Don Beith | University of Maine (original) (raw)

Books by Don Beith

Series in Continental Thought, no. 52 Ohio University Press “A timely contribution ... more Series in Continental Thought, no. 52
Ohio University Press

“A timely contribution to scholarship on Merleau-Ponty’s work, considering the emerging focus in phenomenological literature on the significance of the dimension of passivity.… Beith advances a phenomenology of embodiment by going beyond a mere ‘corporeal essentialism’ to a focus that can engage with difference and oppression generally and issues of gender and race more specifically”
--Fiona Utley, University of New England, Australia

“Beith fruitfully deploys the concepts of 'institution' and 'passivity' to interpret central issues in Merleau-Ponty's corpus and in contemporary philosophy, ultimately offering an account of the emergence of personhood and sociality out of the matrix of intercorporeal embodiment and behavior. This is a significant addition not only to Merleau-Ponty scholarship but also, more broadly, to philosophical discussions about nature, development, learning, self-consciousness, agency, and politics.”
--Scott Marratto, author of The Intercorporeal Self: Merleau-Ponty on Subjectivity

In The Birth of Sense, Don Beith proposes a new concept of generative passivity, the idea that our organic, psychological, and social activities take time to develop into sense. More than being a limit, passivity marks out the way in which organisms, persons, and interbodily systems take time in order to manifest a coherent sense. Beith situates his argument within contemporary debates about evolution, developmental biology, scientific causal explanations, psychology, postmodernism, social constructivism, and critical race theory. Drawing on empirical studies and phenomenological reflections, Beith argues that in nature, novel meaning emerges prior to any type of constituting activity or deterministic plan.

The Birth of Sense is an original phenomenological investigation in the style of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and it demonstrates that the French philosopher’s works cohere around the notion that life is radically expressive. While Merleau-Ponty’s early works are widely interpreted as arguing for the primacy of human consciousness, Beith argues that a pivotal redefinition of passivity is already under way here, and extends throughout Merleau-Ponty’s corpus. This work introduces new concepts in contemporary philosophy to interrogate how organic development involves spontaneous expression, how personhood emerges from this bodily growth, and how our interpersonal human life remains rooted in, and often thwarted by, domains of bodily expressivity.

Conference Presentations by Don Beith

A generative workshop fostering creative thinking, experiential teaching and engaged practice. Un... more A generative workshop fostering creative thinking, experiential teaching and engaged practice. University of Maine, Department of Philosophy 2021

Papers by Don Beith

Humanities, 2023

Maurice Merleau-Ponty takes inspiration from Franz Kafka’s metonymic animal literature to develop... more Maurice Merleau-Ponty takes inspiration from Franz Kafka’s metonymic animal literature to develop his concepts of institution and “sardonic humanism.” Metonymy is a literary device, an instituting dimension of language, that allows us a lateral access to animality and expression. Kafka’s dog story enacts a radical reflection, a critical phenomenology parodying human life. Kafka puts forward a philosophy of generative openness to the animal, against social alienation. This reading comes with Merleau-Ponty’s existential redeployment of Sigmund Freud’s concept of the unconscious as expressive passivity or institution of adulthood. As instituting–instituted, we are always between preserving and surpassing the past, though different comportments and institutions can dogmatically or openly take up these possibilities. Kafka’s (struggle through) metonymic animal literature reminds us that philosophical truth is expressive, that unconscious desire animates language, and that the oppressive silencing of the generative past, the feeling child and the other animal, is at the root of society’s institutionalized oppression. Institution offers a literary method of phenomenologically resisting, of creative critique.

Environmental Philosophy (18.2), 2021

Biomimicry promises great progress in ecological design. Advocates, hinging on the work of Janine... more Biomimicry promises great progress in ecological design. Advocates, hinging on the work of Janine Benyus, argue that biomimicry enhances sustainable technologies. This essay suggests conceptual and ethical improvements to biomimicry: first by considering Michael Fisch's concept of bioinspiration through studying Neri Oxman's Silkworm Pavilion and second, through the articulation of a new concept of biosophia, drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty's late Institution and Nature lectures. His investigation of seemingly impossible proto-mimicry prior to perception discloses a deeper comportment toward biomimicry, revealing its conditions of possibility in intercorporeal expressivity. Biosophia grounds a deeper ethic of collaboration with other lifeforms.

Horizon (7) 2018:186-202.

in _Perception and its Development in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology_ Kirsten Jacobson and John Ru... more in _Perception and its Development in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology_ Kirsten Jacobson and John Russon, eds. 2017: 123-41.

PhaenEx (10) 2015: 189-200.

Chiasmi (15) 2013: 195-210.

Symposium (11) 2007: 183-187.

Teaching Documents by Don Beith

Seminar for Spring 2025. Deep time, intergenerational justice and radical climate futures.

Prof. Don Beith Spring 2022, University of Maine

We will investigate and discuss healthcare ethics during a once in a century public healthcare cr... more We will investigate and discuss healthcare ethics during a once in a century public healthcare crisis. Through familiarizing ourselves with basic concepts from existentialism, we will philosophically interrogate and analyze the concepts of health, illness and care. Being alive, as human beings, includes not just bodily health, but also personal and social well being. To deepen our understanding of the relationship between health, care and interpersonal life, we will reflect upon the phenomenon of human respiratory illness. Developing this enriched account of human well being enables a study of the practices, places and people through which we receive healthcare, and thus allows us to better appreciate the ethical dilemmas that arise in care work. Studying basic principles of clinical ethics in modern medical institutions will open up deeper reflections upon the ethics of care-giving, medical institutional design, the virtues and moral distress of nurses, the nature of dependency in aging, the distribution of scarce resources like ventilators, and the ultimate questions that face us and those we care for at the end of our lives. We will consider the questions of autonomy, end of life care, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, the ethics of organ transplantation, the right to universal healthcare, the nature of the globalized pharmaceutical industry, the ethics of medical testing performed on humans, and critical questions about racial and economic medical justice in the pandemic. Our investigations conclude with an interdisciplinary study of the Covid-19 crisis, and questions of how the pandemic is ethically changing us.

This is a philosophy course. You should come to our online classes each week already having read these texts, but moreover having thought about what they mean and how they make rationally compelling arguments. If you come online ready to ask questions and constructively talk about these challenging texts and issues, you will not only succeed in the course but also discover new ways of thinking about life, wellness, bioethics and your own clinical experiences.

This is an interdisciplinary course centered at the intersection of philosophical ethics and ecol... more This is an interdisciplinary course centered at the intersection of philosophical ethics and ecology. We will endeavor to develop sharp reasoning skills, ethical concepts and an appreciation for different ways of thinking about our place in nature, the way our cultural shapes our environments, and the contemporary crisis of climate change with its global consequences. Our course consists of three units and a seminar component. Henry David Thoreau's autobiographical hiking stories in The Maine Woods will open our study and allow us to explore our historical, experiential and eco-centric relationships to nature here in Maine. Second, Alexander Wilson's The Culture of Nature: North American Landscapes from Disney to the Exxon Valdez will, through a Canadian perspective, shed light on how the ways we perceive and talk about the environment are products of our specific cultures. By reading Rob Nixon's Slow Violence: The Environmentalism of the Poor we can come to a position to critically interrogate the way climate change unjustly affects the globally marginalized. Our changing environment, we will see, involves not only scientific and ecological problems, but also ethical challenges and existential crises. About one quarter of the class will be a seminar format, where groups are responsible for presenting on a short, supplementary reading about local and global ecological issues, ranging from the Maine Woods National Park debate, to hunting and animal rights, the Penobscot Nation's water struggle, and other contemporary issues. You can expect to leave this course with new ideas about nature, ethics, climate change, and ecological justice.

With so much uncertainty about the sustainability of our current ways of life and technological p... more With so much uncertainty about the sustainability of our current ways of life and technological practices, many existential and ethical questions arise. This course is a study of the basic ideas in biology, engineering, and the humanities in light of our contemporary environmental issues. We will read and interrogate texts, ideas, and scientific developments from historical, ecological socioeconomic , philosophical and local perspectives in order to think about the relationship between technology, evolution and the meaning of future life on Earth. This course is divided into three sections: first, an inquiry into the philosophical first principles of life, biology and evolution through a careful study of Charles Darwin's world-changing account of evolution in On the Origin of Species ; second, a philosophical investigation, through the work of Hans Jonas' From Ancient Creed to Technological Man of the impact of technology, engineering and the scientific revolution on our contemporary life and planetary future; and third, a reflection on the convergence of life and technology, through a critical investigation of biotechnology and genetics with sociobiologist Richard Lewontin's Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA. Analyzing the ways technology influences biological evolution, and also our social life, can better help us understand the roles of human action in climate change. Alongside these central readings, lectures and discussions, you will engage in group presentations and seminar days where each group is responsible for giving a discussion-starter presentation about a short reading on an ethically significant issue in life science or ecology. By the end of the class you should expect to be able to carefully discuss, write and think about key conceptual and ethical issues in biology, engineering and ecology.

In this course we will study the unique paradoxes that are at the center of human life. Existenti... more In this course we will study the unique paradoxes that are at the center of human life. Existentialism is a philosophical science that concerns itself with human freedom. Like biology or physics, this science seeks to systematically account for what it means to be a person who experiences the world and is faced by the demands of her own freedom. Unlike these other sciences however, existentialism does not involve looking at a human being from a third-person perspective, like we might do in a laboratory or a statistical study, but rather involves an investigation where we ourselves the questioner are also the thing in question. In other words, existentialism is a science of everyday life, one we must learn to practice in real, living terms. Some of our greatest works and traditions in literature offer us an ideal place to conduct this study. Literary works directly engage us within the structures and conflicts that define our experience. To this end, we will use our science of human experience— existentialism—to study literary works that directly ask us what it means to be human. In the first part of the course we will learn the central existentialist themes of freedom, alienation, mystery, wonder and anxiety from the works of Jean-Paul Sartre and David Foster Wallace, while reading a play about one of the most perplexing existentialists in our modern world: Hamlet. We will consider how theatre and drama offer unique methods of studying human experience through dialogue and monologue, and also consider how human life is marked by a sense of tragedy. In the second section of the course, we will read prose from Sheila Watson and Toni Morrison in order to explore the paradoxes and contradictions of human freedom. Here we will draw upon the critical philosophers Simone de Beauvoir and Frantz Fanon, who offer compelling studies of human oppression and the difficult nature of freedom. We will specifically consider how the prose narrative form offers opportunities to understand human oppression. Finally, we turn to poetry and the mysterious wonder that surrounds our being in the world. Through Martin Heidegger's study of the poetic character of human experience, we will investigate the poetry of Sophocles, Al Purdy, Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes. Our questioning will explore how verse, metaphor and live-voice melodics offer us unprecedented avenues to understand the nature of our being. Along the way we will consider other philosophical movements and artistic genres, like painting, film, music and dance. You should leave this course with the basic skills of a philosophical commentator and literary critic—but this will involve a lot of careful reading, thinking, re-reading, writing, and collaboratively talking about these things in class.

This course is a study of what makes a human life good, how to assess the rightness of our intent... more This course is a study of what makes a human life good, how to assess the rightness of our intentions and actions, and the individual and shared character of responsibility. As a course in philosophy, ethics requires us to consider the ways we are ignorant and not adequately self-aware of the ethical principles and institutions that orient our lives. By taking up some of the greatest works in our intellectual history we challenge ourselves to find deeper and richer norms and narratives to make sense of our moral life. Our study begins with the works of ancient Greek thinkers, Sophocles and Aristotle, who demonstrate that ethical issues are deeply embedded in our character, our friendships, and our family and civic life in ways that are often obscure to us. Thinking about ethics from the standpoint of character opens up a position where we can become critical of implicit biases that inform and distort the objectivity of our ethical reasoning, particularly in cases of nationalism, class consciousness, and racism. After studying this ancient " virtue ethics " , we turn to modern theories of ethical agency, including David Hume's sceptical method that roots morality in the life of our feelings, John Stuart Mill's action-oriented utilitarian theory of ethical life, and Immanuel Kant's demonstration that our very freedom as ethical agents binds us to universal, absolute moral duties. Special focus will be given to how Kant's " deontology " or duty-ethics can make sense of the contradictions and impasses of contemporary moral life. To further this end, we carefully study the critical philosophies of existential phenomenology and feminist critical theory by turning to the works of John Russon and Maria Lugones, respectively. Here we will explore how concrete human relationships, embodiment, and the nature of expressive spaces shape our moral agency. By the end of this course, you should be able to differentiate, apply, and philosophically discuss these deep and challenging theories of ethical value.

PHI 100 - University of Maine

PHI 242 - The University of Maine

This is a course about healthcare ethics. To begin, we will philosophically interrogate and analy... more This is a course about healthcare ethics. To begin, we will philosophically interrogate and analyze the concepts of health and care. We will see that being alive, as human beings, includes not just bodily health, but also personal and social well being. To be fully alive and healthy, then, is to exist within relationships of care. To deepen our understanding of the relationship between health, care and interpersonal life, we will reflect upon the phenomenon of human illness. Developing this enriched account of human wellbeing will allow us to reflect upon the practices, places and people through which we receive healthcare, and thus enable us to better appreciate the ethical dilemmas that arise in situations of caring for our health. Studying the nature of the clinical experience in modern medical institutions will open up deeper reflections upon the ethics of care-giving, medical institutional design, the role and virtue of nurses, the nature of dependency in aging, and the ultimate questions that face us and those we care for at the end of our lives. Next, we will move to contemporary debates in biomedical ethics about the nature and limits of healthcare. We will consider the questions of autonomy, end of life care, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, the right to universal healthcare, the nature of the globalized pharmaceutical industry, the ethics of medical testing performed on animals and humans, and questions about the benefits and limitations of genetic patenting. In conclusion, we will briefly examine feminist critiques of the concept of autonomous, liberal decision making in biomedical ethics, and we will also take up a powerful existentialist challenge to the discipline of clinical psychiatry. Our goal is to collaboratively develop deeper theoretical resources and existential sensitivities to grapple with some of the most difficult issues we sharedly face as we strive for healthy, caring, and full lives. This is a philosophy course. You should come to class already having read these texts, but moreover thought about what they mean and how they make rationally compelling arguments. If you come to class ready to ask questions and constructively talk about these challenging texts and issues, you will not only succeed in the course but also discover new ways of thinking about life, wellness, and our shared obligations and institutions of health and care.

Series in Continental Thought, no. 52 Ohio University Press “A timely contribution ... more Series in Continental Thought, no. 52
Ohio University Press

Humanities, 2023

Environmental Philosophy (18.2), 2021

Horizon (7) 2018:186-202.

PhaenEx (10) 2015: 189-200.

Chiasmi (15) 2013: 195-210.

Symposium (11) 2007: 183-187.

Seminar for Spring 2025. Deep time, intergenerational justice and radical climate futures.

Prof. Don Beith Spring 2022, University of Maine

PHI 100 - University of Maine

PHI 242 - The University of Maine

This course is a commencement to the study of philosophy, the systematic study of what we can kno... more This course is a commencement to the study of philosophy, the systematic study of what we can know and what it means to be. These two topics: epistemology and metaphysics will be the focus of our study. The course is divided into three parts: one concerning the nature of selfhood and personal identity, one about metaphysical arguments concerning causality (the questions of free will and god), and a final section considering the difficult problems we face in explaining how we know what we know. We will work to understand the reasoning and interrogative methods of some of the most challenging and daring thinkers in our rich traditions. For this reason, no matter your level of previous education or preparation, I suggest you approach the practice of philosophy with a beginner's mindset, because even if we have read these texts or thought about these issues before, philosophy demands from us what Socrates called a vocational ignorance. This involves the recognition that we are not always aware of what is left " unthought " , as well as the commitment to develop a radically critical self-understanding. Indeed, by the end of this class you should expect to have a sharpened appreciation that that are distinctive and powerful arguments that explain both the limits of knowledge and the nature of reality.

This class is an introductory study of central issues in jurisprudence. We will study inf... more This class is an introductory study of central issues in jurisprudence. We will study influential and distinctive visions of what constitutes, justifies, and effects law. Our orienting question is the relationship of philosophy, law, and morality. The first section of our study will take up this question of the nature and existence of law, and different conceptions of the nature of legal authority. Here our particular focus will be Hart's legal positivism, and its various critics. In the middle section of the class, we will consider philosophical debates about the legislation, adjudication, and enforcement of law, particularly debates surrounding imprisonment and retributive justice. Finally, our investigations conclude with feminist philosophers, critical legal scholars and critical race theorists who point out critical shortcomings in legal theory and systematic injustices in the practice of law. The question of the legitimacy of conventional colonial legal regimes will take us back to concerns about the authoritative violence of law we encountered in our study of positivism. By the end of the course, you should have a solid grasp of these issues in jurisprudence and a more developed critical awareness of how practical and theoretical legal problems are mutually enmeshed.

This is a philosophy course. So more than just studying how law happens to be practiced, we will focus on conceptual arguments that define, explain and justify legal principles and practices. Appreciating the strength of a good conceptual argument is a skill you should work to refine through this study. Indeed, the practice of sustained, constructive argument marks out a kinship between philosophy and law, a relationship that we will carefully consider throughout the course.

PHIL 385: Existentialism UBC, Winter 2016

PHIL 449, UBC, Winter 2016: Continental Philosophy Special topic for 2016: The Phenomenology of M... more PHIL 449, UBC, Winter 2016: Continental Philosophy
Special topic for 2016: The Phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty

PHIL 375: Philosophy and Literature University of British Columbia Don Beith Fall 2015

A syllabus for a class for honours philosophy majors on the works of Immanuel Kant, Bishop's Univ... more A syllabus for a class for honours philosophy majors on the works of Immanuel Kant, Bishop's University, Fall 2014.

Presented at the 2nd Annual UBC-SFU Undergraduate Philosophy Conference, in Vancouver. in their ... more Presented at the 2nd Annual UBC-SFU Undergraduate Philosophy Conference, in Vancouver.

in their respective works, the 1948 essay " On What There Is " and the lecture course called " Basic Concepts " and presented 75 years ago in the winter of 1941, share a concern about how statements involving " there is " tend to imply consequences about being. For each thinker, existential statements are first and foremost characterized not by indication of what there is but by linguistic meaningfulness. Despite this shared concern, they inseparably diverge in working out the implications of this point. Quine argues that since our concepts are always attempts to adequately describe and explain a given flow of raw phenomena, the task of his logical analysis of language is to reduce languages to efficient means of offering definite descriptions of what appears to us. A conceptual system, for Quine, only commits us to claiming that something is when a definite description applies to the range of a bound variable, and only then comes the question of whether this description does a good job of simplifying our experience of matters.

For Heidegger, no such division between experience and speech—phenomenon and logos—is possible in advance. Rejecting Quine's empiricist premise, Heidegger argues that language, particularly the statement " there is " , is a transcendental condition of possibility of intelligibility as such. Instead of conceiving of this transcendental condition as a concept that determines an object, as Immanuel Kant might have it, Heidegger argues that the copula, the formulation " X is Y " , demands a more radical and unconstrained conception of transcendental conditions. There is something unconditioned and indeterminate about synthesis. Heidegger argues that the copula is a condition of possibility that is in itself unintelligible, but only shows itself up as intelligible through acts of expressive predication. We can thus better grasp the statement " there is " in light of the German " es gibt " or " there is given " , conceiving being first and foremost as a coming to presence that grasps us. In this way, we understand being as a kind of pre-predicative giving of intelligibility.

To conclude this reflection, I consider whether Quine has a response to Heidegger's critique. I will also briefly suggest that Heidegger's understanding of the " is " suggests that only a retrogressive understanding of being is possible. I will suggest that this requires that we conceive of language as embodied, embedded, and enactive, but where we understand enactment as temporally delayed and spread-out, or, as expressive. This entails that at some basic level, Heidegger's separation of being and beings is provisional and retrograde, which I see as a reflecting an almost Quinean pragmatic concern, even while rejecting Quine's explanatory dualisms. Namely: meaningfulness is irreducibly specific, provisional, and context-sensitive. Being's spontaneity, then, is always caught up in the acquired meaningfulness of our pre-reflective, embodied and melodically expressive comportment to beings, such that the spontaneity of being is equally a kind of radical passivity that points toward the body as a site of the rhythmic self-articulation of being as expression. Here we can think of embodiment as the pre-predicative silence and comportment that has always nevertheless taken us discriminately into being.

Phenomenology is often criticized as a philosophy that mistakenly privileges consciousness and su... more Phenomenology is often criticized as a philosophy that mistakenly privileges consciousness and subjectivity. If phenomenology presupposes subjectivity, then it must be either supplemented or supplanted by a more comprehensive ontology. In this paper, I argue that such a bifurcation of phenomenological and ontological methods is itself ultimately premised on a kind of mind-body dualism, or the idea that consciousness is a world constituting activity. By drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s 1954-5 lectures on Institution and Passivity, recently translated into English by Leonard Lawlor and Heath Massey, I develop the resources to explain how consciousness is not a meaning-constituting activity but rather an instituting-instituted synthesis, that is, the expressive inheritance and transformation of different developmental institutions of meaning. The paper proceeds by introducing the phenomenological method, dealing with three antinomies that the idea of constitution cannot resolve (a problem of conscious passivity, the problem of the existence of the pre-conscious past, and the problem of other minds). I elaborate the concept of institution by drawing on three levels of institution which I present through the examples of organic sensori-motor development, expressive human habituation and learning (particularly writing), and the experience of shared social spaces and gestures. After exploring these organic, personal, and social institutions, I will briefly develop the implications institution has for, on the one hand, attempts to naturalize phenomenology, and on the other, how we should rethink individual responsibility on the basis of institution.

Talk given at University of Alberta philosophy colloquium series, 27 November 2015.

http://www.phenomenologyresearchcenter.org/Merleau-Pontylow%20%281%29.jpg

Aristotle demonstrates that bodily movement issues between activity and passivity in the joint’s ... more Aristotle demonstrates that bodily movement issues between activity and passivity in the joint’s oscillating motors and anchors of jointed movement. The origin of movement does not issue from a spontaneous activity, but from temporal depth, an already meaningful relation between activity and passivity. This movement, for Aristotle, pivots on a deeper passivity, an unmoving ground—the Earth. I take Aristotle’s account of locomotive movement to the meaning-engendering body of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology. Explaining the habit body as a movement generated between activity and passivity, I argue the body is a kind of temporal depth, and that Merleau-Ponty’s account requires a deeper sense of passivity. In developing this idea I read “The Overthrow of the Copernican Revolution” in order to rethink the foundations of motion and rest, and to assert Husserl’s daring hypothesis that the Earth does not move. Appreciating this claim requires undertaking the very project of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, radically rethinking time in terms of the living body.

A review of the major insights and developments of Husserl's evolving time manuscripts from 1905-... more A review of the major insights and developments of Husserl's evolving time manuscripts from 1905-1917, with special focus on the themes of impression, temporal ambiguity, and operative or lived intentionality.

When we try to say what the meaning of our existence is we commit a kind of hubris. We attempt t... more When we try to say what the meaning of our existence is we commit a kind of hubris. We attempt to speak on behalf of a whole of which we are only a part, and we inevitably err. But we have to be careful too in speaking about this limitedness of philosophical speech, or in using it as sanction not to speak about the meaning of our lives at all. Philosophy requires care is because we are not part of reality as a fixed part of a fixed whole, but rather in a dynamic engagement, a living and embodied threshold which is always on the move, always in question. So as philosophers I think we ought to take great caution in speaking, and in this paper I want to take heed of the words of Socrates, who does not assert a theory of forms so much as a vocational ignorance. Philosophy is the hardest thing because it means standing at a distance from ourselves, seeing ignorance in knowledge, and finding openness by finding limits. Philosophy does not possess wisdom; it loves it: and like good lovers good philosophers must understand that love fails if we hold on too much to ourselves or to our beloved.

Adorno’s Negative Dialectics offers a diverse range of comments on subjectivity and its mediated ... more Adorno’s Negative Dialectics offers a diverse range of comments on subjectivity and its mediated objectivity. I will approach these remarks first with an exegesis of Adorno’s definition of thinking as an affirmation of identity and a negation of the object identified. I will interpret Adorno’s claims about the preponderance of objects against this impasse. Adorno’s reduction of the subject to object is meant to counter the subject’s transcendental claim to authority over objects and the reification of this drive in capitalist society. Adorno illustrates that non-conceptuality and materiality are always tacitly inherent in conceptuality and subjectivity; in this respect I will read Adorno’s analysis of the bodily terms of Hegel’s master-slave relation, and his remarks that subjectivity is little more than an extreme survival instinct. In response, I will argue that rather than reducing subjective experience, Adorno’s Aristotelian conception of nature, from his lectures on metaphysics, can support a dialectical notion of consciousness. I will assert that his model of nature, which in its becoming eludes static concepts, complements his conception of the subject’s self-transcending identity. Adorno calls for us to think against our transcendental and practical mastery of nature, and to discover possibility in the very limit of subjectivity.

Horizon. Studies in Phenomenology, 7.1. (2018), 2018

Журнал входит в международные базы данных, электронные библиотеки открытого доступа, каталоги пер... more Журнал входит в международные базы данных, электронные библиотеки открытого доступа, каталоги периодических изданий: Scopus | DOAJ | The Philosopher's Index | CrossRef | ERIH plus | ProQuest | CEEOL | J-Gate | Ulrich | WorldCat | Google Scholar | CyberLeninka | RISC | MLA International Bibliography | OAJI | COPE Журнал зарегистрирован в качестве СМИ. Свидетельство ПИ № ФС77-54878 от 26 июля 2013 г. Учредители журнала: Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет и Артеменко Наталья Андреевна Журнал издается при Институте философии Санкт-Петербургского государственного университета и при участии Центрального европейского института философии при Карловом университете и Институте философии Чешской академии наук ПУБЛИКУЕМЫЕ МАТЕРИАЛЫ ПРОШЛИ ПРОЦЕДУРУ РЕЦЕНЗИРОВАНИЯ И ЭКСПЕРТНОГО ОТБОРА Главный редактор Наталья Артёменко (Россия) Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет Учёный секретарь Татьяна Балакирева (Россия) Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет Редакционная коллегия Ханс-Райнер Зепп (Германия, Чехия) Педагогический университет Фрайбруга и Карлов Университет в Праге; Карел Новотны (Чехия) Институт философии Чешской академии наук; Александр Шнелль (Франция) Университет Париж IV Сорбонна; Андрей Паткуль (Россия) Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет; Георгий Чернавин (Россия) Национальный исследовательский университет "Высшая школа экономики", Москва; Андрей Лаврухин (Россия) Национальный исследовательский университет "Высшая школа экономики", Санкт-Петербург; Фёдор Станжевский (Россия) Санкт-Петербургский государственный технологический институт (Технологический университет); Михаил Белоусов (Россия) Российская Академия Народного Хозяйства и Государственной Службы при Президенте Российской Федерации, Москва; Олег Мухутдинов (Россия) Уральский государственный университет, Екатеринбург; Фредерик Трэмблей (Россия) Балтийский федеральный университет имени Иммануила Канта, Калининград; Алексей Крюков (Россия) Социологический институт Российской академии наук, Санкт-Петербург; Светлана Никонова (Россия) Санкт-Петербургский Гуманитарный университет профсоюзов Научный совет Дан Захави (Дания) Университет Копенгагена; Николя Фернандо де Варрен (Бельгия) Католический университет Лувена; Ханс-Хельмут Гандер (Германия) Фрайбургский университет им. Альберта-Людвига; Михаэль Габель (Германия) Университет Эрфурта; Жан Гронден (Канада) Университет Монреаля; Себастиан Луфт (США) Университет Маркетт; Дитер Ломар (Германия) Университет Кёльна, директор Гуссерль-архива; Виктор Молчанов (Россия) Российский Государственный гуманитарный университет; Неля Мотрошилова (Россия) Институт философии Российской Академии Наук; Алексей Савин (Россия) Институт философии Российской Академии Наук; Ярослав Слинин (Россия) Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет; Александр Хаардт (Германия) Рурский университет Бохума; Петер Травни (Германия) Бергский университет Вупперталя; Эндрю Хаас (Россия, США) Национальный исследовательский университет "Высшая школа экономики" (Москва); Михаил Хорьков (Россия) Институт философии Российской Академии Наук; Наталья Бросова (Россия) Белгородский государственный национальный исследовательский университет; Данил Разеев (Россия) Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет; Аннабель Дюфурк (Франция, Нидерланды) Университет Неймегена имени св. Радбода Утрехтского; Юлия Орлова † (Россия) Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет; Роман Громов † (Россия) Южный Федеральный университет; Ласло Тенгели † (Германия) Бергский университет Вупперталя Электронная почта гл. редактора: n.a.artemenko@gmail.com © СПбГУ, 2018 Информация о журнале размещена на сайте: www.horizon.spb.ru HORIZON STUDIES IN PHENOMENOLOGY Vol. 7 (1) 2018 SPECIAL ISSUE TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGY The journal is indexed in: Scopus | DOAJ | The Philosopher's Index | CrossRef | ERIH plus | ProQuest | CEEOL | J-Gate | Ulrich | WorldCat | Google Scholar | CyberLeninka | RISC | MLA International Bibliography | OAJI | COPE Mass media registration certificate ПИ № ФС 77-54878 issued on