All posts tagged: philosophy

Parmenides…Joyce

Tuesday, June 16, 2026
by Joseph Weissman
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aesthetics / chaos / dreams / immanence / metaphysics / phenomenology / signification

The mares that carry me as far as my (their?) spirit might reach Were conducting [me]; when leading (carrying) me they put me onto a many-voiced road Of a goddess (daimōn), who through all cities bears the man of understanding… Parmenides (DK B1.1-3) …most people are not aware that this roundabout progress through all things is the only way in which the mind can attain truth and wisdom. Plato, Parmenides Citations (U xx) follow the […]

Antigone Ironhearted

Sunday, December 28, 2025
by Joseph Weissman
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aesthetics / antiproduction / censorship / drama / genealogy / irony / revolution / speech / war

Sophocles’ Antigone functions as a tragic simulation of state intelligence. It offers practical and didactic lessons to the ruling class on detecting sabotage, recognizing coded resistance, and disrupting clandestine networks of dissent. This lesson is dramatized in the paradoxical dyad of Antigone and Ismene, who embody the problem of collective action. What reasons could lie behind their invention, more urgent than mythological continuity? A new idea is being expressed that simultaneously involves both family and polis. The […]

The Philosopher

Saturday, November 11, 2023
by Joseph Weissman
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In fact, an ancient story has it that the gods delight in this business, both as followers and spectators of the chase. —Xenophon, Cynegetica The fox is a trap; when the right moment comes the dead creature becomes more alive than the living. But the skill of the fox lies in its ability to lie low, crouching in the shadows. This is how the author of the Treatise on Hunting sees it: ‘The most scheming […]

Translation of F. Laruelle’s “The Concept of an Ordinary Ethics or of an Ethics Founded in Man”

Saturday, June 13, 2020
by Taylor Adkins
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ethics / Laruelle / non-philosophy / ordinary ethics / philosophy / philosophy of ethics / Uncategorized

The Concept of an Ordinary Ethics or of an Ethics Founded in Man F. Laruelle. “Le concept d’une éthique ordinaire ou fondée dans l’homme.” Rue Descartes 7 (1993: 70-82). Translated by Taylor Adkins (6/13/20)             Ordinary ethics: the formula is ambiguous and perhaps must be abandoned. It does not designate the morality inscribed in everydayness, supposedly that of man in opposition to a philosophical ethics. On the contrary, it is opposed to these two ethics […]

New Translation of François Laruelle’s Nietzsche contre Heidegger, Chapter 1

Sunday, May 6, 2018
by Taylor Adkins
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fascism / French Translation / French Translations / heidegger / Laruelle / Nietzsche / Politics / Rebellion / revolution / translation / Uncategorized

Laruelle, François. Nietzsche contre Heidegger. Payot: Paris, 1977, p. 9-20. Translated by Taylor Adkins (For a paragraph-by-paragraph translator’s introduction and exegesis of the following text, go to this threadreaderapp readout)   1. THE TWO POLITICS OF NIETZSCHE 1. Thesis 1: Nietzsche is the revolutionary thinker who corresponds to the era of Imperialism in Capitalism, and more specifically to the era of Fascism in Imperialism. Thesis 2: Nietzsche is, in a double sense, the thinker of fascism; he […]

Notes on ‘Introduction aux sciences génériques’

Friday, March 1, 2013
by Taylor Adkins
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The following are notes typed up fairly summarily and quickly from Laruelle’s Introduction aux sciences génériques [Introduction to the Generic Sciences], Paris: Editions Petra, 2008. Since this work hasn’t yet been translated, I have tried to stick closely to Laruelle’s verbiage. Any lack of clarity is definitely on my part. One thing not included in these notes is a little dig that Laruelle makes at Badiou and Deleuze (p. 21). Since I am mentioning it […]

Simondon in English: “Two Lessons on Animal and Man”

Thursday, January 19, 2012
by Joseph Weissman
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animal / desire / ecology / individuation / mythology / psychology / Simondon

It is my great delight to help announce the publication of one of the first book-length English translations available of the writings of French philosopher of technology Gilbert Simondon (1924-1989), published by Univocal. The volume is available under the title Two Lessons on Animal and Man and was translated by Drew Burk. The work is composed of a series of lectures intended for undergraduates interested in the humanities, especially philosophy, sociology and psychology. As the translator […]

New Translation of Laruelle’s ‘Biography of the Eye’

Saturday, November 21, 2009
by Taylor Adkins
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night / other / speculation / vision-in-one / world

Biography of the Eye by François Laruelle Originally published as “Biographie de l’oeil,” La Decision philosophique 9 (1989): 93-104. for Adolfo Fernandez Zoila “Man is this night, this empty nothingness that contains everything in its undivided simplicity…he is this night that one sees if one looks a man in the eyes.” Hegel Supplement to Hegel’s judgment concerning man A philosopher has never looked a man directly in the eyes. The philosopher is the man who […]

Irreal

Friday, November 20, 2009
by Joseph Weissman
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noise / subjectivity / truth / violence

Irrealism. Modernity can be seen as a kind of victory for realism, but this victory was always already betrayed by capitalism, disseminated to death. Despite all appearances, the masks and pseudonymity of the postmodern era indicate not an abandonment of the war against cynicism and superstition, but rather a renewed undertaking of this same battle with a greater degree of caution, pragmatism and assiduity than the modern age could have imagined necessary. Will to think. […]

Pathways

Wednesday, May 13, 2009
by Joseph Weissman
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desire / existence / history / idealism / micro-politics / morality / reality / truth

Joel Isaacson, James Joyce (1998) War on Information. Idealism begins with the proposition that life is futurity, yet attempts to halt before the inevitable futility this produces, the cancerous desires which follow, not from “particular” notions, but precisely from the incorporation of Truth into life, that is, the incorporation of a point of ideality into the social diagrammatics of thought. A bad conscience, alienation, a nullity or ‘nihilism,’ is the necessary counterpart to this process […]

Supplements

Friday, March 13, 2009
by Joseph Weissman
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decision / Deleuze / mathematics / Nietzsche / nihilism / non-philosophy

    Is mathematics discovered or invented? But what if we have misplaced the scent from the start; in other words what if this clear distinction elides the process itself, if the particular and immanent relation between invention and discovery forms the basis of the ‘singularizing’ expression involved in a new mathematical proof? But a rigorous diagram of novelty itself, of the Event, seems to escape the boundaries of mathematical thought. Ontology is not the […]

On Recognition, or Why Dogs Make Great Philosophers

Thursday, August 28, 2008
by Taylor Adkins
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justice / Plato / Politics / sameness / the Republic

There are various moments in the Republic, especially in book II which we will focus on here, where justice is elusively illustrated according to those to whom justice is attributed, i.e. proceeding from types which partake in or lay claim to justice and showing by example not only the essence of justice but how it is in itself good. Now, obviously all of this is evident from the text and does not require repeating except […]