chant provençal (words by Michel Carré)
Ouvre tes yeux bleux (words by Paul Robiquet)
Que l'heure est donc brève (words by Armand Silvestre)
GABRIEL PIERNÉ
Sérénade (Op. 7; words by Eugène Adenis)
CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS
La cloche (words by Victor Hugo)
Clair de lune (words by Catulle Mendès)
AMBROISE THOMAS
Le soir (words by Michel Carré)
CHARLES-MARIE WIDOR
Soupir (words by Théophile Gautier)

download

Sunday, December 2, 2007

Derrida - a documentary


DERRIDA

official site

Kirby Dick: Kirby Dick is an award-winning Los Angeles filmmaker. His most recent film, THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED, premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. His previous film, TWIST OF FAITH, about clergy sexual abuse, was nominated for an Academy Award. Earlier films include DERRIDA, winner of the Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco Film Festival, and CHAIN CAMERA, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. In 1997 he directed the internationally acclaimed SICK: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF BOB FLANAGAN, SUPERMASOCHIST, which won the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the Grand Prize at the Los Angeles Film Festival.

Amy Ziering Kofman: DERRIDA marks Amy Ziering Kofman’s directing debut. She most recently produced the critically acclaimed feature documentary TAYLOR’S CAMPAIGN, which followed the race for a seat on the Santa Monica City Council by one of its homeless residents.

watch now

there are many videos about Derrida here

Routledge Philosophy Guidebook To Derrida On Deconstruction


Jacques Derrida is one of the most influential and controversial philosophers of the last fifty years. Derrida on Deconstruction introduces and assesses:

* Derrida's life and the background to his philosophy
* the key themes of the critique of metaphysics, language and ethics that characterize his most widely read works
* the continuing importance of Derrida's work to philosophy.

This is a much-needed introduction for philosophy or humanities students undertaking courses on Derrida.

an introduction for beginners. to begin. to beg. in. derrida. dada.

The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam



The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History
(Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization)
by G. R. Hawting

"Hawting has accomplished his task with deep learning and with sharp, detailed arguments. All students of Arabia and early Islam will do well to read this book." Meas Bulletin

"The book is original and challenging and should be read by all scholars interested in the Quran, Islamic origins, and how religions imagine their origins." Religious Studies Review

Book Description
Why and under what circumstances did the religion of Islam emerge in a remote part of Arabia at the beginning of the seventh century? Traditional scholarship maintains that Islam developed in opposition to the idolatrous and polytheistic religion of the Arabs of Mecca and the surrounding regions. In this study of pre-Islamic Arabian religion, G. R. Hawting adopts a comparative religious perspective to suggest an alternative view. By examining the various bodies of evidence which survive from this period, the Koran and the vast resources of the Islamic tradition, the author argues that in fact Islam arose out of conflict with other monotheists whose beliefs and practices were judged to fall short of true monotheism and were, in consequence, attacked polemically as idolatry. The author is adept at unravelling the complexities of the source material, and students and scholars will find his argument both engaging and persuasive.

mecca in time of sultan abdulhamid the 2nd

The Ottoman Empire and the World Around it - Suraiya Faroqhi


The Ottoman Empire and the World Around it - Suraiya Faroqhi
I.B Tauris

In Islamic law the world was made up of the House of Islam and the House of War with the Ottoman Sultan--the perceived successor to the Caliphs--supreme ruler of the Islamic world. However, Suraiya Faroqhi demonstrates that there was no iron curtain between the Ottoman and other worlds but rather a long-established network of diplomatic, financial, cultural and religious connections. These extended to the empires of Asia and the modern states of Europe. Faroqhi's book is based on a huge study of original and early modern sources, including diplomatic records, travel and geographical writing, as well as personal accounts.

once upon a time is now

The Islamic Leviathan: Islam and the making of State Power


The Islamic Leviathan: Islam and the making of State Power


Islamism is often associated with oppositional social movements. However, increasingly, Muslim states too have served as agents of Islamism. They have adopted Islamization strategies, and realigned state ideology and policy-making to reflect Islamist ideals and to fulfill demands of Islamic ideology. They have done so not only as a reaction to Islamist challenges from below but also to harness the energies of Islamism to expand state power and capacity. By co-opting Islamism, they have strengthened the postcolonial state. Pakistan during the Zia ul-Haq period, and Malaysia under Mahathir Mohammad have been at the forefront of this trend, devising Islamization from above strategies that allowed these weak states to effectively alleviate limitations before exercise of state power and to pursue goals such as economic growth. The Islamization of the postcolonial state underscores the importance of religion and culture to state power and capacity.

"an islamic state is coming soon!" it writes

Bourdieu & Coleman - Social Theory for a Changing Society


Social theory for a changing society.
Edited by Pierre Bourdieu and James S. Coleman.
1991, vii, 389 S

Contents
Prologue: Constructed Social Organization , James S. Coleman 1

COMMENTS
Michael Hechter , 14
Susan P. Shapiro , 16

PART ONE CHANGES IN TECHNOLOGY AND ORGANIZATIONAL RESPONSES
1 Moebius-Strip Organizations and Open Labor Markets: Some Consequences of the Reintegration of Conception and Execution in a Volatile Economy , Charles Sabel 23

COMMENTS
Richard Biernacki , 54
David Stark , 56
2 The Future of Bureaucracy and Hierarchy in Organizational Theory: A Report from the Field , Rosabeth Moss Kanter 63

COMMENTS
Peter Hedström , 87
Edward O. Laumann , 90
3 Indirect Relationships and Imagined Communities: Large-Scale Social Integration and the Transformation of Everyday Life , Craig Calhoun 95

COMMENTS
Gudmund Hernes , 121
Edward Shils , 126

PART TWO CHANGES IN CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS AND CULTURAL TRANSMISSION
4 Social Structure, Institutions, and Cultural Goods: The Case of the United States , Paul DiMaggio 133

COMMENTS
Wendy Griswold , 156
Richard A. Peterson , 159
5 The New and the Old in Religion , Thomas Luckmann 167

COMMENTS
Andrew Greeley , 182
Seymour Martin Lipset , 185
6 Families, Childrearing, and Education 189
Opening Remarks , Charles E. Bidwell 189
Institutions and Human Capital Development , Mary C. Brinton 194
Individuals, Institutions, and Academic Achievement , James W. Stigler 198

PART THREE CHANGES IN SYSTEMS OF SOCIAL CONTROL
7 On the Individualistic Theory of Social Order , Alessandro Pizzorno 209

COMMENTS
Rogers Brubaker , 234
Donald N. Levine , 238
8 Discretion, Institutions, and the Problem of Government Commitment , Kenneth A. Shepsle 245

COMMENTS
Russell Hardin , 263
9 Law Without Accidents , Kim Lane Scheppele 267

COMMENTS
Jack Goldstone , 293
Michael Hechter , 296

PART FOUR NEW POLITICAL BOUNDARIES AND NEW POLITICAL FORMS
10 Bounded States in a Global Market: The Uses of International Labor Migrations , Aristide R. Zolberg 301

COMMENTS
Charles C. Ragin , 325
George Steinmetz , 329
11 Intellectuals and Domination in Post-Communist Societies , George Konrad and Ivan Szelenyi 337

COMMENTS
Seymour Martin Lipset , 364
Klemens Szaniawski , 369
Epilogue: On the Possibility of a Field of World Sociology , Pierre Bourdieu 373
About the Book and Editors 389

bourdieu rules!

Monday, November 26, 2007

Agamben - Means Without End




Means without End

Notes on Politics

Giorgio Agamben
Translated by Vincenzo Binetti and Cesare Casarino

An essential reevaluation of the proper role of politics in contemporary life.

A critical rethinking of the categories of politics within a new sociopolitical and historical context, this book builds on the previous work of the distinguished political philosopher Giorgio Agamben to address the status and nature of politics itself. Bringing politics face-to-face with its own failures of consciousness and consequence, Agamben frames his analysis in terms of clear contemporary relevance. He proposes, in his characteristically allusive and intriguing way, a politics of gesture-a politics of means without end.

Among the topics Agamben takes up are the "properly" political paradigms of experience, as well as those generally not viewed as political. He begins by elaborating work on biopower begun by Foucault, returning the natural life of humans to the center of the polis and considering it as the very basis for politics. He then considers subjects such as the state of exception (the temporary suspension of the juridical order); the concentration camp (a zone of indifference between public and private and, at the same time, the secret matrix of the political space in which we live); the refugee, who, breaking the bond between the human and the citizen, moves from marginal status to the center of the crisis of the modern nation-state; and the sphere of pure means or gestures (those gestures that, remaining nothing more than means, liberate themselves from any relation to ends) as the proper sphere of politics. Attentive to the urgent demands of the political moment, as well as to the bankruptcy of political discourse, Agamben's work brings politics back to life, and life back to politics

hmmm

Agamben - Homo Sacer


Giorgio Agamben - Homo Sacer

tr by: Daniel Heller-Roazen
Stanford University Press 1998


The work of Giorgio Agamben, one of Italy’s most important and original philosophers, has been based on an uncommon erudition in classical traditions of philosophy and rhetoric, the grammarians of late antiquity, Christian theology, and modern philosophy. Recently, Agamben has begun to direct his thinking to the constitution of the social and to some concrete, ethico-political conclusions concerning the state of society today, and the place of the individual within it.In Homo Sacer, Agamben aims to connect the problem of pure possibility, potentiality, and power with the problem of political and social ethics in a context where the latter has lost its previous religious, metaphysical, and cultural grounding. Taking his cue from Foucault’s fragmentary analysis of biopolitics, Agamben probes with great breadth, intensity, and acuteness the covert or implicit presence of an idea of biopolitics in the history of traditional political theory. He argues that from the earliest treatises of political theory, notably in Aristotle’s notion of man as a political animal, and throughout the history of Western thinking about sovereignty (whether of the king or the state), a notion of sovereignty as power over “life” is implicit.The reason it remains merely implicit has to do, according to Agamben, with the way the sacred, or the idea of sacrality, becomes indissociable from the idea of sovereignty. Drawing upon Carl Schmitt’s idea of the sovereign’s status as the exception to the rules he safeguards, and on anthropological research that reveals the close interlinking of the sacred and the taboo, Agamben defines the sacred person as one who can be killed and yet not sacrificed—a paradox he sees as operative in the status of the modern individual living in a system that exerts control over the collective “naked life” of all individuals.

life

Monday, November 19, 2007

'das kapital' song by Lyapis Trubetskoy

Here is a song about capital & Marx by Lyapis Trubetskoy (Ляпис Трубецкой) [from Belarus]



translation of lyrics:
For dinner I devour gold bars
Diamond desert, oil cream
My name is Baalzebul
Owner of the stratosphere
I am unrealistically cool
My respect is beyond measure

In my left hand is Snickers
In my right hand is Mars
My PR Manager is Karl Marx
In my left hand is Snickers
In my right hand is Mars
My PR Manager is Karl Marx

Capital! Capital! Capital! Capital!

I devour the cities and wash them down with the seas.
My beard covers the sky.
Thunder and lightning, rain and fog
My boots are licked by ministers and leaders.

In my left hand is Snickers
In my right hand is Mars
My PR Manager is Karl Marx
In my left hand is Snickers
In my right hand is Mars
My PR Manager is Karl Marx

Capital! Capital! Capital! Capital!

In my left hand is Snickers
In my right hand is Mars
My PR Manager is Karl Marx
I am the face of Madonna
Within me are rotten apples
Everyone on your knees!
Orchestra! The flourish!

Capital! Capital! Capital! Capital!


download mp3

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Heidegger - Contributions to Philosophy : From Enowning



Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), written in 1936-38 and first published in 1989, is Heidegger's most ground-breaking work after the publication of Time and Being in 1927. If Time and Being is perceived as undermining modern metaphysics, Contributions undertakes to reshape the very project of thinking. In this unusual work, thinking becomes a dimension of time and space, and a historical unfolding of being occurs.

DivShare File - Contributions To Philosophy _from Enowing.pdf just click on the link and it will take you to the divshare page from there it will be automatically downloaded. yet fear and trembling stays

Blanchot & Derrida - The Instant Of My Death



This volume records a remarkable encounter in critical and philosophical thinking: a meeting of two of the great pioneers in contemporary thought, Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Derrida, who are also bound together by friendship and a complex relation to their own pasts. More than a literary text with critical commentary, it constitutes an event of central significance for contemporary philosophical, literary, and political concerns.

The book consists of The Instant of My Death, a powerful short prose piece by Blanchot, and an extended essay by Derrida that reads it in the context of questions of literature and of bearing witness. Blanchot’s narrative concerns a moment when a young man is brought before a firing squad during World War II and then suddenly finds himself released from his near death. The incident, written in the third person, is suggestively autobiographical—from the title, several remarks in the text, and a letter Blanchot wrote about a similar incident in his own life—but only insofar as it raises questions for Blanchot about what such an experience might mean. The accident of near death becomes, in the instant the man is released, the accident of a life he no longer possesses. The text raises the question of what it means to write about a (non)experience one cannot claim as one’s own, and as such is a text of testimony or witness.

Derrida’s reading of Blanchot links the problem of testimony to the problem of the secret and to the notion of the instant. It thereby provides the elements of a more expansive reassessment of literature, testimony, and truth. In addressing the complex relation between writing and history, Derrida also implicitly reflects on questions concerning the relation between European intellectuals and World War II.

her nefs ölümü tadacaktır

JL Nancy - The Deleuzian Fold of Thought


Jean-Luc Nancy, The Deleuzian Fold of Thought, in (ed) Paul Patton, The Deleuze Critical Reader, Blackwell, 1996, pp. 107-113.pdf

mevzu var abi

Derrida - Memoirs of the blind



In this brilliant essay, Jacques Derrida explores issues of
vision, blindness, self-representation, and their relation to
drawing, while offering detailed readings of an extraordinary
collection of images. Selected by Derrida from the prints
and drawings department of the Louvre, the works depict
blindness—fictional, historical, and biblical. From Old
and New Testament scenes to the myth of Perseus and the
Gorgon and the blinding of Polyphemus, Derrida uncovers in
these images rich, provocative layers of interpretation.

For Derrida drawing is itself blind; as an act rooted in
memory and anticipation, drawing necessarily replaces one
kind of seeing (direct) with another (mediated). Ultimately,
he explains, the very lines which compose any drawing are
themselves never fully visible to the viewer since they exist
only in a tenuous state of multiple identities: as marks on
a page, as indicators of a contour. Lacking a "pure"
identity, the lines of a drawing summon the supplement of the
word, of verbal discourse, and, in doing so, obscure the
visual experience. Consequently, Derrida demonstrates, the
very act of depicting a blind person undertakes multiple
enactments and statements of blindness and sight.

Memoirs of the Blind is both a sophisticated
philosophical argument and a series of detailed readings.
Derrida provides compelling insights into famous and lesser
known works, interweaving analyses of texts—including
Diderot's Lettres sur les aveugles, the notion of
mnemonic art in Baudelaire's The Painter of Modern
Life, and Merleau-Ponty's The Visible and the
Invisible. Along with engaging meditations on the history
and philosophy of art, Derrida reveals the ways viewers
approach philosophical ideas through art, and the ways art
enriches philosophical reflection.

An exploration of sight, representation, and art,
Memoirs of the Blind extends and deepens the
meditation on vision and painting presented in Truth and
Painting. Readers of Derrida, both new and familiar, will
profit from this powerful contribution to the study of the
visual arts.

< at ille, ut erat, capite velato, "Sine sine" inquit 'fruatur diutius tropaeo Fortuna quod fixit ipsa.' > from my dear Apuleius

Derrida - On the Name


Review
“A major new book by Derrida that represents his most recent thinking, and includes landmark readings of Plato and the German poet-mystic Angelus Silesius. The essays are wonderfully rich and provocative, and, in spite of their apparent diversity of topic, are bound together as three ways of approaching the problematic of naming and speaking of something that exceeds ‘isness.’ ” —J. Hillis Miller, University of California, Irvine


Book Description
“The name: What does one call thus? What does one understand under the name of name? And what occurs when one gies a name? What does one give then? One does not offer a thing, one delivers nothing, and still something comes to be, which comes down to giving that which one does not have, as Plotinus said of the Good. What happens, above all, when it is necessary to sur-name, renaming there where, precisely, the name comes to be found lacking? What makes the proper name into a sort of sur-name, pseudonym, or cryptonym at once singular and singularly untranslatable?”

Jacques Derrida thus poses a central problem in contemporary language, ethics, and politics, which he addresses in a liked series of the three essays. Passions: “An Oblique Offering” is a reflection on the question of the response, on the duty and obligation to respond, and on the possibility of not responding—which is to say, on the ethics and politics of responsibility. Sauf le nom (Post Scriptum) considers the problematics of naming and alterity, or transcendence, raised inevitably by a rigorous negative theology. Much of the text is organized around close readings of the poetry of Angelus Silesius.

The final essay, Khora, explores the problem of space or spacing, of the word khora in Plato’s Tmaeus. Even as it places and makes possible nothing less than the whole world, khora opens and dislocates, displaces, all the categories that govern the production of that world, from naming to gender. In addition to readers in philosophy and literature, Khora will be of special interest to those in the burgeoning field of “space studies”(architecture, urbanism, design).

"My most resolute opponents believe that I am too visible, that I am a little too alive, that my name echoes too much in the texts which they nevertheless claim to be inaccessible." Derrida

Gramsci and Marxist Theory ed. Mouffe



Mouffe, Ch. (ed) - Gramsci and Marxist Theory [Routledge 1979]

la lotta continua

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Robot as a Kid


Robot as a Kid is a music group from Quebec. One of the most silencing reconciliations of contemporary music scene embodied within the assamblage-like antifriction tonality. a master celebration of baudelarian-plathesque nuance of uncanny other.

to listen: robotasakid

Kant's Search for the Supreme Principle of Morality




"The writing is impeccably clear throughout, and given the intricate subject matter, even elegant." Rudiger Bittner, author of What Reason Demands

"...the author joins the discussion of the grounds for a moral theory that has preoccupied philosophers for some time, and advances that discussion significantly further. This is a book that will be required reading for those interested in that topic of Kant's moral theory." Roger Sullivan, Author of Immanuel Kant's Moral Theory and An Introduction to Kant's Ethics

"[Kerstein's] is a very level-headed approach that takes both Kant's texts and those of his commentators and critics seriously... [his] down-to-earth approach would certainly not upset an author who wrote for an 'age of criticism, to which everything must submit.'" Ethics

Book Description
At the core of Kant's ethics lies the claim that if there is a supreme principle of morality, then it is not a utilitarian or Aristotelian perfectionist principle, or even a principle resembling the Ten Commandments. The only viable candidate for the supreme principle of morality is the Categorial Imperative. This book is the most detailed investigation of thie claim. It constructs a new, criterial reading of Kant's derivation of one version of the Categorial Imperative: The Formula of Universal Law. This reading shows this derivation to be far more compelling than contemporary philosophers tend to believe. It also reveals a novel approach to deriving another version of the Categorial Imperative, the Formula of Humanity, a principle widely considered to be the most attractive Kantian candidate for the supreme principle of morality. Lucidly written and dealing with a foundational topic in the history of ethics, this book will be important not just for Kant scholars but for a broad swath of students of philosophy. Samuel Kerstein is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland, College Park

a better reading will be JL Nancy's Kategorein of Excess i n "a finite thinking"

Schumpeter - Capitalism, Socialism And Democracy




Joseph A Schumpeter - Capitalism, Socialism And Democracy

Chapter One

Marx The Prophet

It was not by a slip that an analogy from the world of religion was I permitted to intrude into the title of this chapter. There is more than analogy. In one important sense, Marxism is a religion. To the believer it presents, first, a system of ultimate ends that embody the meaning of life and are absolute standards by which to judge events and actions; and, secondly, a guide to those ends which implies a plan of salvation and the indication of the evil from which mankind, or a chosen section of mankind, is to be saved. We may specify still further: Marxist socialism also belongs to that subgroup which promises paradise on this side of the grave. I believe that a formulation of these characteristics by an hierologist would give opportunities for classification and comment which might possibly lead much deeper into the sociological essence of Marxism than anything a mere economist can say.

The least important point about this is that it explains the success of Marxism. Purely scientific achievement, had it even been much more perfect than it was in the case of Marx, would never have won the immortality in the historical sense which is his. Nor would his arsenal of party slogans have done it. Part of his success, although a very minor part, is indeed attributable to the barrelful of white-hot phrases, of impassioned accusations and wrathful gesticulations, ready for use on any platform, that he put at the disposal of his flock. All that needs to be said about this aspect of the matter is that this ammunition has served and is serving its purpose very well, but that the production of it carried a disadvantage: in order to forge such weapons for the arena of social strife Marx had occasionally to bend, or to deviate from, the opinions that would logically follow from his system. However, if Marx had not been more than a purveyor of phraseology, he would be dead by now. Mankind is not grateful for that sort of service and forgets quickly the names of the people who write the librettos for its political operas.

But he was a prophet, and in order to understand the nature of this achievement we must visualize it in the setting of his own time. It was the zenith of bourgeois realization and the nadir of bourgeois civilization, the time of mechanistic materialism, of a cultural milieu which had as yet betrayed no sign that a new art and a new mode of life were in its womb, and which rioted in most repulsive banality. Faith in any real sense was rapidly falling away from all classes of society, and with it the only ray of light (apart from what may have been derived from Rochdale attitudes and saving banks) died from the workman's world, while intellectuals professed themselves highly satisfied with Mill's Logic and the Poor Law.

Now, to millions of human hearts the Marxian message of the terrestrial paradise of socialism meant a new ray of light and a new meaning of life. Call Marxist religion a counterfeit if you like, or a caricature of faith--there is plenty to be said for this view--but do not overlook or fail to admire the greatness of the achievement. Never mind that nearly all of those millions were unable to understand and appreciate the message in its true significance. That is the fate of all messages. The important thing is that the message was framed and conveyed in such a way as to be acceptable to the positivistic mind of its time--which was essentially bourgeois no doubt, but there is no paradox in saying that Marxism is essentially a product of the bourgeois mind. This was done, on the one hand, by formulating with unsurpassed force that feeling of being thwarted and ill treated which is the auto-therapeutic attitude of the unsuccessful many, and, on the other hand, by proclaiming that socialistic deliverance from those ills was a certainty amenable to rational proof.

Observe how supreme art here succeeds in weaving together those extra-rational cravings which receding religion had left running about like masterless dogs, and the rationalistic and materialistic tendencies of the time ineluctable for the moment, which would not tolerate any creed that had no scientific or pseudo-scientific connotation. Preaching the goal would have been ineffectual; analyzing a social process would have interested only a few hundred specialists. But preaching in the garb of analysis and analyzing with a view to heartfelt needs, this is what conquered passionate allegiance and gave to the Marxist that supreme boon which consists in the conviction that what one is and stands for can never be defeated but must conquer victoriously in the end. This, of course, does not exhaust the achievement. Personal force and the flash of prophecy work independently of the contents of the creed. No new life and no new meaning of life can be effectively revealed without. But this does not concern us here.

Something will have to be said about the cogency and correctness of Marx's attempt to prove the inevitability of the socialist goal. One remark, however, suffices as to what has been called above his formulation of the feelings of the unsuccessful many. It was, of course, not a true formulation of actual feelings, conscious or subconscious. Rather we could call it an attempt at replacing actual feelings by a true or false revelation of the logic of social evolution. By doing this and by at tributing--quite unrealistically--to the masses his own shibboleth of "class consciousness," he undoubtedly falsified the true psychology of the workman (which centers in the wish to become a small bourgeois and to be helped to that status by political force), but in so far as his teaching took effect he also expanded and ennobled it. He did not weep any sentimental tears about the beauty of the socialist idea.

3ünü de sallayın ayva tatlısı hepsine takar, ısmarlayan var mı?

Routledge Philosophy Guide Book to Being and Time


Book Description
Heidegger is one of the most controversial thinkers of the twentieth century. A difficult and powerful philosopher, his work requires careful reading. Being and Time was his first major book and remains his most influential work. Heidegger and Being and Time introduces and assesses: Heidegger's life and the background of Being and Time; the ideas and text of Being and Time; Heidegger's importance to philosophy and to the intellectual life of this century. Ideal for anyone coming to Heidegger for the first time, this guide will be vital for all students of Heidegger in philosophy and cultural theory. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Synopsis
Heidegger is one of the most controversial thinkers of the twentieth century. His writings are notoriously difficult; they both require and reward careful reading. "Being and Time" , his first major publication, remains to this day his most influential work. Heidegger's "Being and Time" introduces and assesses: Heidegger's life and the background to "Being and Time", the ideas and text of "Being and Time", Heidegger's continuing importance to philosophy and his contribution to the intellectual life of our century. In this second edition, Stephen Mulhall expands his treatment of skepticism, revises his discussion on death, and reassesses the contentious relationship between the two parts of "Being and Time" with a focus on the notion of authenticity. This guide will be vital to all students of Heidegger in philosophy and cultural theory.

especially for beginners, but the question is: can you dare?

The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger


Martin Heidegger is now widely recognized as one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. He transformed mainstream philosophy by defining its central task as asking the ‘question of being’. His thought has contributed to the turn to hermeneutics and to postmodernism and poststructuralism. Moreover, the disclosure of his deep involvement in Nazism has provoked much debate about the relation of philosophy to politics. This edition brings to the fore other works, as well as alternative approaches to scholarship. The essays cover topics such as Heidegger’s conception of phenomenology, his relation to Kant and Husserl, his account of truth, and his stand on the realism/anti-realism debate. This edition includes a new preface by the editor, revised versions of several essays from the first edition, and an exhaustive bibliography, providing guidance for both newcomers to Heidegger’s work and established scholars.

• Features essays by many of the leading Heidegger scholars • A carefully selected bibliography, offering an exhaustive guide to further reading • Includes a preface by the editor, explaining how his views on Heidegger (and contemporary scholarship on the man) have developed
Contents

List of contributors; Abbreviations: works by Heidegger; Chronology; Preface to the second edition; Introduction Charles B. Guignon; 1. The question of being: Heidegger’s project Dorothea Frede; 2. Reading a life: Heidegger and hard times Thomas Sheehan; 3. The principle of phenomenology Taylor Carman; 4. Time and phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger Robert J. Dostal; 5. Laying the ground for metaphysics: Heidegger’s appropriation of Kant William Blattner; 6. Heidegger and the hermeneutic turn David Couzens Hoy; 7. Engaged agency and background in Heidegger Charles Taylor; 8. Death, time, history: Division II of Being and Time Piotr Hoffman; 9. Truth and the essence of truth in Heidegger’s thought Mark A. Wrathall; 10. Authenticity, moral values, and psychotherapy Charles B. Guignon; 11. Heidegger, Buddhism, and deep ecology Michael E. Zimmerman; 12. Heidegger and theology John D. Caputo; 13. Heidegger on the connection between nihilism, art, technology and politics Hubert L. Dreyfus; 14. The fourfold Julian Young; Bibliography; Index



thou shalt dwell!

Friday, November 2, 2007

Vernant & Vidal-Naquet - Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece [made in istanbul]



MADE IN TURKEY
Fark Yaralari Presents:


Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet are leaders in a contemporary French classical scholarship that has produced a stunning reconfiguration of Greek thought and literature. In this work, the authors present a disturbing and decidedly nonclassical reading of Greek tragedy that insists on its radical discontinuity with our own outlook and with our social, aesthetic, and psychological categories. Originally published in French in two volumes, this new single-volume edition includes revised essays from Volume I as well as the first English translation of Volume II.

“What is Dionysiac about Greek tragedy, Vernant suggests, and specific to the genre, is the ‘otherness’ of the hero, his belonging to an absent world that no longer exists, and the blurring and shifting of the boundaries between illusion and reality that result for the audience from the enacted fictions of the tragic theatre.... Myth and Tragedy is a book to be unreservedly welcome for its progressive unfolding of ideas which have proved consistently fertile in new perceptions and for thinking that is in the best sense individual as well as collective.”
— Times Literary Supplement

the uncanny as the ground

Eleni Karaindrou - Rosa / Wandering



" Directors Chistoforo Chiristofis and Lefteris Xanthopoulos, as it happens, were both published poets before they turned their attention towards cinema, and their use of the camera is freely "lyrical". Of Wandering, his first film, Christofis has noted that "my explorations into the workings of memory and the possibilities of film making were clearly ruled by an adagio rhythm". An easy, graceful camera motion, like the sea's slow undulation, also shapes Xanthopoulos's Happy Homecoming, Comrade and some of Angelopoulos' work. The rhythms of Rosa are generally more troubled and distracted, as befits this metaphysical thriller, though there's hushed raptness to "Rosa's Song", originally sung by Karaindrou against a closing shot of the rosecoloured still waters of Missolonghi at sunset. Chiristofis's lyrics here are exceptional, beginning
My name is Rosa
and I'm the song of the soul
over the roof-tops
beyond the wind.
I tried to change the world
and turned into a song to save the dream


from musicolog

download
thank you for the GIFT

Heidegger - Early Greek Thinking



[contents will be put aside, "i kiss u" for your patience]

truth is untruth

Property and Power in Social Theory: A Study in Intellectual Rivalry



Property and Power in Social Theory: A Study in Intellectual Rivalry
by Dick Pels
Routledge

In social and political theories of class inequality and stratification, property and power perform a key role. However, theorists have yet to clearly define these concepts, their mutual boundaries and scopes of application. Moreover, a ''primacy puzzle'' remains unsolved: is power ultimately dependent on property, or property upon power? Which is primary, which derivative? Dick Pels seeks answers to the property/power puzzle by undertaking a broad historical inquiry into its intellectual origins and present-day effects. He re-examines the increasingly misleading terms of the debate between property and power by placing the traditional controversy within the framework of intellectual rivalry. He traces the intricate pattern of rivalry between the two master concepts through a series of case studies, including: * Marxism vs. anarchism * the fascist assertion of the primacy of the political * social science as power theory * the managerial revolution * the knowledge society and the new intellectual classes Having examined knowledge as property-and-power, Pels elaborates a radical and reflexive theory of intellectual rivalry This book unravels the dialectics of social-scientific dichotomies and provides a novel and informative way of organizing twentieth century social theory. The work makes a valuable contribution to sociological theory and to the history of thought.

bu işler otobüste koltuk kapmakla başlıyor

Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction


Jacques Lacan
A Feminist Introduction
By Elizabeth Grosz
Routledge

Elizabeth Grosz focuses on the controversial texts of French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan, analysing and assessing them from a feminist point of view. Designed as an introductory text for students of psychoanalysis and feminism, it places Lacan's work in the context of Freud's writings and contemporary debates generated in French intellectual and political life. In particular the back outlines Lacan's subversive conceptualisation of the human subject as a fundamentally divided being; split bilogically, sexually, linguistically and socially. Lacan's account of the genesis of the ego, his understanding of the sexual drives and his notion of the 'unconscious structured like a language' provide the background needed to conceptualise how he understands relations between the sexes, especially love relations. The book also provides a background for understanding the contributions of the French 'feminists of difference', particularly Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray, to contemporary debates within Feminist theory.

yahu bacım otur evinde çocuğuna bak seninki ne kompleksi daha iyi bilirsin

The Cambridge Companion to Levinas




The Cambridge Companion to Levinas
Series: Cambridge Companions to Philosophy
Edited by Simon Critchley
University of Essex

Emmanuel Levinas is now widely recognized alongside Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre as one of the most important Continental philosophers of the twentieth century. His abiding concern was the primacy of the ethical relation to the other person and his central thesis was that ethics is first philosophy. His work has had a profound impact on a number of fields outside philosophy--such as theology, Jewish studies, literature and cultural theory, psychotherapy, sociology, political theory, international relations theory and critical legal theory.
Contents

Emmanuel Levinas: a disparate inventory Simon Critchley; 1. Introduction Simon Critchley; 2. Levinas and Judaism Hilary Putnam; 3. Levinas and the face of the other Bernhard Waldenfels; 4. Levinas’s critique of Husserl Rudolf Bernet; 5. Levinas and the Talmud Catherine Chalier; 6. Levinas and language John Llewelyn; 7. Levinas, feminism and the feminine Stella Sandford; 8. Sincerity and the end of theodicy: three remarks on Levinas and Kant Paul Davies; 9. Language and alterity in the thought of Levinas Edith Wyschograd; 10. The concepts of art and poetry in Emmanuel Levinas’s writings Gerald Bruns; 11. What is the question to which ‘substitution’ is the answer? Robert Bernasconi; 12. Evil and the temptation of theodicy Richard J. Bernstein.

bu korkunç fotoğrafı gördükten sonra indirmeyeceğinizi düşünüdük link mink yok
-kim düşündü ben?
(fısır fısır)
-ötekimmiş
öte kim imiş?

History of Mathematics: from Mesopotamia to Modernity


A History of Mathematics:
From Mesopotamia to Modernity
by Luke Hodgkin
Reviewed by Herbert Kasube

The first thing you notice about this text is its thickness, or should I say lack of thickness. For a text that claims to go "From Mesopotamia to Modernity" it is remarkably thin, just 281 pages, and that includes the bibliography and index. Do not let its thin size deceive you. There is still a substantial amount of material here. The first 132 pages cover Babylonian and Geek mathematics in sufficient depth to give the reader a good feel for the mathematics done by these two ancient civilizations. The coverage is probably not as thorough as that found in other texts, but the topics are well chosen. There is also a chapter on Chinese mathematics and another on Islamic mathematics. While I would hesitate to call these chapters "sparse", it is fair to say that they are "to the point".

To understand the direction that this text is taking one must read the "Introduction" carefully. Hodgkin spends thirteen pages justifying the text and his approach to the history of mathematics. His philosophy is (essentially) that other textbooks in the history of mathematics are "accumulation(s) of facts". He bases his approach on a quote from E. H. Carr who wrote

What had gone wrong was the belief in this untiring and unending accumulation of facts as the foundation of history, the belief that facts speak for themselves and that we cannot have too many facts, a belief at that time so unquestioning that few historians then thought it necessary — and some still think it unnecessary today — to ask themselves the question 'What is history?' (E. H. Carr, in What is History?)

Hodgkin's goal was to write a history of mathematics book that answers Carr's fundamental question. Much time is spent on historiography and not just history. That can be a bit of a double-edged sword. I found the philosophical discussion of history in the Introduction very interesting, but at the same time it was a bit distracting, especially some of his "political" commentary. For example, in discussing a letter written by Simone Weil on the teaching of the history of science Hodgkin made a point of mentioning her "extreme-left sympathies" which had little to do with the context. Part of me wanted to say, "Let's get on with the history of mathematics!"

Once I got past the Introduction I found the exposition to be quite readable and the coverage adequate. I must say "adequate" and not "complete" because the author admits to leaving out some topics typically found in a textbook on this subject. He omits "Egypt, the Indian contribution aside from Kerala and most of the European eighteenth and nineteenth centuries." His bibliography is relatively extensive and does include what he would call "more traditional" textbooks in which the deleted material could be found.

The chapter on the calculus presents a balanced view of both Newton and Leibniz with an excellent use of diagrams. There is also a concise discussion of the "priority dispute" between Newton and Leibniz.

Exercises are sprinkled throughout the text with many having solutions appearing at the end of the chapter. The selection is adequate, but as with other aspects of this book, a bit sparse.

In conclusion, Hodgkin makes the case in his Introduction for a different perspective on the history of mathematics. His argument is well justified and I think he succeeds in producing a text that is different from others on the market. That is the good news. The bad news is that it may not be to the liking of instructors looking for a textbook that would be successful in the classroom. Practitioners of the history of mathematics will find the approach taken by Hodgkin to be interesting and insightful. It is a much tougher read for individuals new to the subject.

kitabı okuduktan sonra olayı aştım: 2+2=5

An Introduction To Mathematical Cosmology



An Introduction to Mathematical Cosmology
2nd Edition
J. N. Islam
University of Chittagong, Bangladesh

This book provides a concise introduction to the mathematical aspects of the origin, structure and evolution of the universe. The book begins with a brief overview of observational and theoretical cosmology, along with a short introduction of general relativity. It then goes on to discuss Friedmann models, the Hubble constant and deceleration parameter, singularities, the early universe, inflation, quantum cosmology and the distant future of the universe. This new edition contains a rigorous derivation of the Robertson-Walker metric. It also discusses the limits to the parameter space through various theoretical and observational constraints, and presents a new inflationary solution for a sixth degree potential. This book is suitable as a textbook for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students. It will also be of interest to cosmologists, astrophysicists, applied mathematicians and mathematical physicists.
Contents

Preface to first edition; Preface to second edition; 1. Some basic concepts and an overview of cosmology; 2. Introduction to general relativity; 3. The Robertson-Walker metric; 4. The Friedmann models; 5. The Hubble constant and the deceleration parameter; 6. Models with a cosmological constant; 7. Singularities in cosmology; 8. The early universe; 9. The very early universe and inflation; 10. Quantum cosmology; 11. The distant future of the universe; Appendix.

bu soyadla tc ye cumhur olsun

Thursday, November 1, 2007

Derrida - Writing and Difference


Jacques Derrida
Writing and Difference
Translated by Alan Bass. 362 p. 1978

First published in 1967, Writing and Difference, a collection of Jacques Derrida's essays written between 1959 and 1966, has become a landmark of contemporary French thought. In it we find Derrida at work on his systematic deconstruction of Western metaphysics. The book's first half, which includes the celebrated essay on Descartes and Foucault, shows the development of Derrida's method of deconstruction. In these essays, Derrida demonstrates the traditional nature of some purportedly nontraditional currents of modern thought—one of his main targets being the way in which "structuralism" unwittingly repeats metaphysical concepts in its use of linguistic models.

The second half of the book contains some of Derrida's most compelling analyses of why and how metaphysical thinking must exclude writing from its conception of language, finally showing metaphysics to be constituted by this exclusion. These essays on Artaud, Freud, Bataille, Hegel, and Lévi-Strauss have served as introductions to Derrida's notions of writing and différence—the untranslatable formulation of a nonmetaphysical "concept" that does not exclude writing—for almost a generation of students of literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis.

Writing and Difference reveals the unacknowledged program that makes thought itself possible. In analyzing the contradictions inherent in this program, Derrida foes on to develop new ways of thinking, reading, and writing,—new ways based on the most complete and rigorous understanding of the old ways. Scholars and students from all disciplines will find Writing and Difference an excellent introduction to perhaps the most challenging of contemporary French thinkers—challenging because Derrida questions thought as we know it.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Force and Signification
2. Cogito and the History of Madness
3. Edmond Jabès and the Question of the Book
4. Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas
5. "Genesis and Structure" and Phenomenology
6. La parole soufflée
7. Freud and the Scene of Writing
8. The Theater of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation
9. From Restricted to General Economy: A Hegelianism without Reserve
10. Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences
11. Ellipsis
Notes
Sources

nasıl olsa okumayacaksınız niye kasıyorum ben de anlamadım

Husserl - Phenomonology and the Crisis of Philosophy


Phenomenology and The Crisis of Philosophy: Philosophy as Rigorous Science; and Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man
Editor / Translator: Lauer, Quentin
Published in 1965
Publisher: Harper & Row
Place of publication: New York


"Philosophy as a rigorous science? The dream is all dreamed out." Husserl

Lacoue-Labarthe - Heidegger, Art and Politics


Heidegger, Art and Politics by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

from wikipedia
Lacoue-Labarthe received his doctorat d'état in 1987 with a jury led by Gérard Granel and including Derrida, George Steiner and Jean-François Lyotard. The monograph submitted for that degree was La fiction du politique (1988; trans., Heidegger, Art, and Politics), a study of Heidegger's relation to National Socialism. These works predate the explosion of interest in the political dimensions of Heidegger's thought which followed the publication of a book by Victor Farías.

all that silence prevails

UNHEIL

Wittgenstein: Rethinking the Inner



Wittgenstein: Rethinking the Inner
By Paul Johnston

The idea of the inner is central to our conception of a person and is at the heart of all interaction. But how should we understand this concept, and what do we mean when we wonder what is going on inside our heads? This accessible and non-technical guide to Wittgenstein provides insight into his work in this area and on the problem of the inner. Using Wittgenstein's recently published writings on the philosophy of psychology, together with unpublished material, Paul Johnston presents a thorough account of a subject that was central to Wittgenstein's later work. He shows that Wittgenstein's arguments involve a radical re-thinking of our understanding of the inner and present a challenge to contemporary views which has yet to be fully appreciated or understood. "Wittgenstein" demonstrates how a Wittgensteinian approach can dissolve age-old problems about the nature of consciousness and the relationship between the mind, the body, and the soul. The resulting picture of the inner, with its stress on the crucial role of language, sheds light on the direction of Wittgenstein's work and presents a stimulating and controversial alternative to more fashionable positions on the subject.

"Tell them I've had a wonderful life." Wittgenstein

Sunday, October 14, 2007

The Longest War: Northern Ireland's Troubled History


The Longest War: Northern Ireland's Troubled History
Marc Mulholland
Oxford

'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland have proved one of the most intractable conflicts in Europe since the Second World War, consistently attracting international attention, particularly from the United States. This highly readable exploration of the central issues and debates about Northern Ireland sets them in the historical context of hundreds of years of conflict. It tackles many questions, such as: What accounts for the perpetuation of ethnic and religious conflict in Ireland? Why has armed violence proven so hard to control? Who are the major figures and issues in the conflict? Can we expect more 'Northern Irelands' in the future?

`The Longest War, a masterly feat of compression . . . is excellent on the paradoxes of political developments since the ceasefires.' Financial Times 26/01/01

`a useful little handbook with some easy-to-access basic information' Irish Democrat April/May 2002

`a brief and helpful introduction to the Troubles. . . . The Volume's great value is that offers a lucidly and lightly written, short introduction to a subject that will continue to haunt many people for a very' TLS 29/03/02

viva IRA

[bende bazen neden tüm terörist gruplara sempatim var diye sormuyor değilim]

Madness: A Brief History - Roy Porter




Review:
Joanna Griffiths
Sunday February 10, 2002
The Observer


Roy Porter ends his short history of madness with a teasing question: 'Is Folly jingling its bells again?' More people 'are said to be suffering - indeed claiming to be suffering - from a proliferation of psychiatric syndromes, in a "victim culture" in which benefits may appear to lie in buying into psychiatric paradigms.' Madness is no longer the domain of the witch, the religious seer, or the poetic genius; it is now - as neurosis, trauma, anxiety - the domain of nearly everybody. Those who profess themselves to be unencumbered by mental fragility are seen to be as untrustworthy as the gibbering lunatics of Bedlam, who claimed they were sane.

Porter is no stranger to the mad, having previously written and edited various books on the theme, including the wonderfully cluttered Mind-Forg'd Manacles: A History of Madness in England from the Restoration to the Regency. In Madness: A Brief History he widens the historical remit - to pretty much the Whole of Time - and shortens the book. The result is not quite, as Oliver Sacks suggests in the puff on the back, 'scarcely short of a miracle', but is rather the thrilling rigour of Mind-Forg'd Manacles in expansive holiday-mode - a montage of Porter's favourite lunatics, poets, psychiatrists and phrase-makers.

Porter moves from the 'rational and naturalistic thinking about madness developed by Graeco-Roman philosophers and doctors' to the Christian interpretation of madness as the rage of the divinely inspired or demonically possessed.

He dallies briefly in the lurid realms of medieval witch-hunting, before arriving in the bursting dawn of the Enlightenment, where 'religious madness' was 'pathologised' and understood in medical terms. After ploughing through literary and artistic presentations of insanity, Porter turns to the vogue for institutions, dips briefly into the eighteenth-century cultural fascination with Bedlam, and emerges to discuss the rise of psychiatry and prescription drugs.

Cleverly, Porter suggests that any attempt to define madness is doomed to failure, recycling a favourite quotation from Polonius: to 'define true madness,/ What is't but to be nothing else but mad?' This dispels any need for quibbling over definitions and diagnoses, and allows him to move into a vivid series of case studies, of heroes and villains on both sides of the straitjacket.

Robert Burton is given his due: a mournful seventeenth-century don, who spent his life writing and re-writing The Anatomy of Melancholy , an obsessive account of the depressive disposition, inspired by a sense that 'to live in this sordid, base world, surrounded by despots, tyrants, misers, thieves, slanderers, adulterers, and whole broods of knaves and fools was a melancholy matter'.

William Blake enters for an unsurprising cameo. Blake dreamed that the poet William Cowper - hardly noted for his steely grip on reality - came to him and pleaded: 'O that I were insane always... Can you not make me truly insane?... You retain health and yet are as mad as any of us all - over us all.'

Madness recurs, in its innumerable manifestations, but the understanding of madness is conditioned by time and place. A few theories are rejected: Foucault's whispering theory of the 'great confinement' - incarceration as state power games, not medicine - is dismissed as 'simplistic and over-generalised', disproved by the example of England, where 'not until 1808 was an Act of Parliament passed even permitting the use of public funds for asylums'. Freud is neatly summarised as a 'materialist', 'lionised by the avant-garde as the conquistador of the unconscious'. Porter dismisses retrospective psychoanalysis, suggesting in the case of the fourteenth-century mystic Margery Kempe that 'modern attempts to pin contemporary psychiatric labels on her' will flounder in the absence of a 'master key to Margery's mind'.

Porter appears generally to prefer the eccentric and raving to the experts who fastidiously chained, electric-shocked, doped or hypnotised their patients, depending on the medical consensus of the time.

Treatments nearly as strange as their recipients are held up for gentle ridicule: one of George III's doctors, Francis Willis, ran a Lincolnshire madhouse where the miracle cure lay in the compulsory wearing of 'black coats, white waistcoats, black silk breeches and stockings, and the head of each bien poudrée, frisée, and arrangée'.

Zooming energetically towards the present day, Porter suggests that the rich history of theoretical insights may have all been bluster to no real end: confusion remains. Clinics abound: treating eating disorders, psycho-social problems, sexual dysfunctions.

One generation's obsession with the modish necessity of psychoanalysis becomes the next generation's reliance on the seratonin-kick of Prozac. Mental hypochondria becomes conventional, as the 'idioms of the psychological and the psychiatric replace Christianity and humanism as the ways of making sense of self'.

But, despite the 'ship of fools' ending, Porter stops short of forecasting the decline of the West. His interest is less in commanding polemic, than in the extraordinary variety of attitudes to madness across the centuries.

Through the enthusiastic density of the preceding pages, Porter answers his own question: 'Folly' has never stopped jingling its bells, but we hear different tunes, depending on where we're standing in history.

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Minoans: Life in Bronze Age Crete


Minoans: Life in Bronze Age Crete
Rodney Castleden
Routledge

In this companion to The Knossos Labyrinth (Routledge, 1990), Castleden gives us an outline of the Minoan culture that, he alleges, is more consistent with recent archaeological evidence: that Knossos was a temple, not a palace, in which occurred not only athletic games and graceful rites, but also human sacrifice and other behaviors pointing to a previously unsuspected dark side to the Minoan personality; and that the Minoan world view and distinctive artistic vision were stimulated by the widespread eating of opium. His revision is not implausible. In early cultures the line between church and state tended to be hazy; so with its architecture. On the other hand, in his zeal to reexamine all traditional theories Castleden frequently proposes scenarios drawn more from psychosocial inference than evidence, yielding arguments less compelling than the originals. A nation of addicts could scarcely have had the energy to execute drug-induced creativity, much less to develop the commercial empire that was ancient Crete under the Minoans. Thought-provoking nonetheless.
-Jo-Ann D. Suleiman, Sanad Support Technologies, Rockville, Md.

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