Jeffrey D Gower | Wabash College (original) (raw)
Papers by Jeffrey D Gower
Symposium, 2023
This article rehearses Derrida’s articulation in Theory and Practice of an analogy between Althus... more This article rehearses Derrida’s articulation in Theory and Practice of an analogy between Althusser’s and Heidegger’s treatments of the theory/practice pair. The analogy motivates a question about what remains for thinking and acting in the wake of Marx’s 11th Thesis on Feuerbach, when the traditional sovereignty of theory over practice becomes untenable. In the seminar, Derrida develops a line of inquiry about the edge distinguishing theory from practice, which philosophy would presumably overlow as it ceases to merely interpret the world and begins to change it. The article shows how Derrida’s analogy between Marxist philosophy and Heideggerian thinking exposes some pitfalls of any attempt to definitively escape prescientific philosophy or metaphysics while also opening up the possibility of allying Heidegger’s destruction of technological humanism and retrieval of an originary ethics with the Marxian imperative to change the world.
Environmental Philosophy, 2021
Epoché, 2011
This paper offers a deconstructive reading of the pure actuality of the un- moved mover of Aristo... more This paper offers a deconstructive reading of the pure actuality of the un- moved mover of Aristotle's Metaphysics Lambda.Aristotle describes this first, unmoved principle of movement as a divine sovereign-the king of the cosmos-and maintains that the good governance of the cosmos depends on its unmitigated unity and pure actuality. It is striking, then, when Giorgio Agamben claims that Aristotle bequeathed the paradigm of sovereignty to Western philosophy not through his arguments for the pure actuality of the unmoved mover but rather through his description of the essence of potentiality. An interpretation of Aristotle's account of potentiality in Metaphysics Theta therefore prepares the way for a deconstruction of the unity and pure actuality of the divine sovereign. I argue that the repetition of nous in Aristotle's description of the divine thinking of thinking betrays traces of division and difference at the heart of divine sovereignty. If this is the case, then actuality and potentiality become indiscernible at the level of the absolute and the sovereign corresponds to the bifurcated site of this indiscernibility.
Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy
This essay explores the historical roots of biopolitics by investigating the structural homology ... more This essay explores the historical roots of biopolitics by investigating the structural homology between the supremely virtuous king discussed in Aristotle’s Politics and the sovereign living law advanced in On Law and Justice, accepted here as authored by Archytas of Tarentum. Archytas’s sovereign incarnates a divine law in order to ground the written law of the city and to constitute the way of life proper to the citizenry. The identity of life and law in his person exempts this sovereign from the written laws he grounds just as Aristotle’s king cannot be subjected to law because he is a law unto himself. Despite this homology, Archytas’s sovereign exemplifies a highly determinate way of life fully constituted by law while an analysis of Aristotle’s king reveals a double determination of the virtuous exemplar as both sovereign and exile. This double determination both exhibits and complicates the logic of exclusion that, for Agamben, makes Western politics biopolitical from its inception.
Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy, Jan 1, 2011
This paper offers a deconstructive reading of the pure actuality of the unmoved mover of Aristotl... more This paper offers a deconstructive reading of the pure actuality of the unmoved mover of Aristotle's Metaphysics Lambda. Aristotle describes this first, unmoved principle of movement as a divine sovereign-the king of the cosmos-and maintains that the good governance of the cosmos depends on its unmitigated unity and pure actuality. It is striking, then, when Giorgio Agamben claims that Aristotle bequeathed the paradigm of sovereignty to Western philosophy not through his arguments for the pure actuality of the unmoved mover but rather through his description of the essence of potentiality. An interpretation of Aristotle's account of potentiality in Metaphysics Theta therefore prepares the way for a deconstruction of the unity and pure actuality of the divine sovereign. I argue that the repetition of nous in Aristotle's description of the divine thinking of thinking betrays traces of division and difference at the heart of divine sovereignty. If this is the case, then actuality and potentiality become indiscernible at the level of the absolute and the sovereign corresponds to the bifurcated site of this indiscernibility.
Symposium, 2023
This article rehearses Derrida’s articulation in Theory and Practice of an analogy between Althus... more This article rehearses Derrida’s articulation in Theory and Practice of an analogy between Althusser’s and Heidegger’s treatments of the theory/practice pair. The analogy motivates a question about what remains for thinking and acting in the wake of Marx’s 11th Thesis on Feuerbach, when the traditional sovereignty of theory over practice becomes untenable. In the seminar, Derrida develops a line of inquiry about the edge distinguishing theory from practice, which philosophy would presumably overlow as it ceases to merely interpret the world and begins to change it. The article shows how Derrida’s analogy between Marxist philosophy and Heideggerian thinking exposes some pitfalls of any attempt to definitively escape prescientific philosophy or metaphysics while also opening up the possibility of allying Heidegger’s destruction of technological humanism and retrieval of an originary ethics with the Marxian imperative to change the world.
Environmental Philosophy, 2021
Epoché, 2011
This paper offers a deconstructive reading of the pure actuality of the un- moved mover of Aristo... more This paper offers a deconstructive reading of the pure actuality of the un- moved mover of Aristotle's Metaphysics Lambda.Aristotle describes this first, unmoved principle of movement as a divine sovereign-the king of the cosmos-and maintains that the good governance of the cosmos depends on its unmitigated unity and pure actuality. It is striking, then, when Giorgio Agamben claims that Aristotle bequeathed the paradigm of sovereignty to Western philosophy not through his arguments for the pure actuality of the unmoved mover but rather through his description of the essence of potentiality. An interpretation of Aristotle's account of potentiality in Metaphysics Theta therefore prepares the way for a deconstruction of the unity and pure actuality of the divine sovereign. I argue that the repetition of nous in Aristotle's description of the divine thinking of thinking betrays traces of division and difference at the heart of divine sovereignty. If this is the case, then actuality and potentiality become indiscernible at the level of the absolute and the sovereign corresponds to the bifurcated site of this indiscernibility.
Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy
This essay explores the historical roots of biopolitics by investigating the structural homology ... more This essay explores the historical roots of biopolitics by investigating the structural homology between the supremely virtuous king discussed in Aristotle’s Politics and the sovereign living law advanced in On Law and Justice, accepted here as authored by Archytas of Tarentum. Archytas’s sovereign incarnates a divine law in order to ground the written law of the city and to constitute the way of life proper to the citizenry. The identity of life and law in his person exempts this sovereign from the written laws he grounds just as Aristotle’s king cannot be subjected to law because he is a law unto himself. Despite this homology, Archytas’s sovereign exemplifies a highly determinate way of life fully constituted by law while an analysis of Aristotle’s king reveals a double determination of the virtuous exemplar as both sovereign and exile. This double determination both exhibits and complicates the logic of exclusion that, for Agamben, makes Western politics biopolitical from its inception.
Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy, Jan 1, 2011
This paper offers a deconstructive reading of the pure actuality of the unmoved mover of Aristotl... more This paper offers a deconstructive reading of the pure actuality of the unmoved mover of Aristotle's Metaphysics Lambda. Aristotle describes this first, unmoved principle of movement as a divine sovereign-the king of the cosmos-and maintains that the good governance of the cosmos depends on its unmitigated unity and pure actuality. It is striking, then, when Giorgio Agamben claims that Aristotle bequeathed the paradigm of sovereignty to Western philosophy not through his arguments for the pure actuality of the unmoved mover but rather through his description of the essence of potentiality. An interpretation of Aristotle's account of potentiality in Metaphysics Theta therefore prepares the way for a deconstruction of the unity and pure actuality of the divine sovereign. I argue that the repetition of nous in Aristotle's description of the divine thinking of thinking betrays traces of division and difference at the heart of divine sovereignty. If this is the case, then actuality and potentiality become indiscernible at the level of the absolute and the sovereign corresponds to the bifurcated site of this indiscernibility.