This essay is being published in six installments. The BIBLIOGRAPHY will be included in the sixth installment. I. Introduction I concluded an earlier essay (Paans, 2020) with an open-ended question: How can one, in a world so thoroughly shattered and torn by “the politics of fragmentation,” carve out a new subjective space? More specifically, is … [continue reading]
Author Archives: Otto Paans
A Philosopher’s Diary, #3—Against Perfectionism.
The descriptive sub-title of this blog—Against Professional Philosophy—originally created and rolled out in 2013, is “A Co-Authored Anarcho-Philosophical Diary.” Now, nine years later, after more than 300, 000 views of the site, this new series, A Philosopher’s Diary, finally literally instantiates that description by featuring short monthly entries by one or another of the members … [continue reading]
Philosophy in a Newer Key: Outside the Professional Academy and Inside the Real World, #2.
This is the second of two installments, the first of which is HERE. Philosophy in a Newer Key: Outside the Professional Academy and Inside the Real World, #2. II. Philosophy in the Adjectival Key Granting all [that I’ve argued already], then real philosophy outside the professional academy is bound to take on a radically different … [continue reading]
Philosophy in a Newer Key: Outside the Professional Academy and Inside the Real World, #1.
This is the first of two installments. Philosophy in a Newer Key: Outside the Professional Academy and Inside the Real World, #1. 0. Introduction If one feels the need to philosophize, how should one finance it? This is the real question for many postgraduate and PhD students who leave the university without a paid job. … [continue reading]
Where are the System-Builders? Recovering the Lost Art of Connective Thinking.
Where are the System-Builders? Recovering the Lost Art of Connective Thinking I. Introduction: Philosophy and Universal Free Sharing Originally, I intended to submit this short piece to Academia Letters. Its scope and content may be familiar to regular readers of APP, since it deals with the consequences of (hyper)specialization in the sciences and philosophy. However, … [continue reading]
Expressive Organicism: Twenty-One Aphorisms.
1. Nature is Vitality itself. This Vitality is not the same as the entelekeia of Aristotle, or the entelechy of Hans Driesch. Both of these notions denote a purposive, teleological development. Instead, Vitality is manifestly real as a ceaseless differentiation in the spatiotemporal, physical order of things. Another word for Vitality is Life (with a … [continue reading]
Aphorisms Toward A Cultural Philosophy For The Present Time, #6–Mechanisms of the State Apparatus.
TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Aphorisms 1-11: Social Dictatorship 2. Aphorisms 12-24: State Power 3. Aphorisms 25-38: Guilt and Exculpation 4. Aphorisms 39-52: Confusion and Control 5. Aphorisms 53-61: The Myth of Order 6. Aphorisms 62-83: Mechanisms of the State Apparatus This is the sixth installment in the series. Mechanisms of the State Apparatus 62. Rituals … [continue reading]
Aphorisms Toward A Cultural Philosophy For The Present Time, #5–The Myth of Order.
TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Aphorisms 1-11: Social Dictatorship 2. Aphorisms 12-24: State Power 3. Aphorisms 25-38: Guilt and Exculpation 4. Aphorisms 39-52: Confusion and Control 5. Aphorisms 53-61: The Myth of Order This is the fifth installment in the series. The Myth of Order 53. Appearance of eternity. The State must appear as the natural … [continue reading]
Aphorisms Toward A Cultural Philosophy For The Present Time, #4–Confusion and Control.
TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Aphorisms 1-11: Social Dictatorship 2. Aphorisms 12-24: State Power 3. Aphorisms 25-38: Guilt and Exculpation 4. Aphorisms 39-52: Confusion and Control 5. Aphorisms 53-61: The Myth of Order Confusion and Control 39. The State as the false prophet. The State is nothing but an ordered collection of coercive authoritarian institutions, that … [continue reading]
Aphorisms Toward A Cultural Philosophy For The Present Time, #3: Guilt and Exculpation.
TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Aphorisms 1-11: Social Dictatorship 2. Aphorisms 12-24: State Power 3. Aphorisms 25-38: Guilt and Exculpation 4. Aphorisms 39-52: Confusion and Control 5. Aphorisms 53-61: The Myth of Order Guilt and Exculpation 25. Guilt and destabilization. The staging of a conflict that the State will always win reinforces feelings of guilt and … [continue reading]