Michael Funk Deckard - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Michael Funk Deckard

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2017

Meta: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy, 2017

Journal of Early Modern Studies, 2021

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Phenomenological Reviews, 2017

Philosophy in Review, Oct 31, 2012

Every graduate student knows the anxiety involved in attempting to say something original and not... more Every graduate student knows the anxiety involved in attempting to say something original and not just imitative. Kant, as philosophers well know, is a master of obscure and possibly poor writing but brilliant thought and may be claimed to be the most influential figure of the Enlightenment. Milton may be seen as the best English language poet ever. To say anything original on either of them would be a daunting task in itself. Sanford Budick has attempted the impossible task to say something original on both of them (and to show a hitherto unseen connection between them) regarding the question, 'What makes something original?'

Journal of Early Modern Studies, 2012

De Gruyter eBooks, Dec 19, 2022

Paul Ricoeur'spresentation of "Consciousness and the Unconscious" at acolloquium in Bonneval from... more Paul Ricoeur'spresentation of "Consciousness and the Unconscious" at acolloquium in Bonneval from 1960 cannot make sense until afterwards, which is fundamental to Freud'sn otion of Nachträglichkeit,o ften translated as aprèscoup or afterwardsness. Thisc hapter is an uncovering of the Freudian concept of Nachträglichkeit in Ricoeur'sown philosophical biographyand writing.Areading of Freud'st ext from 1914(" Remembering,R epeating,Working-Through")r eveals how the work of mourning and the worko fm emory werea lreadyi nterlaced from Freedom and Nature to Living Up to Death. If Descartes is right about the cogito,t hen therec annot be ad istinction between the two concepts of consciousness and an unconscious, and the aprè s-coup cannot exist.B ut Freud'sn otion of working-through (perlaboration)f inds ap ossible wayo ut of this impasse. The little miracle of memory,the opposite of which is repetition toward compulsion (or hell), mayr esurrect the dead. The underworlds of Homer, Virgil, and Dante are takenu pi n2 0th-century philosophya nd psychoanalysis. At the coreo ft his philosophical or psychological work is Ricoeur'sp owerful claim: "consciousness is not givenb ut a task." δοκῶ μοι περὶὧ νπ υνθάνεσθε οὐκ ἀμελέτητος εἶναι Plato, Symposium And in the dismal litanyo ft hese names, which weref ull of sand and salt and too much empty,b reezy space[ … ] which to this day, when they drift up likeg as bubbles from the depths of memory, retain their full specific virtue, though they have to traverse one after another the manyd ifferent layers of other mediums beforer eachingt he surface. Proust, Àl ar echerche de temps perdu 1I ntroduction To tell as tory about the middle of Paul Ricoeur'sl ife is to speak of the Colloque sur l'inconscient at the former Benedictine monastery in Bonneval, France in the Open Access.

Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, 2020

I suggest we now face the moment in history when the elemental right to the future tense is endan... more I suggest we now face the moment in history when the elemental right to the future tense is endangered by a panvasive digital architecture of behavior modification owned and operated by surveillance capital, necessitated by its economic imperatives, and driven by its laws of motion, all for the sake of its guaranteed outcomes (Shoshana Zuboff, 2020, p. 331). 1 See Müller (2015, p. 106), who writes: "Thus (Avicenna's) agent intellect functions like a kind of universally accessible external hard disk from which all the individual human souls can get the intellectual forms stored in it from the beginning". See also Russell (1994).

Dance and the Quality of Life, 2019

notes in his book, The Abuse of Beauty: Aesthetics and the Concept of Art (2003), that one of the... more notes in his book, The Abuse of Beauty: Aesthetics and the Concept of Art (2003), that one of the great advances in the philosophy of art has been to understand that not all good art is beautiful. He cites Henri Matisse's painting Blue Nude (1907) as a case in point (p. 36). He also says, however, that: … beauty is the only one of the aesthetic qualities that is also a value, like truth and goodness. It is not simply among the values we live by, but one of the values that defines what a fully human life means. (p. 15) In On Beauty and Being Just, Elaine Scarry (1999) also points to Matisse's paintings as examples that expand the capacity of our minds to change and accommodate new forms of beauty (pp. 46-47). Scarry also credits Matisse for showing us how beautiful persons or things lead the perceiver "to a more capacious regard for the world" (p. 48). Like Danto and Scarry, rather than claiming that beauty is an outmoded idea, we hold to the need for this important concept. This chapter is an attempt to reconsider the idea of beauty in a way that broadens it to include the possibility that there can be beauty in disability when the perceiver learns to expand their regard for the world through dance-based and other social interactions with disabled persons. This broadening is not a watering-down of the idea of beauty, but rather an enriching of it in a way that is true to what is happening in both dance and in non-dance life. In reconsidering beauty, we will first look to the historical origins of the dominant contemporary understanding of beauty. From there we will show how historical accounts of beauty can be traced through

Philosophy in review, 2012

The pilgrim's progress from this world to that which is to come, delivered under the similitude o... more The pilgrim's progress from this world to that which is to come, delivered under the similitude of a dream, wherein is discovered the manner of his setting out, his dangerous journey and safe arrival at the desired country.

Phenomenological Reviews, 2019

STJ | Stellenbosch Theological Journal, 2018

Two works were published the same year: Ricoeur’s Oneself as Another and Coetzee’s Age of Iron (1... more Two works were published the same year: Ricoeur’s Oneself as Another and Coetzee’s Age of Iron (1990). One is philosophy and one is fiction. Both attempt to heal wounds, personal and political. Eschewing purely biographical narratives, their authors attempted to deal meaningfully with death and the work of mourning. What might these works say about symbols, narrative identity and the liminality between life and death, fact and fiction, history and character? I argue that the female narrative of Coetzee’s works are in limine primo – in a place that is no-place – a kind of haunting ground of liminal subjects with no real existence. This form of storytelling approaches the real by means of shocks or intimations that provide an opening onto another world. Both works, Age of Iron and Oneself as Another, can be read together as attempts at a work of mourning and at reconciliation with the past and loss.

Phenomenological Reviews, 2016

The Science of Sensibility: Reading Burke's Philosophical Enquiry, 2011

Burke and the writing of the Philosophical Enquiry Edmund Burke (1730-1797) was 23 years old when... more Burke and the writing of the Philosophical Enquiry Edmund Burke (1730-1797) was 23 years old when he finished writing the Philosophical Enquiry, as he attests to in the introduction to the 1757 edition. 29 A major work in the history of criticism (or what we would now call aesthetics), the topic of the book had long been present in Burke's mind. From his early years in college (1743-1748), Burke was fascinated by literature, poetry, and art. Sneaking away when possible, spending much of his free time reading literature and history in the public library, Burke was not much engaged in his formal studies at Trinity College, Dublin, but aspired to become a poet. 30 Burke was immersed from early on in literary pursuits. He co-founded a debating club and a periodical, and he wrote poems, satires and newspaper articles. His interest in art theory is also clear from a letter he wrote when he was 14 years old. In this letter, he comments favourably on a Hutchesonian view of 'beauty' as consisting in variety and uniformity, exemplified in the motion of the heavenly bodies. 31 In the ten years or so that Burke formed and gestated his ideas on the beautiful and the sublime, he would draw on various sources. In addition to Burke's classical studies from Aristotle to Virgil, Horace and Cicero, 32 an early inspiration from his college years was the Greek treatise Peri Hupsous [On the Sublime], attributed to Longinus, which he shared enthusiastically with his friends. 33 From 1750, a new world opened up to Burke, when he travelled to England to study law. He still did not apply himself to his studies wholeheartedly, and his interests were deflected to literary topics, soaking up the London intellectual milieu. At first, the change disagreed with Burke. For two years, till 1752, Burke suffered from psychosomatic ailments, which he attributed to his sensibility and too much study. Probably, it was rather due to his inability to apply himself to his studies and to make a firm choice as regards his future. He travelled to resorts to alleviate his sufferings, and it was at the fashionable resort of Bath that he met Christopher Nugent, who would become a major influence in his life. Nugent was a physician and Burke initially came to him for a cure of his illness. Burke was very much impressed with Nugent's character, however, and the latter became the guide, friend and surrogate father figure that Burke needed. Burke had been interested in medicine from early on. In 1745, for instance, he had attended a course of public lectures by the oculist John Taylor. Although Burke considered Taylor an errant quack, Burke's biographer Fred Lock speculates that these lectures could have started him thinking about the physiology of perception, and about the experiences of the blind, which provided important evidence for his 29 For biographies of Burke in the 1750s, see esp. F.P. Lock's recent biography,

The British Journal of Aesthetics, 2006

MUCH OF the recent philosophical literature on the aesthetic theories of Hume and Kant has, or so... more MUCH OF the recent philosophical literature on the aesthetic theories of Hume and Kant has, or so it seems to me, misrepresented the history and development of eighteenth-century aesthetics. That is to say, many artists, thinkers, and philosophers have simply been left ...