After 2400 years the Republic continues to generate intense scholarly and hermeneutical debate. I... more After 2400 years the Republic continues to generate intense scholarly and hermeneutical debate. It is one of Plato's longest works and clearly one of the most important for an understanding of his thought. Richard Kraus explains its centrality, by reason that in the Republic we find "a unified metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, political, and psychological theory that goes far beyond the doctrines of the early dialogues. The Republic is in one sense the centrepiece of Plato's philosophy, for no other single work of his attempts to treat all of these topics so fully" (10).
This essay develops a comparison between the treatments of mimesis (imitation) in Plato and Arist... more This essay develops a comparison between the treatments of mimesis (imitation) in Plato and Aristotle, and also the critique of Plato in the work of Martin Heidegger, in light of the clear bias that Heidegger displays toward an Aristotelian interpretation of Plato. The Generative Anthropology of Eric Gans, and its situating of language in relation to culture as a whole, provides a context for my treatment of mimesis, contributing an important perspective on the underlying purposes of Plato’s differentiation of philosophical from rhetorical discourse, and the ways in which that illuminates Plato’s view of mimesis. Likewise, given that Plato was the first to bring to mimesis a philosophical examination, a clearer understanding of the key role played by the construct of mimesis in Plato’s work, I argue, sheds light on the interpretation of mimesis in the theoretical model of Gans’ Generative Anthropology. interpretation of
This paper focuses on the photography theory of Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, with referenc... more This paper focuses on the photography theory of Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, with reference also to the theoretical work on photography by Villem Flusser and Francois Laruelle. The central construct explored here is Derrida’s response to Barthes’s distinction between studium and punctum in the photographic image and Derrida’s coinage of the term acti/passivity to capture the inseparability of the active and passive valences of the inventive relationship between the photographer/audience and the camera/object photographed.
Introduction to a collection of essays on Digital Culture, entitled The Digital Nexus: Identity, ... more Introduction to a collection of essays on Digital Culture, entitled The Digital Nexus: Identity, Agency, and Political Engagement
In the light of the sheer scope, depth, and range of complexity of the Republic, of its pivotal r... more In the light of the sheer scope, depth, and range of complexity of the Republic, of its pivotal role in Plato’s corpus, and of its still living interpretive reception, I will focus on a single but clearly central issue in the dialogue, that of mimesis, emphasizing its treatment in Book X, and referring also to a key passage in Book VI. Mimesis plays a crucial and highly contested role in the dialogue as a whole, figuring centrally in Books II, III, and X. Socrates picks up his earlier discussion of it in the tenth and final book in the light the intervening discussion in books IV through IX of the role of justice in an ideal city and in the well-balanced individual psyche. I will discuss some of the complexities attendant upon the role of mimesis in the Republic; this will be followed by a treatment of the responses of René Girard and Eric Gans, both of whom, because of the central role played by mimesis in their work, of necessity comment on Plato’s founding role in relation to the...
Negation, Critical Theory, and Postmodern Textuality, 1994
The role negative theology plays in Derrida’s work is a complex and revealing one. On the one han... more The role negative theology plays in Derrida’s work is a complex and revealing one. On the one hand, differance, he says, though it resembles negative theology occasionally “even to the point of being indistinguishable from negative theology”—is “not theological, not even in the order of the most negative of negative theologies” (1968a 6). On the other hand, he admits that the thought of differance “is and it is not” (1968b 84) a negative theology, that it “has been called, precipitately, a type of negative theology (this was neither true nor false)” (1988 3). Derrida acknowledges that negative theology has an irregular position in the history of classical onto-theological discourse, that “what is called ‘negative theology’ (a rich and very diverse corpus) does not let itself be easily assembled under the general category of ‘onto-theology-to-be-deconstructed’” (1981 61), that, respecting negative theology, “we are touching upon the limits and the greatest audacities of discourse in Western thought” (1978 271).
Garry Leonard offers a Lacanian perspective on the problem of history In "Nestor," sugg... more Garry Leonard offers a Lacanian perspective on the problem of history In "Nestor," suggesting that the public narrative we call History and the personal narrative we create in generating our own subjectivity are reciprocally related. In one of my favorite essays, Dan Schiff explores the cartoon figures that appear In Ulysses and Finnegans Wake; among his discoveries is the fact that, despite their appearance In guidebooks, Mickey and Minnie Mouse are not characters in the Wake. Fritz Senn and Bernard Benstock, both of whom explore Joycean catalogues, are as intriguing as ever. The essays are not uniformly successful, of course. Theresa O'Connor is erudite in Irish and comparative mythology, but when she discusses "Joyce's dlalogized Grail myth," my Bakhtinian soul rebels. Nor am I convinced by Roy Gottfried's rather strained argument that In Dubliners the style of "scrupulous meanness" to which Joyce aspired was In fact a parody of Irish Literary Revival writers like Standlsh O'Grady. Finally, I was surprised to find that during Ian Crump's analysis of Stephen's esthetic theory and the epiphany in particular, nowhere does he mention any of the classic work on that subject by Morris Beja and others. Still, these are quibbles; Joyce in Context is an excellent sampling of what Joyce scholars are producing today.
... of Plato, Kierkegaard, and Henrich's own Buddhist-inspired idealism, genuine excepti... more ... of Plato, Kierkegaard, and Henrich's own Buddhist-inspired idealism, genuine exceptions to metaphysical founda-tionalism, Habermas implicitly modifies his claim to an unproblematic distinction and opposition between metaphysical and post-metaphysical thinking. Wilber too ...
In" Tradition and the Individual Talent," TS Eliot gives a classic delineation of that ... more In" Tradition and the Individual Talent," TS Eliot gives a classic delineation of that central New Critical doctrine of the sovereignty of the text. Though deconstruction is ordinarily understood to be in direct opposition to such textual formalism, a close reading of Derrida's essay on Kafka's" Before the Law" reveals a subtle correspondence between a preoccupation with aesthetic form and a deconstructive response to it. While Derrida is impressed by the degree of reflexivity inherent in Kafka's parable, I argue that the parable ...
Valences of Interdisciplinarity: Theory, Practice, Pedagogy, Apr 25, 2012
Disciplines have proliferated in the modern university as a natural and inevitable consequence of... more Disciplines have proliferated in the modern university as a natural and inevitable consequence of the inexorable extension—both macro-and microscopically, qualitatively and quantitatively—of the boundaries of knowledge: that is to say, as a consequence of the logic of inquiry and research themselves. What is this underlying logic of inquiry? Despite the unwieldy scope of such a question, it is curious to observe the ostensible unity that underwrites it, a unity provided by the central role of the Law of Non-contradiction (lnc) in ...
and of dialectic in particular, as the primary discourse of truth. The goal of the philosophical ... more and of dialectic in particular, as the primary discourse of truth. The goal of the philosophical life, and of training as a Guardian, configured in the allegory of the cave, is illumination by the ideal forms and ultimately by the Form of the Good. Poetry, in its nourishing of the emotions, is found in the Dialogue to obscure the dispassionate exercise of dialectical training, which is the necessary if not the sufficient condition for such illumination. Poetry is the chief opposition to be overcome in the Republic because poetry is the reigning vehicle ...
Chapter 2, "Of an Apocalyptic Tone Newly Adopted in Philosophy," by Jacques Derrida, or... more Chapter 2, "Of an Apocalyptic Tone Newly Adopted in Philosophy," by Jacques Derrida, originally appeared in volume 23 of Semeta (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1982). Chapter 3, "How to Avoid Speaking: Denials," by Jacques Derrida, ls reprinted from Languages of the Unsay able: ...
This paper situates the interpretation of Plato in its 2500-year trajectory toward a significant ... more This paper situates the interpretation of Plato in its 2500-year trajectory toward a significant change in the mid-twentieth century, away from the attempt to establish Plato's metaphysical doctrines to a recognition of the intrinsic value of their literary-dramatic dialogue form. I discuss the lingering presence of doctrinal interpretation in the Nietzschean-Heideggerian tradition of Plato interpretation as it manifests in Derrida's reading of Plato's Phaedrus. I then give two examples of the transformative power of attention to the literary-dramatic structure of the dialogues in the work of two quite different but mutually confirming kinds of contemporary Plato interpretation, those by Catherine H. Zuckert and William Desmond, respectively. The Plato that emerges from their work confirms the growing recognition that the tradition of Platonism does not represent the thinking embodied in Plato's dialogues.
After 2400 years the Republic continues to generate intense scholarly and hermeneutical debate. I... more After 2400 years the Republic continues to generate intense scholarly and hermeneutical debate. It is one of Plato's longest works and clearly one of the most important for an understanding of his thought. Richard Kraus explains its centrality, by reason that in the Republic we find "a unified metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, political, and psychological theory that goes far beyond the doctrines of the early dialogues. The Republic is in one sense the centrepiece of Plato's philosophy, for no other single work of his attempts to treat all of these topics so fully" (10).
This essay develops a comparison between the treatments of mimesis (imitation) in Plato and Arist... more This essay develops a comparison between the treatments of mimesis (imitation) in Plato and Aristotle, and also the critique of Plato in the work of Martin Heidegger, in light of the clear bias that Heidegger displays toward an Aristotelian interpretation of Plato. The Generative Anthropology of Eric Gans, and its situating of language in relation to culture as a whole, provides a context for my treatment of mimesis, contributing an important perspective on the underlying purposes of Plato’s differentiation of philosophical from rhetorical discourse, and the ways in which that illuminates Plato’s view of mimesis. Likewise, given that Plato was the first to bring to mimesis a philosophical examination, a clearer understanding of the key role played by the construct of mimesis in Plato’s work, I argue, sheds light on the interpretation of mimesis in the theoretical model of Gans’ Generative Anthropology. interpretation of
This paper focuses on the photography theory of Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, with referenc... more This paper focuses on the photography theory of Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, with reference also to the theoretical work on photography by Villem Flusser and Francois Laruelle. The central construct explored here is Derrida’s response to Barthes’s distinction between studium and punctum in the photographic image and Derrida’s coinage of the term acti/passivity to capture the inseparability of the active and passive valences of the inventive relationship between the photographer/audience and the camera/object photographed.
Introduction to a collection of essays on Digital Culture, entitled The Digital Nexus: Identity, ... more Introduction to a collection of essays on Digital Culture, entitled The Digital Nexus: Identity, Agency, and Political Engagement
In the light of the sheer scope, depth, and range of complexity of the Republic, of its pivotal r... more In the light of the sheer scope, depth, and range of complexity of the Republic, of its pivotal role in Plato’s corpus, and of its still living interpretive reception, I will focus on a single but clearly central issue in the dialogue, that of mimesis, emphasizing its treatment in Book X, and referring also to a key passage in Book VI. Mimesis plays a crucial and highly contested role in the dialogue as a whole, figuring centrally in Books II, III, and X. Socrates picks up his earlier discussion of it in the tenth and final book in the light the intervening discussion in books IV through IX of the role of justice in an ideal city and in the well-balanced individual psyche. I will discuss some of the complexities attendant upon the role of mimesis in the Republic; this will be followed by a treatment of the responses of René Girard and Eric Gans, both of whom, because of the central role played by mimesis in their work, of necessity comment on Plato’s founding role in relation to the...
Negation, Critical Theory, and Postmodern Textuality, 1994
The role negative theology plays in Derrida’s work is a complex and revealing one. On the one han... more The role negative theology plays in Derrida’s work is a complex and revealing one. On the one hand, differance, he says, though it resembles negative theology occasionally “even to the point of being indistinguishable from negative theology”—is “not theological, not even in the order of the most negative of negative theologies” (1968a 6). On the other hand, he admits that the thought of differance “is and it is not” (1968b 84) a negative theology, that it “has been called, precipitately, a type of negative theology (this was neither true nor false)” (1988 3). Derrida acknowledges that negative theology has an irregular position in the history of classical onto-theological discourse, that “what is called ‘negative theology’ (a rich and very diverse corpus) does not let itself be easily assembled under the general category of ‘onto-theology-to-be-deconstructed’” (1981 61), that, respecting negative theology, “we are touching upon the limits and the greatest audacities of discourse in Western thought” (1978 271).
Garry Leonard offers a Lacanian perspective on the problem of history In "Nestor," sugg... more Garry Leonard offers a Lacanian perspective on the problem of history In "Nestor," suggesting that the public narrative we call History and the personal narrative we create in generating our own subjectivity are reciprocally related. In one of my favorite essays, Dan Schiff explores the cartoon figures that appear In Ulysses and Finnegans Wake; among his discoveries is the fact that, despite their appearance In guidebooks, Mickey and Minnie Mouse are not characters in the Wake. Fritz Senn and Bernard Benstock, both of whom explore Joycean catalogues, are as intriguing as ever. The essays are not uniformly successful, of course. Theresa O'Connor is erudite in Irish and comparative mythology, but when she discusses "Joyce's dlalogized Grail myth," my Bakhtinian soul rebels. Nor am I convinced by Roy Gottfried's rather strained argument that In Dubliners the style of "scrupulous meanness" to which Joyce aspired was In fact a parody of Irish Literary Revival writers like Standlsh O'Grady. Finally, I was surprised to find that during Ian Crump's analysis of Stephen's esthetic theory and the epiphany in particular, nowhere does he mention any of the classic work on that subject by Morris Beja and others. Still, these are quibbles; Joyce in Context is an excellent sampling of what Joyce scholars are producing today.
... of Plato, Kierkegaard, and Henrich's own Buddhist-inspired idealism, genuine excepti... more ... of Plato, Kierkegaard, and Henrich's own Buddhist-inspired idealism, genuine exceptions to metaphysical founda-tionalism, Habermas implicitly modifies his claim to an unproblematic distinction and opposition between metaphysical and post-metaphysical thinking. Wilber too ...
In" Tradition and the Individual Talent," TS Eliot gives a classic delineation of that ... more In" Tradition and the Individual Talent," TS Eliot gives a classic delineation of that central New Critical doctrine of the sovereignty of the text. Though deconstruction is ordinarily understood to be in direct opposition to such textual formalism, a close reading of Derrida's essay on Kafka's" Before the Law" reveals a subtle correspondence between a preoccupation with aesthetic form and a deconstructive response to it. While Derrida is impressed by the degree of reflexivity inherent in Kafka's parable, I argue that the parable ...
Valences of Interdisciplinarity: Theory, Practice, Pedagogy, Apr 25, 2012
Disciplines have proliferated in the modern university as a natural and inevitable consequence of... more Disciplines have proliferated in the modern university as a natural and inevitable consequence of the inexorable extension—both macro-and microscopically, qualitatively and quantitatively—of the boundaries of knowledge: that is to say, as a consequence of the logic of inquiry and research themselves. What is this underlying logic of inquiry? Despite the unwieldy scope of such a question, it is curious to observe the ostensible unity that underwrites it, a unity provided by the central role of the Law of Non-contradiction (lnc) in ...
and of dialectic in particular, as the primary discourse of truth. The goal of the philosophical ... more and of dialectic in particular, as the primary discourse of truth. The goal of the philosophical life, and of training as a Guardian, configured in the allegory of the cave, is illumination by the ideal forms and ultimately by the Form of the Good. Poetry, in its nourishing of the emotions, is found in the Dialogue to obscure the dispassionate exercise of dialectical training, which is the necessary if not the sufficient condition for such illumination. Poetry is the chief opposition to be overcome in the Republic because poetry is the reigning vehicle ...
Chapter 2, "Of an Apocalyptic Tone Newly Adopted in Philosophy," by Jacques Derrida, or... more Chapter 2, "Of an Apocalyptic Tone Newly Adopted in Philosophy," by Jacques Derrida, originally appeared in volume 23 of Semeta (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1982). Chapter 3, "How to Avoid Speaking: Denials," by Jacques Derrida, ls reprinted from Languages of the Unsay able: ...
This paper situates the interpretation of Plato in its 2500-year trajectory toward a significant ... more This paper situates the interpretation of Plato in its 2500-year trajectory toward a significant change in the mid-twentieth century, away from the attempt to establish Plato's metaphysical doctrines to a recognition of the intrinsic value of their literary-dramatic dialogue form. I discuss the lingering presence of doctrinal interpretation in the Nietzschean-Heideggerian tradition of Plato interpretation as it manifests in Derrida's reading of Plato's Phaedrus. I then give two examples of the transformative power of attention to the literary-dramatic structure of the dialogues in the work of two quite different but mutually confirming kinds of contemporary Plato interpretation, those by Catherine H. Zuckert and William Desmond, respectively. The Plato that emerges from their work confirms the growing recognition that the tradition of Platonism does not represent the thinking embodied in Plato's dialogues.
A collection of essays on the impact, significance, and challenge of digital media and networking... more A collection of essays on the impact, significance, and challenge of digital media and networking on contemporary culture.
Valences of Interdisciplinarity presents essays by an international array of scholars committed t... more Valences of Interdisciplinarity presents essays by an international array of scholars committed to enhancing our understanding of the theoretical underpinnings and the practical realities of interdisciplinary teaching and research.
This book explores the thought of Jacques Derrida as it relates to the tradition of apophatic tho... more This book explores the thought of Jacques Derrida as it relates to the tradition of apophatic thought--negative theology and philosophy--in both Western and Eastern traditions. Following the Introduction by Toby Foshay, two of Derrida's essays on negative theology, Of an Apocalyptic Tone Newly Adopted in Philosophy and How to Avoid Speaking: Denials, are reprinted here. These are followed by essays from a Western perspective by Mark C. Taylor and Michel Despland, and essays from an Eastern perspective by David Loy, a Buddhist, and Harold Coward, a Hindu. In the Conclusion, Jacques Derrida responds to these discussions.
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Papers by Raphael Foshay