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The Sickness unto Death is commonly regarded as one of Kierkegaard's most important works – but also as one of his most difficult texts to understand. It is a meditation on Christian existentialist themes including sin, despair, religious faith and its redemptive power, and the relation and difference between physical and spiritual death. This volume of new essays guides readers through the philosophical and theological significance of the work, while clarifying the complicated ideas that Kierkegaard develops. Some of the essays (...) focus closely on particular themes, others attempt to elucidate the text as a whole, and yet others examine it in relation to other philosophical views. Bringing together these diverse approaches, the volume offers a comprehensive understanding of this pivotal work. It will be of interest to those studying Kierkegaard as well as existentialism, religious philosophy, and moral psychology. (shrink)

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A question dating to Mardešić and Prasolov’s 1988 work [S. Mardešić and A. V. Prasolov, Strong homology is not additive, Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 307(2) (1988) 725–744], and motivating a considerable amount of set theoretic work in the years since, is that of whether it is consistent with the ZFC axioms for the higher derived limits [Formula: see text] [Formula: see text] of a certain inverse system [Formula: see text] indexed by [Formula: see text] to simultaneously vanish. An equivalent formulation (...) of this question is that of whether it is consistent for all [Formula: see text]-coherent families of functions indexed by [Formula: see text] to be trivial. In this paper, we prove that, in any forcing extension given by adjoining [Formula: see text]-many Cohen reals, [Formula: see text] vanishes for all [Formula: see text]. Our proof involves a detailed combinatorial analysis of the forcing extension and repeated applications of higher-dimensional [Formula: see text]-system lemmas. This work removes all large cardinal hypotheses from the main result of [J. Bergfalk and C. Lambie-Hanson, Simultaneously vanishing higher derived limits, Forum Math. Pi 9 (2021) e4] and substantially reduces the least value of the continuum known to be compatible with the simultaneous vanishing of [Formula: see text] for all [Formula: see text]. (shrink)

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Engaging the thought of the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard, I challenge a tendency within the analytic tradition of philosophy on the subject of meaning in life. Taking as a starting point Kierkegaard's insights about meaning in life, the striving needed to attain an imagined ideal self, and his paradoxical conception of the perfection available to human life, I claim that meaning in life is a function of an individual's striving for an ideal self. This continuous effort to achieve myself is (...) marked by suffering, an indispensable part of Kierkegaard's project of identity formation. The imagined grasp of a possible ideal self is essential to this process but insufficient for it because the imagination can only ever glimpse a kind of static perfection, not the lived perfection that only results from willed actualization of an ideal self. The meaning of a human life, then, consists in the suffering that results from a struggle to actualize the ideal I aspire to become in the process of identity formation. I contrast this view with a tendency shared by many contemporary analytic philosophers of meaning in life, for whom meaning in life is constituted by achievement of valued goods, without much attention to one's relation to the process of achieving them. In that respect, I will focus on the position of Iddo Landau. After clearing a number of his misconceptions about Kierkegaard's philosophy, I claim that, for a life to be meaningful, valued goods in life must be complemented by a conscious enactment of the process of the formation of one's identity that includes striving to attain a kind of perfection. I conclude that Kierkegaard's paradoxical account of perfectionism makes him more of an ally to Landau than an opponent. (shrink)

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The question of meaning in life has enjoyed renewed attention in analytic discourse over the last few decades. Despite the apparently “existential” quality of this topic, existential philosophy has had little impact on this re-energized conversation. This paper draws on Kierkegaard’s _The Sickness unto Death_ in order to challenge the objectivist theory of meaning in life. According to that theory, a meaningful life is one replete with objective goods. Kierkegaard, however, exposits four forms of the spiritual sickness he calls despair (...) that are compatible with the possession of objective goods. If this account is convincing, it poses a challenge to the objectivist view, suggesting that a subjective contribution is also necessary to fully account for meaning in life. By a process of negative inference, this paper concludes by sketching out what this subjective contribution might look like and suggests the term “authenticity” in order to capture this subjective element of a meaningful life. (shrink)

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In a recent article Iddo Landau has defended his distinction between perspectives on and standards of meaning in life to support his rebuttal of a familiar pessimistic objection to the meaningfulness of human life. According to that complaint, human life is meaningless when viewed from a detached, cosmic, or sub specie aeternitatis [SSA] perspective. Landau argues that a cosmic perspective need not entail a comparably high standard of meaningfulness. What counts on his view then is not the perspective, which is (...) compatible with any number of possible standards for what constitutes an adequate amount of meaningfulness, but the standard that sets that threshold. In this article I argue that Landau has 1.a.) underestimated the severity of the pessimists’ critique of the availability of any standards for meaningfulness and has also 1.b.) misunderstood the pessimists to be saying that human lives are meaningless because they make an insufficient spatio-temporal impact. I argue further that 2.a.) Landau has left unexplained on what basis we would locate the standard of meaning, leaving a gap in his account. Finally, I maintain that 2.b.) by acknowledging that the ontological, normative, or theological content of the SSA perspective can influence the placing of that standard, Landau leaves himself open to the plausible alternative possibility that the meaning of a life is settled not by the standard itself but by the character attributed to the SSA perspective. (shrink)

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ABSTRACT This article engages Frater Taciturnus’s ‘Letter to the Reader’ to argue for a religious aesthetics in Kierkegaard. This religious aesthetics is designed to purify the passions and help the believer ‘see’ the religious ideal, but also to confront the aesthetic spectator with the religious reality of her own situation. My claim for this revised reading of religious poetics in Kierkegaard derives from Taciturnus’s view of a superior form of religious ideality that comes ‘after actuality’. This ideality is not an (...) envisioned ideal that is untested by actuality and thus ‘illusory’ but an ideal that is graspable only after the self has acknowledged the actuality of their sinful condition, rather than any specific actual sin. To appreciate this form of ideality, Frater Taciturnus repeatedly resorts to visual metaphors and the power of imagination, suggesting that the religious ideal must be ‘seen’ with a sort of synoptic vision capable of looking past both comedy and tragedy and resulting in the purification of our typical affective responses to aesthetic objects. Seeing in this way, the individual imaginatively engages in religious aesthetics and grasps the religious ideality by affirming the actuality of their own sinfulness and receiving forgiveness for that sinfulness. (shrink)

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Recent readings of Kierkegaard's Works of Love have admirably shown how his apparent reservations about romantic love can be deflected on his own terms by imbuing them with some of the moral rigor of neighbor‐love. This paper argues however that these readings must be complemented by the reverse argument, which would show how some of the qualities of romantic loves are in fact preserved in neighbor‐love. By drawing on his dialectics of sensate love, psychical love, spiritual love, and self‐love, I (...) show how Kierkegaard believes neighbor‐love should be impartial and yet exhibit some of the character of preferential romantic loves. (shrink)

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Soren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling is one of the most widely read works of Continental philosophy and the philosophy of religion. While several commentaries and critical editions exist,JeffreyHanson offers a distinctive approach to this crucial text.Hanson gives equal weight and attention to all three of Kierkegaard’s "problems," dealing with Fear and Trembling as part of the entire corpus of Kierkegaard's production and putting all parts into relation with each other. Additionally, he offers a distinctive (...) analysis of the Abraham story and other biblical texts, giving particular attention to questions of poetics, language, and philosophy, especially as each relates to the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. Presented in a thoughtful, well-informed, and fresh manner,Hanson’s claims are original and edifying. This new reading of Kierkegaard will stimulate fruitful dialogue on well-traveled philosophical ground. (shrink)

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For Henry the question ‘Can the truth be learned?’ is as much an aporia as it was for Kierkegaard, and both thinkers ask this question not in order to solve some abstract or pedantic epistemological issue but because the truth they seek is the one that is appropriate to human beings and their salvation. This paper examines Henry’s and Kierkegaard’s answers to the question of how the truth is learned, and in the course of this examination will necessarily have occasion (...) to compare the two thinkers’ accounts of paradox and the phenomenality of Christ, two themes that bring into focus the nature of truth in both thinkers. The paper begins with an analysis of Henry’s theory of two truths, one of the world and the other of life. These two truths collide in the crucial eleventh chapter of I Am the Truth, which elucidates Henry’s understanding of paradox and the role it plays in his phenomenology. Finally, the paper entertains some questions for his theory that a Kierkegaardian might raise. Throughout it can be seen that despite his appreciation of Kierkegaard, Henry’s account of paradox and the specific mode of revelation that is appropriate to the Christ deviates from the Dane’s theory. Furthermore, it would seem that in a similar fashion their understandings of what counts as a paradox ultimately differ in such a way that Henry’s supposed paradoxes turn out to be by his own admission merely apparent, whereas for Kierkegaard (and perhaps in this respect his theory is a bit closer to ordinary intuitions about what it means for a truth to be paradoxical), paradox is an ineradicable feature of the highest kind of truth as reason confronts it. The thesis then that for Henry paradox and the tension between two kinds of truth are merely apparent whereas for Kierkegaard they are intensified is not merely of interest in establishing a proper reading of each respective thinker; it affects our understanding of the phenomenological notions of world, truth, and the absolute as well as establishing divergences of considerable theological interest. What is at stake is the exact status of the kind of truth phenomenology will privilege and the bearing that this question has upon the nature of the world and phenomenality. (shrink)

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Offering original research by both leading and new scholars, this book revisits the vexed and contested questions of Kierkegaard's Works of Love and demonstrates its continuing relevance and importance to present-day debates. It will be valuable to students of philosophy, theology, ecology, and political theory"-- Provided by publisher.

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In this paper I argue -- pace J. L. Schellenberg -- that it remains the case for Kierkegaard that infinite striving, properly understood, is essential to the relationship with God, who remains the Infinite Subject, one necessarily hidden for defensible logical, ontological, and existential reasons. Thus Kierkegaard’s arguments for the hiddenness of God as a logically required ingredient in the relationship that human beings are called to undertake with God can withstand Schellenberg’s criticisms.

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Providing theoretical and applied analyses of Michel Henry's practical philosophy in light of his guiding idea of Life, this is the first sustained exploration of Henry's practical thought in anglophone literature, reaffirming his centrality to contemporary continental thought. This book ranges from the tension between his methodological insistence on life as non-intentional and worldly activities to Henry's engagement with the practical philosophy of intellectuals such as Marx, Freud, and Kandisky to topics of application such as labor, abstract art, education, political (...) liberalism, and spiritual life. An international team of leading Henry scholars examine a vital dimension of Henry's thinking that has remained under-explored for too long. (shrink)

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Intuition is surely a theme of singular importance to phenomenology, and Henry writes sometimes as if intuition should receive extensive attention from phenomenologists. However, he devotes relatively little attention to the problem of intuition himself. Instead he off ers a complex critique of intuition and the central place it enjoys in phenomenological speculation. This article reconstructs Henry’s critique and raises some questions for his counterintuitive theory of intuition. While Henry cannot make a place for the traditional sort of intuition given (...) his commitment to the primacy of life as the natural and spontaneous habitation of consciousness, an abode entirely outside the world, there nevertheless with some modification to Henry’s thinking could be a role for intuition to play in discerning the traces of life in the world. (shrink)

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The purpose of this paper is to establish a proper context for reading Jacques Derrida’s The Gift of Death, which, I contend, can only be understood fully against the backdrop of “Violence and Metaphysics.” The later work cannot be fully understood unless the reader appreciates the fact that Derrida returns to “a certain Abraham” not only in the name of Kierkegaard but also in the name of Levinas himself. The hypothesis of the reading that follows therefore would be that Derrida (...) writes The Gift of Death not as an attempt to re-present Kierkegaard’s Abraham either rightly or wrongly but as an effort to do with Kierkegaard’s Abraham what is possible with his thought in a broadly Levinasian/derridean framework. That the reading he provides of the Abraham story would not be recognizable to Kierkegaard is not the principal point of Derrida’s effort; his aim is to demonstrate that Levinas should not have been so hasty to dismiss Kierkegaard but could have recovered his interpretation of Abraham for purposes that Derrida and Levinas both share. (shrink)

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Sebbah’s noteworthy book is perhaps the first sustained inquiry into the relationship between three thinkers in the French phenomenological tradition, two of whom are well known in the Anglophone world (Levinas, Derrida) and one of whom (Henry) is gradually better understood by English-speaking audiences. That all three are arrayed together in this study makes it a pioneering enterprise and one that allows the English reader to apprise the worthiness of Henry’s association with his better-known compatriots.The strongest and most extensive portions (...) of the text focus on the three named figures in its subtitle, and in Part I Sebbah justifies his focus on these three in terms of a “family resemblance” (6–7) that they bear: Each in his own way practices phenomenology in the mode of excess, an excess that not only emerges in the style of each man’s writing but more fundamentally betrays a testing “of the limit, the limit through whose transgression alone excess can be what it is” (4). Rather. (shrink)

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Kierkegaard has undoubtedly influenced phenomenological thinking, but he has rarely if ever been read as a phenomenologist himself.

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The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it seeks to demonstrate how Kierkegaard’s deployment of the idea of earnestness can furnish a sort of tonal “unity” to a narrative understanding of the Kierkegaardian self, which gestures toward a solution to the problem of how a narrative self can be unified over time and over a multiplicity of projects and plans. Second, this paper aims to give further richness to the recent work of Patrick Stokes, who argues that the narrative (...) self needs to be supplemented by what he calls a naked self. This paper then argues that because there are these two dimensions to selfhood—the narrative person and the naked self—the Kierkegaardian individual is in a fundamental way not so much a matter of identity as of contradiction or internal tension. (shrink)

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Kierkegaardian Phenomenologies offers a timely consideration of phenomenological engagements within the thought of Søren Kierkegaard. This collection not only reflects the current state of scholarly conversations in Kierkegaardian studies and phenomenological research, but also envisions new directions in which they should go.

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Happiness is an increasingly prominent topic of interest across academia. However, relatively little attention has been paid to how it is created, especially not in a multidimensional sense. By ‘created’ we do not mean its influencing factors, for which there is extensive research, but how it actually forms in the person. The work that has been done in this arena tends to focus on physiological dynamics, which are certainly part of the puzzle. But they are not the whole picture, with (...) psychological, phenomenological, and socio cultural processes also playing their part. As a result, this paper offers a multidimensional overview of scholarship on the ‘architecture’ of happiness, providing a stimulus for further work into this important topic. (shrink)

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Drawing on previous models of anxiety, intermediate memory, the positive symptoms of schizophrenia, and goal-directed behaviour, a neuropsychological hypothesis is proposed for the generation of the contents of consciousness. It is suggested that these correspond to the outputs of a comparator that, on a moment-by-moment basis, compares the current state of the organism's perceptual world with a predicted state. An outline is given of the information-processing functions of the comparator system and of the neural systems which mediate them. The hypothesis (...) appears to be able to account for a number of key features of the contents of consciousness. However, it is argued that neitherthis nor any existing comparable hypothesis is yet able to explain why the brain should generate conscious experience of any kind at all. (shrink)

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Machine generated contents note: 1.What is a Concept? -- 2.Why Philosophy? -- 3.How to Become a Philosopher -- 4.Putting Philosophy in its Place -- 5.Philosophy and Science -- 6.Philosophy and Logic -- 7.Philosophy and Art.

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A review ofJeffreyHanson and Michael R. Kelly, eds., Michel Henry: The Affects of Thought (London: Continuum, 2012), 177 pp.

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We consider how cue-reading, sensory-manipulation, and signaling games may initially evolve from ritualized decisions and how more complex games may evolve from simpler games by polymerization, template transfer, and modular composition. Modular composition is a process that combines simpler games into more complex games. Template transfer, a process by which a game is appropriated to a context other than the one in which it initially evolved, is one mechanism for modular composition. And polymerization is a particularly salient example of modular (...) composition where simpler games evolve to form more complex chains. We also consider how the evolution of new capacities by modular composition may be more efficient than evolving those capacities from basic decisions. (shrink)

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A model of the neuropsychology of anxiety is proposed. The model is based in the first instance upon an analysis of the behavioural effects of the antianxiety drugs (benzodiazepines, barbiturates, and alcohol) in animals. From such psychopharmacologi-cal experiments the concept of a “behavioural inhibition system” (BIS) has been developed. This system responds to novel stimuli or to those associated with punishment or nonreward by inhibiting ongoing behaviour and increasing arousal and attention to the environment. It is activity in the BIS (...) that constitutes anxiety and that is reduced by antianxiety drugs. The effects of the antianxiety drugs in the brain also suggest hypotheses concerning the neural substrate of anxiety. Although the benzodiazepines and barbiturates facilitate the effects of γ-aminobutyrate, this is insufficient to explain their highly specific behavioural effects. Because of similarities between the behavioural effects of certain lesions and those of the antianxiety drugs, it is proposed that these drugs reduce anxiety by impairing the functioning of a widespread neural system including the septo-hippocampal system (SHS), the Papez circuit, the prefrontal cortex, and ascending monoaminergic and cholinergic pathways which innervate these forebrain structures. Analysis of the functions of this system (based on anatomical, physiological, and behavioural data) suggests that it acts as a comparator: it compares predicted to actual sensory events and activates the outputs of the BIS when there is a mismatch or when the predicted event is aversive. Suggestions are made as to the functions of particular pathways within this overall brain system. The resulting theory is applied to the symptoms and treatment of anxiety in man, its relations to depression, and the personality of individuals who are susceptible to anxiety or depression. (shrink)

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Introduction -- 1. Problem of the New -- 2. Problem of Relations -- 3. Problem of Emergence -- 4. Problem of One and Many -- 5. Plato and the Third Man Argument -- 6. Bradley and the Problem of Relations -- 7. Moore, Russell and the Birth of Analytic Philosophy -- 8. Russell and Deleuze on Leibniz -- 9. On Problematic Fields -- 10. Kant and Problematic Ideas -- 11. Armstrong and Lewis on the Problem of One and Many -- (...) 12. Determinables and Determinates -- 13. The Limits of Representational Thought -- 14. Learning from a Cup of Coffee -- 15. Carnap and the Fate of Metaphysics -- 16. Truth and Relevance -- Conclusion. (shrink)

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It is shown in this article that the two sides of an equation in the medieval Arabic algebra are aggregations of the algebraic “numbers” (powers) with no operations present. Unlike an expression such as our 3x + 4, the Arabic polynomial “three things and four dirhams” is merely a collection of seven objects of two different types. Ideally, the two sides of an equation were polynomials so the Arabic algebraists preferred to work out all operations of the enunciation to a (...) problem before stating an equation. Some difficult problems which involve square roots and divisions cannot be handled nicely by this basic method, so we do find square roots of polynomials and expressions of the form “A divided by B” in some equations. But rather than initiate a reconsideration of the notion of equation, these developments were used only for particularly complex problems. Also, the algebraic notation practiced in the Maghreb in the later middle ages was developed with the “aggregations” interpretation in mind, so it had no noticeable impact on the concept of polynomial. Arabic algebraists continued to solve problems by working operations before setting up an equation to the end of the medieval period. (shrink)

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Given Hugh Everett III's understanding of the proper cognitive status of physical theories, his relative-state formulation of pure wave mechanics arguably qualifies as an empirically acceptable physical theory. The argument turns on the precise nature of the relationship that Everett requires between the empirical substructure of an empirically faithful physical theory and experience. On this view, Everett provides a weak resolution to both the determinate record and the probability problems encountered by pure wave mechanics, and does so in a way (...) that avoids unnecessary metaphysical complications. Taking Everett's goal to be showing the empirical faithfulness of the relative-state formulation agrees well with his characterization of his project as one of seeking a model for observation in the correlation structure described by pure wave mechanics and seeking a measure of typicality over this empirical substructure that covaries with our empirically warranted expectations. 1 Pure Wave Mechanics and Relative States2 Everett and Frank3 Everett on the Nature of Physical Theories4 Conditions for Empirical Faithfulness5 The Empirical Faithfulness of Pure Wave Mechanics6 Conclusion. (shrink)

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This volume, with contributions from scholars in political science, literature, and philosophy, examines the mutual influence of reason and religion at the time of the American Founding.

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Hugh Everett III proposed his relative-state formulation of pure wave mechanics as a solution to the quantum measurement problem. He sought to address the theory’s determinate record and probability problems by showing that, while counterintuitive, pure wave mechanics was nevertheless empirically faithful and hence empirical acceptable. We will consider what Everett meant by empirical faithfulness. The suggestion will be that empirical faithfulness is well understood as a weak variety of empirical adequacy. The thought is that the very idea of empirical (...) adequacy might be renegotiated in the context of a new physical theory given the theory’s other virtues. Everett’s argument for pure wave mechanics provides a concrete example of such a renegotiation. (shrink)

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We consider how an epistemic network might self-assemble from the ritualization of the individual decisions of simple heterogeneous agents. In such evolved social networks, inquirers may be significantly more successful than they could be investigating nature on their own. The evolved network may also dramatically lower the epistemic risk faced by even the most talented inquirers. We consider networks that self-assemble in the context of both perfect and imperfect communication and compare the behaviour of inquirers in each. This provides a (...) step in bringing together two new and developing research programs, the theory of self-assembling games and the theory of network epistemology. (shrink)

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A resolution of the quantum measurement problem would require one to explain how it is that we end up with determinate records at the end of our measurements. Metaphysical commitments typically do real work in such an explanation. Indeed, one should not be satisfied with one's metaphysical commitments unless one can provide some account of determinate measurement records. I will explain some of the problems in getting determinate records in relativistic quantum field theory and pay particular attention to the relationship (...) between the measurement problem and a generalized version of Malament's theorem. (shrink)

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This paper is concerned with the possibility and nature of relativistic hidden-variable formulations of quantum mechanics. Both ad hoc teleological constructions of spacetime maps and frame-dependent constructions of spacetime maps are considered. While frame-dependent constructions are clearly preferable, they provide neither mechanical nor causal explanations for local quantum events. Rather, the hiddenvariable dynamics used in such constructions is just a rule that helps to characterize the set of all possible spacetime maps. But while having neither mechanical nor causal explanations of (...) the values of quantummechanical measurement records is a significant cost, it may simply prove too much to ask for such explanations in relativistic quantum mechanics. (shrink)

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argued that there are two options for what he called a realistic solution to the quantum measurement problem: (1) select a preferred set of observables for which definite values are assumed to exist, or (2) attempt to assign definite values to all observables simultaneously (1810–1). While conventional wisdom has it that the second option is ruled out by the Kochen-Specker theorem, Vink nevertheless advocated it. Making every physical quantity determinate in quantum mechanics carries with it significant conceptual costs, but it (...) also provides a way of addressing the preferred basis problem that arises if one chooses to pursue the first option. The potential costs and benefits of a formulation of quantum mechanics where every physical quantity is determinate are herein examined. The preferred-basis problem How to solve the preferred-basis problem Relativistic constraints Conclusion. (shrink)

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We consider two ways one might use algorithmic randomness to characterize a probabilistic law. The first is a generative chance* law. Such laws involve a nonstandard notion of chance. The second is a probabilistic* constraining law. Such laws impose relative frequency and randomness constraints that every physically possible world must satisfy. While each notion has virtues, we argue that the latter has advantages over the former. It supports a unified governing account of non-Humean laws and provides independently motivated solutions to (...) issues in the Humean best-system account. On both notions, we have a much tighter connection between probabilistic laws and their corresponding sets of possible worlds. Certain histories permitted by traditional probabilistic laws are ruled out as physically impossible. As a result, such laws avoid one variety of empirical underdetermination, but the approach reveals other varieties of underdetermination that are typically overlooked. (shrink)

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Skyrms-Lewis sender-receiver games with invention allow one to model how a simple mathematical language might be invented and become meaningful as its use coevolves with the basic arithmetic competence of primitive mathematical inquirers. Such models provide sufficient conditions for the invention and evolution of a very basic sort of arithmetic language and practice, and, in doing so, provide insight into the nature of a correspondingly basic sort of mathematical knowledge in an evolutionary context. Given traditional philosophical reflections concerning the nature (...) and preconditions of mathematical knowledge, these conditions are strikingly modest. (shrink)

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A Conversation with Claire Katz about her book, Levinas and the Crisis of Humanism.

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