Symposion

The Cogito formulation in Discourse on Method attributes properties to one conceptual category that belong to another. Correcting the error ends up defeating Descartes’ response to skepticism. His own creation, the Evil Genius, is to blame.

This article examines the basis for testing historical claims and proffers the observation that the historical method is akin to the scientific method in that it utilizes critical elimination rather than justification. Building on the critical rationalism of Karl Popper – and specifically the deductive component of the scientific method called falsification – I examine his tetradic schema and adapt it for the specific purpose of historical analysis by making explicit a discrete step of critical testing, even though the schema is adequate as Popper expresses it and the elimination of error occurs at all steps of analysis. I also add a discrete step of critical elimination to Popper’s schema even though the elimination of error occurs at every step of analysis. The basis for critical elimination history is the demonstrable counterexample. The study of history will never approach the precision of science – history deals with open systems that cannot be replicated like experiments guided by fundamental laws. But just because we cannot know something with the rigor of science does not mean that we cannon know it better than we do. There may be no objective truth in an absolute sense, but there is a distinction to be made between well-tested and poorly tested theories and therefore between history done well and history done with less analytical rigor. What I hope to show is how our historical knowledge may progress through good faith critical discussion – history is discussion – and the elimination of error.

The aim of this paper is a socio-philosophical analysis of attention deficit phenomenon, which is being detected at the intersection of several subject areas (psychiatry, theory of journalism, economics). The main methodological instrument of the study is a Marxist principle of alienation. Alienation of attention, which, on the one hand, is being understood as a process of producing attention as a commodity, and on the other one – as the process of producing a person as a user of the platform, provides the methodological basis, necessary for a holistic view of the phenomenon. The main differences of attention alienation from alienation of labor and desire are considered within the paper. The possibility of a modern form of alienation is associated primarily with the emergence of the new forms of capital – platforms, providing infrastructure for the interaction of other users and aimed at collection and procession of large amounts of data. The main aspects of attention management: game, content sharing and design have been distinguished within the paper. The main consequences of alienation of attention for the structure of the individual and society have been spelled out. The effects of the spread of gaming techniques of attention management and content distribution techniques specific to social networks have been considered. It being is suggested that there is a correlation between the spread of ADHD diagnosis and the spread of attention management technologies, and, as well, between the distribution of attention management technology and the ‘renaissance’ of social in the social theory.

In this paper, I will develop a new theory of the nature of happiness, or “perfect happiness.” I will examine what perfect happiness is and what it is not and I will try to answer some fundamental questions about this property. According to the theory, which I shall call “the fulfillment theory,” perfect happiness is perfect fulfillment. The analysis of happiness in this paper is a development of the old idea that happiness is getting what you want and can be classified as a kind of desire-satisfaction theory. According to the fulfillment theory of happiness, it is necessarily the case that an individual x is perfectly happy if and only if all x’s wants are fulfilled. The interpretation of this basic definition is important, since the consequences of the particular version defended in this essay are radically different from the consequences of many other popular theories of happiness. The fulfillment theory is also quite different from most other desire-satisfaction theories of happiness. We will see that it has many interesting consequences and that it can be defended against some potentially serious counterarguments. The upshot is that the analysis of (perfect) happiness developed in the present paper is quite attractive.

This paper excavates certain impulses that are buried in Pierre Klossowski’s 1968 edition of his original 1947 work, Sade My Neighbor. We argue that the self-suffocating nature of our historical present reveals the problem of an epochal threshold: in which twenty-first century democracy itself is threatened with death and violence in delusional neofascist attempts at national self-preservation. This speaks to a deeper enigma of time, epochal shifts, and the mystery of historical time; but it does so in a manner that escapes classical problems in the philosophy of history. Rather, by returning to Klossowski’s late 1940s and late 1960s contexts while reoccupying the New Testament question of Jesus’s foresakeness on the Cross, we unravel a series of paradoxes and aporias that attempt to deepen metaphysical problems of time, death, and the sovereign autonomy of human freedom and existence. Ultimately the paper concludes by offering certain speculative philosophical constructions on why today’s self-cannibalization of democracy has its roots in unresolved tensions that span these two poles: a.) the primordial secret of early Christian proclamation of Jesus’s death and b.) the post-Christian Sadean experiment of a philosophical revolution that was doomed to implode when the valorization of pain, suffering, and death fails to fill the vacuum left behind by atheism.