Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy

Contextual Economics

Juliet Bennett — 2023-12-26

Contextual economics weaves together aspects of orthodox and heterodox economics theories (e.g. feminist, ecological, Keynesian and Marxist economics) in such a way that (re)interprets formal economic models within changing social, historical and environmental contexts. Drawing from the work of Julie Nelson, Kate Raworth and process philosophers, this paper conceptualises the contextual economic paradigm as nesting static abstractions within changing contexts. This brings into question the static metaphysics assumed by mainstream neo-classical economics, and presents an alternative basis for economics arising from process-relational metaphysics. This leads to an economics that: situates the economy as a subsystem of society and ecosystems; replaces Homo economicus with persons-in-communities; and redirects economic policies from profit and GDP growth to purpose and improving wellbeing. This shift in thinking, metaphysics and economics—nesting static in processes—is posited as a critical reorientation of economic decision-making for personal and planetary wellbeing.

An Evaluation of Marx's Critique of Hegel's Political Organism

Emre Ebetürk — 2023-12-26

In his Critique of Hegel's ‘Philosophy of Right,' Marx states that Hegel achieves a great advance by thinking of the state as an organism. Nonetheless, Marx criticizes the way Hegel presents this political organism and its inner differentiation. He argues that Hegel's account of the state as an organism is a mystified attempt to fit empirical observations into the framework of his logical category of the Idea without providing a derivation of uniquely political determinacies. Also, for Marx, because Hegel does not specify the organic constitution of the state in distinction from the Idea, he cannot differentiate between the animal and the political organism. By focusing particularly on the initial determinacy of Hegel's Idea of the state and the transition to this determinacy from what precedes it, this paper examines the extent to which Hegel accounts for the organic constitution of the state without falling prey to logical reductionism and empiricism.

On the "Naturalist" Critique of Clement Greenberg Vide Kant

Ekin Erkan — 2023-12-26

According to commentators like Rosalind Krauss, Briony Fer, Caroline Jones, and Michael Fried, Clement Greenberg’s formalist/positivist device of “medium-specificity” debars errant affective aesthetic experiences that are embodied; despite significant differences in how these theorists arrive at this conclusion, one shared point of emphasis is Greenberg’s inheriting Kant’s disinterested conception of pleasure in reflective judgments of beauty. Offering a textualist review of Kant’s Analytic of the Beautiful, I seek to demonstrate that neither Greenberg, nor Greenberg’s critics, are correct in their account of Kant’s judgments of beauty. Specifically, I argue that Greenberg conflates Kant’s conception of judgments of free beauty (pulchritudo vaga) with merely adherent beauty (pulchritudo adhaerens). In formulating a rejoinder to Greenberg and the misplacement of Greenberg as a Kantian, and following Diarmuid Costello, I hope to save a path for a Kantian aesthetics of the present, much in the spirit of other broadly Kantian art historians and philosophers of art/aesthetics (e.g., Thierry de Duve, Paul Guyer, Ido Geiger, etc.).

The Subversive Weber

Carlos Frade — 2023-12-26

That there is a subversive Max Weber may go unrecognized even by Marxist scholars otherwise appreciative, if critically, of Weber, to say nothing of mainstream Weber scholarship. That the subversive side of Weber’s thought and teaching lies in his figure of subjectivation or stance towards the world, is likely to be met with incredulity, even with a smug smile. Yet, it is precisely this claim what this article seeks to probe by bringing out that stance so as to delineate its pure form and disclose the subject carrying it, an operation which will in addition allow us to see how Weber’s social science is both summoned by that subject and specifically suited to study it. Seeking to grasp Weber’s thought and teaching from the standpoint of his stance involves a perspective which is consistent with the subjective disposition that Weber demands from himself and his addressees.

This is a new approach to Weber’s thought which, by prioritising its subjective determinations, is able to demonstrate its fundamental unity, which is not thematic, its consistency, as well as the way in which Weber’s theoretical developments and educational efforts spring from his stance and unfold it. Weber’s thought is shown to be grounded on an unparalleled disjunctive figure of subjectivation whose two components, held together in pure subjectivity in the mode of tension, are deployed at several crucial levels of Weber’s oeuvre. By giving subjectivation its due both structurally and historically vis-à-vis rationalization, the article makes clear that Weber’s social and cultural science is not just a science ‘of Man’, i.e. a humanist science, still less a posthumanist science of human and nonhuman entities in a flattened world, but a science of ‘daemonized’ humans and rationalized daemons. Is not that social and cultural science, or a variant thereof, what we necessitate today?

Biological Evolution, Sociocultural Evolution, Cosmological Evolution

Jan-Boje Frauen — 2023-12-26

This article brings together transcendental philosophy, biosemiotics and quantum mechanics to derive a unified theory of biological, sociocultural and cosmological evolution. It is argued that all three of them are characterized by the evolution of emerging subjectivity from the objective world following a natural law of emergence. The determined final end of causation, it is argued with Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Willhelm Joseph von Schelling and John Archibald Wheeler, is to posit its own creation in observation.

Limits and Epistemological Barriers to Human Knowledge of the Natural World

Jorge E. Horvath — 2023-12-26

The goal of this article is to chart the current limitations and epistemological barriers in Science and Scientific Philosophy from a very general point of view. We list and discuss different types of barriers that difficult the knowledge of the physical world. Some particularly relevant physical problems, where absolute barriers seem to determine the end of the attainable knowledge, are discussed in the last part.

Representation and Inconsistent Multiplicity

Uros Kranjc — 2023-12-26

Philosophy attributes to mathematics the exclusive capacity of constructing pure knowledge – i.e. the thinking (of ideas) – reserving for itself the modes of its representation. In the first part of the article, we briefly trace the reverberations of representation stemming from mathematics in the thought from Descartes, Kant to Heidegger, and investigate how they unfold and influence the contemporary philosophies of Alain Badiou and Cornelius Castoriadis. Although the two share a common ontological root in Cantor’s naïve set theory, this aspect of their thought remains relatively unrelated. In the second part, we closely examine the respective usage of the notion of representation and its transmutation to a mathematical concept of inconsistent multiplicity, consequently arguing for a rare, but particularly important point of convergence of the two thinkers. It is this contradictory inconsistent multiplicity that represents an abstract concept for thinking Magmas (Castoriadis) or the Absolute (Badiou) – both conceiving it as the place in which Truth(s) are either ex-nihilo created or eternally residing.

Henri Bergson’s Open Society

Adam Lovasz — 2023-12-26

In this article, I propose a reading of Henri Bergson’s Two Sources of Morality and Religion, centering on how mysticism transforms homo sapiens. For Bergson, the mystics are exemplars of social innovation, representatives of a „new species.” The open society, far from being a distant utopian social ideal, is already immanent to static, closed society. Openness can be achieved now, in the moment of mystical experience, defined by Bergson as unity with the flow of life. Instead of a rigid dualism between closure and openness, Bergson proposes that social change is driven from the inside by new moral ideas. Moral heroes are those willing to break the mould of social obligation. A form of non-discriminatory love is possible, going beyond the inner/outer distinction. Far from being a passive or contemplative practice, mysticism for Bergson is an active change of the human condition, a passage to the more-than-human.

The Copernican Long Awaited Breakthrough

Rinat Nugayev — 2023-12-26

The Copernican inextricable revolution is scrutinized in the distinctive context of intense interaction and profound interpenetration of Aristotelean and Ptolemaic subtle theoretical languages. It is elicited that already within the Ptolemaic sophisticated research program the mathematical exactness increasingly deviated from the blunt tenets of Aristotelean qualitative physics though well-grounded empirically. Aristotelian - Ptolemaic heathen cosmology could not help but be exposed to repeated severe attacks during the European Middle Ages since it apparently confronted the stout principles of monotheism not admitting the strict demarcation line between the celestial and mundane realms. All seemingly different worlds should have one and the same Creator. Henceforth the Copernican startling breakthrough should be evaluated in the refined scope of further clarification of the tremendous gap between astronomy and physics and the subsequent commencement of effective efforts to eradicate it in the favorable monotheistic social-cultural context of Christian Weltanschauung enforcement. The posterior indispensable contributions of Galileo Galilei, Johann Kepler, Rene Descartes and Isaac Newton incarnated the stiff milestones of the mathematics descent from sublime Skies to sinful Earth and the reciprocal ascent of Earth physics in comprehending the distinctive Divine phenomena.

On the Question of the Ground of Fredric Jameson’s Postmodern Dialectic

Liam O'Donnell — 2023-12-26

This paper examines Fredric Jameson’s attempt to formulate a postmodern dialectic in his text, Valences of the Dialectic. Such a project is necessary, according to Jameson, because dialectical thought is immanent to the movement of history, and the latest epoch of history that we find ourselves caught within is that of postmodernity. Epochality and history are totalising concepts, and so we can see immediately that there is a tension between Jameson’s historicist method (and presuppositions), and the prioritising of difference and non-identity that characterises postmodernism. What Jameson aims to do, therefore, is to reveal how the dialectical concepts of totality and contradiction can be thought in such a way that they are compatible with the postmodern prioritising of difference and non-identity. He aims to do this by arguing that history itself, understood in its most profound sense rather than its everyday sense, is an unrepresentable ground existing behind, and beyond, the manifold beings of our world as their condition of possibility. Jameson claims that our access to this deeper reality of history can only emerge indirectly through our awareness of the antinomies of thought and experience.

Overdetermination and the Epistemic Argument

Martin Orensanz — 2023-12-26

The overdetermination argument that Merricks advances for the elimination of ordinary objects aims to show that an event, such as the shattering of a window, can never be determined by two independent causes, such as a baseball on the one hand and a collection of atoms arranged baseballwise on the other. And if this is so, then baseballs do not exist. In a previous article, I suggested a novel way to resist that argument. However, Merricks also advances an epistemic argument, which aims to show that we should suspend our belief in the existence of baseballs. I resorted to Korman’s reconstruction of the epistemic argument, in order to deny one of its premises. But my interpretation of the logical structure of the argument was incorrect, since I treated its mere conditionals as if they were biconditionals. Here I would like to correct my mistake, by providing a new refutation of the epistemic argument.

Exploring Kohak’s Dialogue With Nature as a Language Game

Matej Sedlar — 2023-12-26

The article provides a textual analysis of Kohak's position on human relationship with the natural world, through the lens of Wittgenstein's language games. The experiential engagement of humans and their perception of the natural world is analysed as a language game of its own, featuring the interplay between the contrasting phenomenological perspectives on the human role in the Earths functioning; humans qua members of the ecosystem and humans as entities outside of it which shape it to their will. The article then claims that by perceiving our interactions with nature in its entirety as a language game, our internal perspective on our relationship will by necessity constitute the former one, which in turn provides for a normative shift towards taking into account nature's needs and wants. In other words, the article provides an argument for changing our views on nature towards a relationship of ethical equality, which is essential for dealing with issues pertaining to the environment reasonably.

The Blazing World or a Woman’s Attempt to Escape from her Human Condition

Isadora Cristina de Sousa Monteiro — 2023-12-26

In Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition (1958), the author states that science is an expression of the human being’s desire to escape from their human condition. Since ‘science fiction’ has ‘science’ itself in its formation, throughout Arendt’s approach we may be able to think of this discipline through the lenses of her reflections on science. Throughout this conception, we will analyze Margaret Cavendish’s The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World (1666). Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673) was a British noblewoman who had the opportunity to receive a better education. She had written several texts, such as poems, philosophical essays, and short stories. The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World is precisely mixed of those genres. We aim to discuss the content of Cavendish’s text as one of the first attempts to create a science fiction book that might reflect the desire of a woman to escape her human condition.

Clearing the Ground for a New Social Contract

Vivan Storlund — 2023-12-26

We are today at a societal juncture, where we need new approaches to tackle societal issues. The transition from an industrial society to one dominated by digital means, as well as the neoliberal policies that have been dominating during the past 30 years or so, have led to growing social inequalities. Thus, a new social contract is often called for, and it is then timely to look back at Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract. We will do so here, and pin Rousseau's theory down through the Papakonstantinidis' Win-win-win method.

Care for Thyself? An Hegelian Critique of the Foucauldian Subject

Evan Supple — 2023-12-26

In the wake of Foucault’s reproach of all political projects “global and radical”, Foucault resuscitates the Stoic concept of epimeleia heautou (care of the self), suggesting self-transformation—"making one’s life a work of art”—to be a potent antidote to domination. By making one’s life a work of art, which entails disengagement from all things that turn one away from oneself, one can circumvent domination, as well as reduce one’s own inclinations to dominate others. Foucault justifies this by claiming that self-relation is ontologically prior to other-relatedness and thus, ethically prior; however, he neglects to delineate how he derives this assumption, making it little more than an arbitrarily posited axiom. I argue that it is upon this assumption that the legitimacy of Foucault’s final era hinges, and hence its tenability warrants investigation. In this paper, I use Hegel’s immanent ontology systematized in the Science of Logic. I dispute Foucault’s claim regarding self-relation’s primacy by demonstrating how self-relation immanently emerges in the passage through an other and I outline the ramifications of holding fast to an unsustainable categorical assumption.

Pop-stars are Outdated!

David Antolínez — 2023-12-26

This paper offers a review of the debate between Harari and Žižek about trusting nature with two aims: first, to demonstrate the chasm between theories embedded in modern philosophy and contemporary ecology; and second, to question the utility of public events in which mainstream intellectuals act as guiding voices. After posing the problem, there will be a general summary of Harari and Žižek’s arguments, then those will be discussed in contrast with diverse authors concerned with ecology. Finally, there will be a general reflection about the place of mainstream philosophy and some forms of scientific expertise in the chaotic state-of-affairs caused by climate change. The article concludes that high-reputed intellectuals cannot help to be out of touch with current matters-of-concerns, therefore leaving their role in public deliberation rather futile.