Category Archives: Philosophy

Bite Size Theory: Complications: Communism and the Dilemmas of Democracy

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“At the source of democracy can be found the rejection of a number of things: power detached from the social ensemble, law that governs an immutable order, and a spiritual authority possessing knowledge of the ultimate ends of human conduct and of the community. However, it is not enough to say at the source of democracy: this rejection has been democracy’s permanent driving energy. A force of negativity inhabits it.”

Claude Lefort, 1999, Complications: Communism and the Dilemmas of Democracy. New York, Columbia University Press

Bite Size Theory: Religion and Rationality

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“I only want to say that the evidence of my relation to a theological heritage does not bother me, as long as one recognizes the methodological difference of the discourses: that is, as long as the philosophical discourse conforms to the distinctive demands of justificatory speech. In my view, a philosophy that oversteps the bounds of methodological atheism loses its philosophical seriousness.”

Jürgen Habermas, 2002, Religion and Rationality: Essays on Reason, God, and Modernity, Polity Press.

Bite Size Theory: Between Facts and Norms

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“Democratic procedure, which establishes a network of pragmatic considerations, compromises, and discourses of self-understanding and of justice, grounds the presumption that reasonable or fair results are obtained insofar as the flow of relevant information and its proper handling have not been obstructed.”

Jürgen Habermas, 1996, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, Polity Press.

Bite Size Theory: The Laws of Hostility

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“The Enlightenment, confronted by the evil of politics, goes down in a display of true religious pageantry, showing that morality cannot be conceived without the guarantee of some sort of transcendence.”

Pierre Saint-Armand, 1996, The Laws of Hostility, University of Minnesota Press.

Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology: 25th Anniversary Issue

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For those interested in space, place, embodiment, intentionality, and such things, the latest, and 25th anniversary issue of Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology, edited by David Seamon, is available here or here. Includes short essays on phenomenological themes by various people, including Ted Relph, Yi-Fu Tuan, Jef Malpas, and Tim Ingold.

Bite Size Theory: Autiobographies

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“Beautiful as is the morality of the New Testament, it can hardly be denied that its perfection depends in part on the interpretation which we now put on metaphors and allegories.”

Charles Darwin, 2002, Autobiographies, Penguin.

Bite Size Theory: Sophistical Practice

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“Philosophy counts two, speaking of and speaking to, but regardless of what happens in the bosom of the one, they always come back under the regulation of the truth that governs speaking of. […] Austin’s invention consists in counting three.”

Barbara Cassin, 2014, Sophistical Practice: Toward a Consistent Relativism, Fordham University Press.

Bite Size Theory: Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline

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“It is not an accident or a limitation or a prejudice that we cannot care equally about all the suffering in the world: it is a condition of our existence and our sanity.”

Bernard Williams, 2006, Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline. Princeton University Press.

Bite Size Theory: Ontological Relativity

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“Ontology is indeed doubly relative. Specifying the universe of a theory makes sense only relative to some background theory, and only relative to some choice of a manual of translation of one theory into the other”.

W.V. Quine, 1969, Ontological Relativity and other essays, Columbia University Press.

Bite Size Theory: The Visual World of French Theory

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Photo Yann Revol“I argue both directly and implicitly that it was the confrontation with the explosion of the art world and its discourses – as well as events on the street and the barricades – that released a generation of philosophers from the ivory tower of the École Normale Supérieure and that their engagement with contemporary art played a crucial role in formulating the new postmodern mindset”.

Sarah Wilson, 2010, The Visual World of French Theory: Figurations, Yale University Press.