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This paper critically evaluates Foucault’s relation to Bachelard and Canguilhem. It reconsiders the relevance of the concept of “influence” for treating this relation in order to register the more sceptical position Foucault adopts towards knowledge practices than either of these figures from twentieth-century French epistemology.

Ruth Leys’ Ascent of Affect is a compelling and impressive history of twentieth century interest in the emotions as an object of study in the human sciences. Leys’ interest in the topic dates from ...

This article canvases some of the issues involved in the idea of form as a practice in Kant, Blumenberg and Foucault, and it also outlines the different contexts and approaches the individual papers collected in this Special Issue use to explore this idea.

This paper offers a critical analysis of the use of the idea of distance in philosophical anthropology. Distance is generally presented in works of philosophical anthropology as the ideal coping strategy, which rests in turn on the thesis of the instinct deficiency of the human species. Some of the features of species life, such as its sophisticated use of symbolic forms, come to be seen as necessary parts of this general coping strategy, rather than a merely expressive outlet, incidental to the ultimate goal of life preservation. The paper analyses the arguments used in support of the thesis of instinct deficiency in Hans Blumenberg and considers their implications for the status of symbolic expression in species life. It contrasts the approach this thesis involves with one that proceeds by presenting and arguing from biological evolutionary evidence. The contrast is used to examine the questions: in what sense instinct deficiency is specifically anthropological, and in what precise sense philoso...

The concept of ‘the image’ can be given historical, conceptual, aesthetic and moral specifications. This essay sets out some of the scholarly issues in the dense semantic field of ‘the image’. In p...

From the comparative framework of writing on the meaning of ritual in the field of the history of religions (M. Eliade and J. Z. Smith), this essay argues that one of the major problems in Benjamin’s thinking is how to make certain forms of materiality stand out against other (degraded) forms. In his early work, the way that Benjamin deals with this problem is to call degraded forms “symbolic”, and those forms of materiality with positive value, “allegorical”. The article shows how there is more than an incidental connection with the recent approach to ritual in the field of history of religions, seeing that Benjamin too wants to set out the significance of certain material forms against those that are “ritualistic” and hence false. It is argued that he treats the latter in his essay on Elective Affinities and the former in his Trauerspiel. The key claim is that the way material forms stand out as meaningful is akin to the Kantian description of the aesthetic attitude, which identifies how certain...

Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man is a modern myth. Like many ancient myths it seems to have the structure of a rite of passage analysed by van Gennep into three stages: separation, marginal existence and reintegration. Separation is precipitated by a traumatic event and the marginal state is characterized by extraordinary experiences and feats. However, Jarmusch's tale does not quite fit the ancient initiation pattern since the last stage, reintegration, is at least prima facie missing. This already undermines the social function of initiation and warps the significance of the myth. The modern town of “Machine”, where the marginal existence of Blake is sealed, looms in the background of the story of his final journey to the world of spirits whence he had come. But Blake cannot quite embrace the story in which he plays the protagonist. The story is cobbled together by the Native American called “Nobody.” Blake sceptically resigns himself to his fate. Why does Blake do this? Jarmusch manipulates the generic structur...

This paper examines the use of "pleasure" as the distinguishing mark of aesthetic experience in post-Kantian philosophy. It shows how the distinctive features of aesthetic experience, such as pleasure, qualify this experience as a platform for social criticism. The key argument is that the autonomy of the aesthetic experience is not "false", rather it is paradoxical in the strong sense that the fact of its communicative efficacy, which follows from distinctive, "autonomous" aesthetic features, necessarily loads it with functions and expectations that are external to the aesthetic moment. Kant takes a complicated path to qualify aesthetic judgement as disinterested in order that it may eloquently testify for morality. He thereby sets up the cogency of the modern pattern of looking to aesthetic experience as a locus of meaningful communication for ideas that are experientially poor or remote.

Kant's moral philosophy understands the experience of moral law in two somewhat divergent ways.1 In the preface to his Critique of Practical Reason Kant defines moral law as a mere ‘fact’ of moral ...

Background: The impact of change in communication, life participation, and psychological well‐being in aphasia is recognised but still not fully explored. Further, considerable scope exists to address these factors within the context of intervention. Innovative practices and group intervention are advocated for people with chronic aphasia but detail and evidence remains limited. We are grateful to Leeds Health Authority, the Leeds Speech and Language Therapy Service, Leeds Social Services, Leeds Metropolitan University and the Leeds Modernisation Team ‐ Disability for funding and other resources for the group and the research. Our thanks in particular are conveyed to the group participants. Additionally we thank the reviewers for their guidance. Aims: To explore the experience of aphasia within the context of communication, life participation and psychological well‐being and evaluate the outcomes of these phenomena in people with chronic aphasia following participation in a group intervention involving a ...

(2006). The Work of the Art-Work: Art after Heidegger's Origin of the Work of Art. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology: Vol. 37, Ontology, Art and The Holy, pp. 199-215.

This paper deals with Derrida’s analysis of Kant’s Critique of Judgment in his essay ‘Economimesis’. I argue that Derrida’s analysis of Kant’s aesthetics can be used to describe the aporia within Kantian politics between rebellion and progressive revolutionary acts. The focus of my argument falls on examining how the recent debate over Derrida’s ethics can be usefully considered from the background of this treatment of Kant. In particular, the analysis Derrida gives of Kant’s aesthetics commits him to a series of conceptual constraints that can be detected in his recent commentaries on ‘forgiveness’ and ‘hospitality’. I suggest that these recent commentaries on political topics also depart from his earlier practice of ethics in ‘Economimesis’ as a ‘witnessing’ of the particular. This departure can be clearly seen once the Kantian background to Derrida’s recent writing is set out.

This paper analyses the diverse references involved in Walter Benjamin’s idea of revolution. Despite its significance for his philosophical outlook, the concept of revolution seems to receive no systematic or perhaps even consistent treatment in his heterogeneous writings. But what is clear is that, in contrast to the way the term is usually understood in political philosophy, Benjamin conceives of revolution primarily as a category of experience, a type of emphatic experience of meaning. The paper defends this interpretation against some of the recent treatments of Benjamin’s notion of the dream and the wish. It shows that an adequate account of Benjamin’s idea of revolution must grapple with his peculiar idea of an articulated wish that is fulfilled in history. And it defends the thesis that this idea of a fulfilled historical wish provides the most robust formulation of the different references involved in Benjamin’s idea of revolutionary experience as well an instructive point of contrast between Benjamin’s treatment of this idea and other well-known conceptions of revolution.