“Derrida’s Travels: Swift at Large in the Academy”. The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 42:2 (Summer 2001): 113-41. (original) (raw)

INTRODUCTION TO PART 2 A Revolution of Reason

INTRODUCTION TO PART 2 A Revolution of Reason, 2024

This introduction to Part 2 of The Marcusean Mind, explores Herbert Marcuse's critique of one-dimensional society and the reduction of reason to serve technological and capitalist rationality. It traces the genealogical roots of Marcuse’s thought through engagements with figures such as Kant, Hegel, and Freud, and explores how their ideas shaped Marcuse’s critique of advanced industrial society. The section extends this analysis to contemporary issues, such as climate change, aesthetic socialism, and the role of popular culture in utopian thinking. By connecting Marcuse’s philosophical legacy to current global crises, the essays in this section offer a comprehensive view of reason’s potential for revolutionary transformation.

Rigour and Recoil: Claims of Reason, Failures of Expression

Journal of Philosophy of Education, 2018

This paper begins with the 'ancient quarrel' between philosophy and literature, which, with the subsequent splitting of logos into word and reason, comes to mark philosophy's self-conception and much other thinking besides-compartmentalising, in the process, what is understood by 'literature'. Philosophy, thus separated becomes atemporal and abstract, preoccupied with propositions rather than statements or sentences, and, in some of its incarnations, aligning itself with science. Language, thus separated, becomes 'literary'-that is, it comes to be epitomised by self-consciousness about literary form and style; and a casualty of this is the 'poetic', a term whose origins in poiesis (production of meaning) are forgotten. But the relationship has never been as settled as it may have seemed, and a series of examples from classical and contemporary philosophy and literature helps to demonstrate this. At stake in these examples are the ways in which reason requires that one means what one says. A classic expression of commitment to this view is provided in Hamlet, by the much-quoted words of Polonius to his son, who is about to travel to Germany to study philosophy: 'This above all, to thine own self be true'. The implications of this in relation to the claims of reason are developed with reference to moral education and the development of judgement for learners and teachers.

At the Heart of Reason : Review in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

A tectonic shift is taking place in French philosophy in the 21 st century. While French philosophers of the past largely ignored work in Analytic philosophy, it has now become an essential part of the academic training of young scholars in France, thus giving rise to a new style of French thinker who is equally versed in the so-called Continental and Analytic traditions. Claude Romano, a professor at the University of Paris-Sorbonne, is a prime example of this new breed of scholar and also a leading voice in French philosophy today. This book, Romano's sixth, marks his most ambitious project to date and is essential reading for anyone who is interested in pursuing a substantive dialogue between Continental and Analytic traditions of thought.

Derrida, Deconstruction, and the University

Derrida and the Future of the Liberal Arts, 2013

Th is section consists of two chapters that examine the university in relation to Derrida ' s contribution to thinking about these institutions, the challenges that Derrida has posed to them, and how social theorists have responded to those challenges and to the wider project of deconstruction in the university. Th e second chapter is a republication of Simon Critchley ' s " What Is the Institutional Form of Th inking?, " which lays out how we might better imagine what Derrida called the " unconditional university. " 02Chapter 01.indd 11 02Chapter 01.indd Th e university without conditions is not situated necessarily or exclusively within the walls of what is today called the university. It is not necessarily, exclusively, exemplarily represented in the fi gure of the professor. It takes place, it seeks its place wherever this unconditionality can take shape. Everywhere that is, perhaps, given one (itself) to think. Sometimes even beyond, no doubt, a logic or a lexicon of the " condition. "