Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy

This paper explores the transformation which Adorno’s conception of history undergoes from his texts of the 1930s to those of the 1960s. This transformation involves a change in the role played by Hölderlin’s figure of transience. In the texts of the ’30s, Hölderlinian transience (in its Benjaminian interpretation) amounts to a moment of negative content within Adorno’s conception of history. In the texts of the ’60s, such transience becomes the very form of Adornian philosophical history. As such, his thinking of history changes from a tragic conception (emphasizing a “negative absolute”) to an iconoclastic one (emphasizing “absolute negativity”).

The body is central to the philosophies of Spinoza and Nietzsche. Both thinkers are concerned with the composition of the body, its potential relations with other bodies, and the modifications which a body can undergo. Gilles Deleuze has contributed significantly to the relatively sparse literature which draws out the affinities between Spinoza and Nietzsche. Deleuze’s reconceptualization of the field of ethology enables us to bring Spinoza and Nietzsche together as ethologists of the body and to elaborate their common, physiological perspective on ethico-political composition. This is accomplished by reading the concepts of force, power, and affect as they are mobilized in their discussions of corporeity and intercorporeity. What emerges is a metaphysics of bodies that can simultaneously be regarded as a physiology of encounters, one which renders the friend/enemy distinction indiscernible and opens the door for a rethinking of the nature of political alliances. Both Spinoza and Nietzsche are shown to be invaluable resources for helping us imagine the potential of the individual’s body and the body politic.

The method of the philosophers of the future that Nietzsche heralds, but does not self-identify with, has not received the attention it deserves in the secondary literature. In this essay, I address this lacuna with an interpretation of the roles of the philosophers of the future that explains in what sense they are and are not (at)tempters. As free spirits, cultural physicians, and legislators, the philosophers of the future undertake experiments to acquire knowledge; hence, the philosophers of the future are attempters. Nevertheless, it is also wrong to call them attempters; as educators, the philosophers of the future are tempters.

This paper examines the relation of Schiller’s Letters on Aesthetic Education to Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, particularly by examining the connection between the concepts of “play” and “appearance” in Schiller’s thought. The paper points out parallels between the two thinkers which remain unacknowledged in Gadamer’s critique of Schiller. The first main section of the paper examines the notion of play in Schiller, pointing out that Schiller conceives of play in a medial voice, much as Gadamer does. The second section directly takes on Gadamer’s claim that Schiller’s notion of aesthetic appearance sunders art from truth, by arguing that Schiller conceives of appearance as a mode of truth.

This paper confronts Heidegger’s critique of Platonism and defends Plato as a productionist metaphysician. Heidegger misunderstands and abuses Platonic metaphysics. Rather than initiating the reification of being (Sein) in beings (das Seiende) and the subordination of nature to human control, as Heidegger accuses, Plato offers us a non-dogmatic metaphysics of human possibility oriented by and subordinated to being, conceived equally as the good and the beautiful. The relevant production constitutes the ethical counterpart of Platonic metaphysics: it is the responsible bringing of ourselves to “presence” in accordance with the measures given in nature, a process that is erotic, progressive, and always on-the-way.