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1. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 39
Helena Costa de Carvalho

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Blanchot shook the foundations of Philosophy like few others in its systematic and totalizing discourse and its close relationship with academism, appealing to the need for a new and disruptive theorizing about its role and its possibility. Refusing the title of philosopher, he called himself a writer who became interested in (literary) writing itself as an experience of the outside (dehors) and expression of a neuter, an absolutely other that resists any attempt at apprehension and discursive unification, interrupting the various discourses and deconstructing the boundaries between them. In the radicalism of his thought, philosophical discourse loses its status of superiority and its possibility of overcoming literary ambiguity, seeing itself also devoted to seeking a non-existent unity and to the condition of not-knowing and non-power, whereby philosophy should approach literature and become itself image and fragment. In this context, the literary emerges as disruption of philosophical discourse, like the other word that resists within its boundaries to interrupt the word-concept by pointing to a there where thought does not arrive, and philosophy becomes, as the poetic, an investigation into the neuter, an exercise in listening and paying attention to this Other that remains nocturnal, infinitely moving discourses and their meanings and interrupting dialectic progression.
2. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 39
Gökçe Çataloluk

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Georg Trakl is known to be a poet that uses images of silence and one that uses as less words as possible when writing. This paper tries to examine whether it is possible to analyze this preference, following systems’ theory. For this, it examines the ways people communicate and communications bind to each other, the value of silence as negation and its anschlussfaehigkeit.
3. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 39
Vitor Cei Santos

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Machado de Assis was the 19th century Brazilian writer whose work registered the nihilism with greater consistency. Despite the fact that the presence of nihilism in his works has already been recognized, the subject received little attention from critics and scholars, remaining an unexplored field. This paper aims to fill this gap in the critical fortune, and not only argue for the relevance of the subject, but also in favor of the thesis that the Brazilian writer had an acute awareness of the complex and multifaceted nature of the nineteenth-century nihilism. Attentive to the rise of nihilism in 19th century, Machado de Assis approached the problem in a critical and comic tone, contrasting their approach with the philosophical tradition seriousness. By writing with a playful pen, he used humor as one of the main principles of literary composition in his work. He enriched this feature using it as a kind of centerpiece to criticize and deride the spirit of his time, demonstrating that the problem of nihilism may be responded to with an attitude of good humor and irony.
4. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 39
Vicente Claramonte, Marietta Papamichail

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This article proposes a philosophical reflection about the underlying bonds between the Greek Classical Drama and Contemporary Theatre, with special attention to its concomitants in the treatment of the personal identity, the periplus towards revealed self-conscious and the self-estrangement in an alienated environment. It presents the context of Valencian Contemporary Theatre at that effect, and observes, from the point of the complex questions raised to the individual by the immigration, the possible existing parallelisms between the author’s preoccupations and some of the universal and atemporal themes in the Classic Greek Drama. It concludes pointing out the cost of autonomy implicated by the modern civic identity and suggesting its dissolution like a prosperous journey to the rediscovery of liberty and consciousness.
5. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 39
Tanuka Das

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Auden’s poems of the ’thirties bear witness to his social awareness and social commitment almost from the beginning. The great depression of the 30s gave Macspaunday, i.e., Macneice, Spender, Auden and Day Lewis, the conviction that it was the duty of poets to take sides in politics using poetry for that purpose. In the late 1920s the contemporary scene with its grave financial crisis was observed as a dark and sinister one. Auden, the leader of the group, found strong inspiration from the reading of Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud in the programme of using poetry to send messages, and create, and spread awareness among common people, whom he and his group saw as “sick” people. The ‘sick” people were for him either politically or psychologically, “sick”. Auden’s poems of 1927-1938 constitute a text with potential effects which call for actualization. Being university-educated, Auden would write in a language brilliantly witty, symbolic and allegorical. He was also an extremely reticent poet. Thus, was produced a complex poetic utterance fit for intelligent reception by a coterie of fellow poets. At the same time, he must reach out to the (lay) people, if - as a poet- he had to heal his fellow members of the society. The resultant dilemma was one from which he could not extricate himself successfully. Remembering how Wolfgang Iser raises the issue of readability of a text, leads to the question: did the contemporary readers of Auden find an easy job before them?
6. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 39
Celine Dewas

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According to Merleau-Ponty, the renewal of philosophy (mainly with phenomenological and existential philosophies) has led to a new relation between philosophy and literature, from which we can assist to a real collaboration: novels are being used as real experiences inducing philosophical ideas, but without being reduced to them. This observation allows us reevaluate the possible philosophical implications of the influence of Bergson on the Greek writer Kazantzakis, envisaging a similar work to the one that did Lapoujade in his book Fictions du pragmatisme William et Henry James. Applying in our reading the requirements of this new relation between literature and philosophy, we will show that a philosophical approach of the Greek writer’s works cannot submit its understanding to an external knowledge or try to abstract ideas from the fiction as if they were really belonging to it. As an example, we will consider a new approach which would differ from the multiple theological interpretations of the Kazantzakis’ texts based on the influence of Bergson, by giving priority to the inner richness of the experience in the novel as a formal totality, from which it will be possible to complete the Bergsonian philosophical ideas rather than to come back to them.
7. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 39
Katarzyna Eliasz

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Pure philosophical ideas can be detached from reality and, because of that, lose their practical dimension. Literature, as Berdyaev and Bakhtin claimed, can be a way of presenting and testing those abstractions in reality created by the author. In his novels, Fyodor Dostoyevsky considered various problems and categories of philosophical type. One of them was a notion of freedom, analyzed by Russian author in two aspects: social and individual. The social aspect is really alike to the one present in ideas offered by philosophical anthropologists like Arnold Gehlen and Helmuth Plessner. In this view, freedom is being fulfilled through the world of institutions that, while constricting some of humans’ behavior, disburdens the man from too many decisions. Being free from that burden, man can fully develop his human potential. The second kind of freedom is the individual one, rooted in Russian authors’ religious world-view. Particular individual needs to make right choice between good and evil sanctify and become God-human. Those two categories of freedom interrelate creating complex vision of Dostoyevsky’s idea of freedom.
8. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 39
Angelos Evangelou

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Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida’s debate on madness was among other things revolving around the question about which of the two can better enact the dissonance that madness is: philosophy or literature? In this paper, I will briefly expose Foucault’s preference to literature, because of its ability to echo the silence of madness, and I will explain why Derrida’s faith in philosophy – in terms of its ability to ethically talk about madness – is legitimate. I will not attempt to dispute Foucault’s argument or challenge the profound tradition or connection between literary expression and madness, be this literary production about madness or most importantly literary production by ‘mad’ authors. What I will attempt to do, however, contra Foucault, is to express confidence in the ability of philosophy to engage in a similar tradition or connection. I will focus on what I call autobiographical philosophy – the philosophy in which both logos and bios are incorporated – and attempt to argue that it too provides philosophically legitimate space where what Derrida calls ‘the fiction of language’ can be enacted. The putting of the self in the work, opens up the body too to the risk of madness.
9. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 39
Alex Gordon

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Taking as its point of departure the thesis of Roland Barthes that ‘culture recurs as an edge: in no matter what form’, this paper considers the post-romantic predicament of poetry summed up thus: that there is no unmediated vision only linguistically-mediated (stylized, symbolized-allegorized) poiesis. Against the radical innocence of ‘Why can’t everything be simple again/Like the first words of the first song as they occurred’ (Ashberry) is posed the radical modernist assertion of the ‘Illegibility of this world/All things twice over’ (Celan). This cultural edge is then viewed from a position in the domain of modernist philosophy, that of Ernest Cassirer, who argued that there is no culture in-itself as such independent of its symbolic encoding. Contrariwise to Cassirer the alternative view is posited – that of Stanley Burnshaw in his The seamless web – that poetry is actually born of a striving against the very restraining nature of culture; it is the result of a need to free the human organism from the burden of cultural constraint. Another cultural edge with this view is the constitution of a mediated second nature, which virtually re-experiences a primary nature through the projection of a third world via the poetic process. The paper will end considering of Paul de Man’s argument in The post-Romantic predicament that the problem of Romanticism – as historical movement and lived project turned on the complexity of poetic consciousness experienced as difficulty.
10. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 39
Kiunnei Lekhanova

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The philosophy of death in the Yakut literature as the ‘eternal’ question of human existence. In the 20th century the theme of death became one of the leading in literature. This is largely determined by the consciousness of the century, which took apocalyptic features. Decadent mood has already ruled the world at the turn of the 19-20th centuries. Everybody was waiting for some unusual events that resulted in fear. The society couldn’t explain changes in policy, economy and arising new world picture rationally. People in the 20th century, based upon the existing cultural ideas, need to re-decide the most important ideological and existential problems of human existence; they need to live, knowing about death. Writers of all the times tried to resolve “eternal” questions of life and death. National and universal are beginning in close unity in many works of the Yakut literature. Universal beginning is expressed by the national original form. The best works of the Yakut literature also express the universal problems and important questions of existence.
11. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 39
Agatha Markati

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In Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel Christ recrucified, the central thematic of the 23rd World Congress of Philosophy, is examined through two opposing philosophical and moral stances. In a Greek village, while the inhabitants are preparing Passion Play, some refugees arrive asking first for bread and then for land. Through the Holy Drama, the local society is reconfigured as two opposing camps and two opposing moral stances. The novel ends with Manolios-Christ, the character that was to be resurrected, being murdered. The crucifixion of the protagonist-Christ is viewed, through Jung’s theory, as an archetypical function, to be traced back to the collective unconscious. The relation ‘good-evil’ is defined, more generally, from the viewpoint of a dynamic ontology. ‘Good’ is posited as the expansion of consciousness, its union with the Whole, and, synecdochically, as the extension of life. On the other hand, ‘evil’ is viewed as inertia and fixation to whatever serves divisiveness (fear, wealth, domination). Kant’s and especially Nietzsche’s and Bergson’s positions, the philosophers that influenced Kazantzakis the most, are formulated, and more particularly their ontological and moral principles (freedom of will, amor fati, élan vital). In Christ recrucified the protagonists of ‘good’ act as ‘the affirmation of life’, the joy of the Nietzschean ‘here and now’. Their action unfolds the ‘eternal spiral of evolution’, Bergson’s ‘vital force’, and elevates them to ‘God’s accomplices’. Subsequently, Plato’s theory of Justice in the Republic enhances the question of ‘good and evil’. The distinction between justice and morality is pointed out, in order to be treated as the distinction between the ‘closed’ morality of rules and laws and the open Morality of personal and social development.
12. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 39
Athena Mirasyesis

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Kant borrowed the concept of autonomy from Sophocles, distorting its meaning. To be autonomous means that one sets one’s own law for oneself. Autonomy is a more or less prohibited dimension of humanity. Autonomy typifies the tragic hero. Autonomy co-exists with the rupture from the city: making his own laws, the autonomous one violates the law. The greatness of the tragic hero is determined precisely by his conflict as equal against equal with the whole of society as well as with the legislator whom all obey. Here, we will concentrate on the rupture with the city, and on whether this is an integral aspect of autonomy; hence collective subjects are excluded in advance from all authentic autonomy. Antigone, Oedipus and Philoctetes along with Euripides’ Medea are characterized as apolis. Between Aristotle’s naturally and contingently apolis there is a third category, the autonomous apolis (apolis on principle), as he or she appears in tragedy.
13. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 39
Jagadish Patgiri

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The multifaceted genius Dr. Bhupen Hazarika has created a world for himself in whom he attempted to observe, gain experience and to understand all the conceivable activities of people to discover the meaning of humanity. Hazarika has achieved many things during his lifetime. He has raised such a height of artistic career that his works can claim to occupy a place among the greatest in the world literature, music and philosophy. His Bengali version of Manuhe manuhor babe (if humans do not care for humans has been) recognized as the best song of the 20th century (by the BBC in 2002). His universal significance as an artist and his universal fame as thinker reflect the universal significance of human life. Hazarika’s songs reflect deep involvement, wide observation and maturity. He has explored unconventional harmonies in his compositions. Without going away from musical sound and tonal quality he has shown in them a deep sense of humanism. Music-lovers called him the ‘Music Maestro’. People are spell-bound by his music. For more than 70 years he had conquered the music world and attracted millions of audiences. Touched by his heartwarming music, people called him the ‘Living legend’. The common mass calls him the ‘god of folk music’.
14. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 39
Mohamad Rikhtegaran, Majid Heidari

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One of the main features of narratives is sequentiality, which is normally related to the sequence of events. In this paper, we intend to show that we can also find another source for sequentiality seen in narratives, i.e., language. In the present study, we will attempt to examine the validity of this supposition that there is strong relationship between the sequentiality we find in narratives and the sequentiality of language. Meanwhile, we will use the ideas of Paul Ricoeur and Heidegger, regarding the narrative and temporality respectively. Also, we will focus on Halliday’s ideas of language and cohesion. Halliday is a distinguished linguist known for his Functional grammar. On one side, we will review Ricoeur’s supposed parts of narratives; episodic or chronological and configurational or nonchronological. He takes episodic as the actions which are “in” time, i.e., he considers the nature of episodic aspect as the sequence of events. On the other side, we will use the idea of cohesion in Functional grammar, to prove the supposition that sequence in the nature of language is prior to the idea of sequence in actions. In fact, every action is accounted to be sequential or is narrated as a story partly, because of language; because language has this potentiality intrinsically to be sequential and express accounts of actions sequentially.
15. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 39
Alfonso Rodríguez Manzano

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Three of the most notable Latin America writers of the genre known as ‘Essayistic’ have been Simon Bolivar, Jose Martí and Leopoldo Zea. And three of their most memorable essays are, respectively, “Response of a Meridional American to a gentleman of this island” (known as “Jamaica Letter”), published in 1815; “Our America”, from 1891 and “Around to an American philosophy”, dated 1942. Are these three texts (only) literature? Can they be considered as philosophical texts? Would we be in the presence of essayistic texts that display a type of discourse belonging to philosophy and written in a poetic language? Our proposition is that they are philosophical texts belonging to political philosophy, philosophy of culture, ontology; they have a palpable poetic component: a strong use of metaphors, self-reflective language, and aesthetics intention. Such texts would be in a line inaugurated by Montaigne, continued mainly by Rousseau. They would constitute, as in the case of various regional philosophies, a philosophy corresponding to particular circumstances referring to conflicts, inequalities, and injustices.
16. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 39
Erika Ruonakoski

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While philosophers generally agree that there can be no direct experience of the foreign consciousness, Simone de Beauvoir argues that literature makes it possible for us to enter the Other’s world. I will investigate the ways in which the position of the other and the position of the self-become one in the literary experience. Using phenomenology of the body as my point of departure, and analyzing the differences and convergences between verbal and literary communication acts, I will argue that the text takes the place of the “inner speech” in the reading act. Consequently, the literary text acquires a kind of ownness, while it also appears as spoken by the other and having a reader-independent existence as a physical or electronic object. Literature does not provide us with the same possibilities of reciprocity, spatial perception and role-reversals as face-to-face encounters do; yet the very absence of the embodied other facilitates the adaption of his or her position and world as “one’s own”.
17. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 39
Juan Mansilla Sepúlveda, Claudia Huaiquián Billeke

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This paper reflects on the beautiful philosophical value in the poetry of Brother St. John of the Cross in a concise way, beyond his mystical sense, which lets us understand his main poems, regardless of the religious meaning that could be attributed. It is showed the big lines in his main works that represent the peak of the Western mystic; it provides clues to the underlying issue associated with being that is displayed in the exhibition of his thinking. We analyze the possibility of understanding the mystic passiveness as opening to the full realization of philosophy, which transcends the simple human possibilities, related to transfigured passiveness. Finally, being is discovered to us in that place of its primitive blooming: the essential joint between soul and God. Finally, we systematize the idea of the deficiency of language to express exactly the concepts themselves which always appear incomplete and ineffective. In this contradiction, and given this possibility, St. John of the Cross’ answer in his deep work expresses a stance: the voice is silenced and it is only the direct contact between the lover and the beloved.
18. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 39
Nataly Tcherepashenets

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Jorge Luis Borges had a life-long fascination with philosophy, and Jacques Derrida was an avid reader of Borges. Borges’s “The wall and the books” can be read as an artistic illustration of Derrida’s concept of archive and his notion of repression as archivization. Borges’s essay revolves around two projects that a Chinese Emperor aspires to accomplish: the building of the Great Wall and the destruction of all books written prior to his own time. Using monstrously cruel methods, the Emperor attempts to gain immortality and to erase all memories of the past so that ‘history’ could begin with him. His actions and meditations can be interpreted in a dialogue with Derrida’s approach to history as an archive, and allow one to relate the notions of repression and archivization. Borges’s essay can be considered as an artistic manifestation of the parallelism between repression as a mental mechanism and as an instrument of political control, a relationship introduced by Freud and re-elaborated by Derrida in his concept of history as archive.
19. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 39
Thomas Thiesen

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In this essay we will discuss the unique philosophy of Leonard Cohen. To do so, we will suggest and test the hypothesis that each song (or poem) states a specific philosophical position, and all of them construct an open system of various positions. Starting with the song There is a war, we analyze the philosophical content and argumentation. Here, we are confronted with the war of ubiquities opposites, like rich/poor, male/female etc. But his metaphysical concept is not simply repeating any of the schemes of dualism we find in the history of thought. It doesn’t present a Hegelian dialectic, because it is skeptical against synthesis. On the other hand, Cohen is not deconstructing the opposites, because he does not at all abandon the idea of conciliation and redemption. Similarly, we will confront his approach namely with Structuralism, Daoism, Kabbalah, political Existentialism, and also Nietzsche’s radical criticism. We will find that Cohen explores most common philosophical and religious positions, but does not confess to any particular metaphysics. Thus, his work is reflecting the true post-metaphysical condition – leaving the door open to the grand narratives and absolute metaphors, but also to the ephemeral phenomena and enigmatic encounters. His conclusion seems to be that each individual has to gain a personal attitude or ethos. In his mature ‘oeuvre’ he suggests an attitude of complex affirmation, embracing the paradoxa: “a cold and broken Hallelujah”.
20. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 39
Christopher Vasillopoulos

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Unlike Ajax or Heracles, Achilles finds the heroic code insufficient to accommodate an embryonic sense of self. The Iliad describes how he becomes the Achilles who reconciles with Priam, Hector’s father. This reconciliation assumes the values necessary to sustain the emerging polis, establishing Homer as the first political theorist.