Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The notion of personhood initially appears to be something that is put into question by Derridean deconstruction. This is due to this notion implying the self-presence of an autonomous consciousness and the narcissism of an exclusionary... more
The notion of personhood initially appears to be something that is put into question by Derridean deconstruction. This is due to this notion implying the self-presence of an autonomous consciousness and the narcissism of an exclusionary qualitative identity. Yet Derrida’s later works emphasize the connection between deconstructive difference and the concept of singularity, a singularity which Derrida associates with the “who” of personhood as opposed to the generic “what”. This article advocates a rethinking of personhood as itself a deconstructive dislocation of the realm of presence and identity. Proto-deconstructive conceptions of personhood that are enlisted to support this rethinking include Hegel’s notion of the subject as the ‘disparity of substance with itself’, Heidegger’s notion of the transcendent finitude of being ‘held out into the nothing’ as a precondition of personhood, and Levinas’s avowedly personalist notion of the singular other that transcends and ‘undoes’ its phenomenal presentation.
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Abstract Hegel’s distinction between the bad and true infinites has provoked contrasting reactions in the works of Alain Badiou and Graham Priest. Badiou claims that Hegel illegitimately attempts to impose a distinction that is only... more
Abstract Hegel’s distinction between the bad and true infinites has provoked contrasting reactions in the works of Alain Badiou and Graham Priest. Badiou claims that Hegel illegitimately attempts to impose a distinction that is only relevant to the qualitative realm onto the quantitative realm. He suggests that Cantor’s mathematical account of infinite multiplicities that are determinate and actual remains an endlessly proliferating bad infinite when placed within Hegel’s faulty schema. In contrast, Priest affirms the Hegelian true infinite, claiming that Cantor’s formal mechanisms of boundary transcendence, such as ‘diagonalization’, are implicit in Hegel’s dialectic. While arguing that a clear dividing line can be drawn here between these two interpretations of the relationship between Hegel and Cantor, this paper also mounts a defence of the Hegelian true infinite by developing Priest’s suggestion that Cantorian diagonalizing functions are prefigured by Hegel’s dialectical overcoming of limits.
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This article argues that those who advocate the capitalist market system on the basis of the ‘invisible hand’ or ‘spontaneous order’ belong to a tradition in political philosophy which attempts to find ways to get the most out of a flawed... more
This article argues that those who advocate the capitalist market system on the basis of the ‘invisible hand’ or ‘spontaneous order’ belong to a tradition in political philosophy which attempts to find ways to get the most out of a flawed human nature, whereas socialists tend to belong to the opposing tradition which maintains faith in human improvement. The former tradition involves a kind of consequentialism in which goodness can be achieved irrespective of people’s intentions, whereas the latter tradition, with its emphasis on conscious decision making and the ‘good will’, includes Kantian deontology. Both utilitarian and deontological arguments for socialism are discussed, but it is argued that the emphases on human dignity and on deliberate planned action make socialist arguments sit more comfortably with deontology. This is most clearly the case when socialist thinkers transform Kantian monological universality into dialogical and communicative mutuality.