Labyrinth: An International Journal for Philosophy, Value Theory and Sociocultural Hermeneutics
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Kafka critique du monde social contemporain : les formes concretes de l’oppression de l’individu occidental
Full text linkThis article shows how the social criticism that unfolds in Kafka’s The Trial and then The Castle was able to guess the majority of the political ills of the contemporary West as they developed mainly from the 20th century onwards. Not restricting oneself to the usual analysis of oppression by the gigantic structures of justice and administration, it focuses more on concrete examples of mistreatment of the individual and underlines the major role of the complicity of admiring people of the totalitarian system. The servile citizens complete the aggression of the State by reducing the private sphere to a minimum. Certain more recent excesses of social networks, notably the growing confusion between the public sphere and the private sphere, are also announced by Kafka’s satire, which depicts the modern Westerner as denied his fundamental freedoms
Walter Benjamin and Günther Anders on Kafka and the Role of Literature
No full textWhat is the political significance of literature? How, if at all, can fictional narratives interact with issues of social and legal justice? This paper addresses these questions and proposes four models of literature\u27s intervention in political reality based on Walter Benjamin’s and Günther Anders’ readings of Kafka. According to Benjamin’s 1930s Kafka essays, fictional narratives have the power to unsettle hitherto established legal decisions and thus partake in the exercise of justice. Anders, in his 1951 book Kafka: Pro und Contra, criticises Kafka for authoring narratives that—complacent with existing power—lend themselves to being used to morally absolve acts of oppression. Taken together, the four models—two of which are based on Benjamin\u27s Kafka reading and two on Anders\u27—offer a complex view of the role of literature as a political actor, recognising its positive value while warning against its potential abuse
Kafka’s Access: A Phenomenological Analysis
Full text linkFranz Kafka\u27s "Before the Law" distills his longer works, like The Trial and The Castle, into a single theme: Access. In "Before the Law," the main character seeks entrance into the law. The doorkeeper apathetically refuses while instigating the man\u27s need. Often, in Kafka\u27s works, the main character seeks access to some part of his life, but is prohibited, sometimes in a material way and, at other times, in an epistemic way. This paper will explore this access problem using Martin Heidegger\u27s Being and Time. It will phenomenologically interrogate the concept of "access" within Kafka, using an early Heideggerian distinction between ready-to-hand and present-at-hand, the former marked by thoughtless availability (thereness) and the latter by a sustained and thoughtful suspension, the result of a break from the regular availability of life\u27s tools (the lack of thereness), forcing Kafka\u27s main characters to dwell in the negation of access
Max Scheler und Ronald De Sousa über Werte und Gefühle
Full text linkThe aim of this paper is to reconsider Max Scheler\u27s philosophy of values in the light of the renewed discussion of axiological issues in contemporary emotion research. In this context, connections are drawn with Ronald de Sousa, who, like Scheler, seeks to demonstrate the relationship between emotions and values. While Scheler assumes an immediate feeling of value, De Sousa conceptualizes value perception as the apprehension of value properties in analogy to sensory perception. Based on De Sousa\u27s concept of key scenarios and Scheler\u27s assumption of a historically evolved ethos, this paper further analyzes the social and cultural aspects of value perception and the possibility of an objective hierarchy of values
Plus ça change: A Response to Toril Moi’s and Catherine Malabou’s Critiques of Derrida
Full text linkThis article argues that, despite their differences as thinkers, Toril Moi and Catherine Malabou offer surprisingly similar critiques of Derrida. Both doubt the political utility of Derridean thought. Both have also expressed reservations about the coherence and ongoing interest of his philosophy. By describing the unacknowledged similarities in their arguments, and by contextualizing them, this article tries to uncover what is and is not original in these "new" critiques. Ultimately, grappling with these challenges provides a useful means of rediscovering what remains unthought and exciting about Derrida
« Loi de la chair » – « loi du phallus » : d’une généalogie déconstructrice du concept de « carno – phallogocentrisme »
Full text linkThe concept of "carno-phallogocentrism", introduced by Derrida in the late 1980s, is receiving significant attention today. However, commentators have noted that Derrida’s account of this concept is incomplete and not explicitly linked to the history of "anthropocentric subjectivity." The commonly proposed genealogy of this concept attempts to remediate these two unclarities by tracing the term’s definition back to its first appearance in 1989 in an interview with Jean-Luc Nancy, titled "‘Il faut bien manger’ ou le calcul du sujet". In this article, we suggest unfolding a new genealogy that examines the context in which this concept first appeared in the text "‘Il faut bien manger’ ou le calcul du sujet" and connects this first appearance to a set of other Derridean concepts and texts implicitly evoked on the same the occasion. This genealogy will reveal the speculative, "hetero-tautological" construction of the concept: the "hyphen" interposed between "carno" and "phallogo" indicates that the "law of the phallus" must speculatively oppose another law, which we call the "law of the flesh". The aim is to devise a deconstructive gesture capable of both revoking the presumed tautological omnipotence of the "anthropocentric subjectivity" (as dominant, virile, carnivorous and logocentric) and free the "law of the flesh" from its subjection to it
"Wie viel \u27ich\u27 verträgt ein \u27wir\u27"? - Funktioniert Gesellschaft auch mit egozentrischen Individualist:innen?
No full textWhen one "I" claims the entire "we" for itself, is there room left for other "I\u27s"? How much "I" can a society endure? The author addresses these questions in three steps. First, she discusses the historical mediation of ideas between the "I" and the "we." Next, she addresses the process of liberating the individual from contexts of domination and provision. Finally, she explores the path from external responsibility to self-responsibility. 
Progress and Criticism of Progress as a Characteristic of Modern Civilizations in the Work of Friedrich Nietzsche and Ludwig Wittgenstein
Full text linkSuperficially, the proximity of Wittgenstein\u27s work and its undisputed influence by Friedrich Nietzsche\u27s ideas and concepts suggests that there are also overlaps in the large and in Nietzsche\u27s work decisive field of progress and criticism of progress. The article tries to show that this is not the case. Despite all the overlaps that may exist between Friedrich Nietzsche and Ludwig Wittgenstein, these do not come to light in the concept of progress and the critique of progress. Both thinkers pursue a very different movement of thought; Wittgenstein sees Nietzsche\u27s focus on the "idea of great progress" as a "delusion", which he does not consider to be expedient. Ludwig Wittgenstein explicitly distances himself here from the spirit that defined the prevailing European and American civilization in the 1930s. He does not succumb to the delusions of grandeur of new, higher-level civilization, but leaves progress as the constantly progressing background noise of any civilization
Friedrich Nietzsche, der "Meister des Verdachts". Über die Nietzsche-Lektüren von Michel Foucault und Paul Ricoeur
Full text linkFriedrich Nietzsche, the "Master of Suspicion". On the Nietzsche Readings of Michel Foucault and Paul Ricoeur
The term "masters of suspicion", which summarizes the critical views of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, has found its way into contemporary philosophy through Paul Ricoeur and is considered his kind of "patent". It is less well known that Michel Foucault also wrote a text on the subject of "Nietzsche, Freud, Marx" in which he speaks of suspicion. The author therefore asks herself where this thematic agreement comes from and undertakes a comparison of Foucault\u27s and Ricoeur\u27s readings of Nietzsche. In doing so, she puts forward two theses that she attempts to prove. The first thesis is that Ricoeur actually begins where Foucault left off and leads us in a direction that is opposite to that of Foucault. The second thesis is that Foucault stays closer to Nietzsche by trying to advance his "suspicion" instead of overcoming it, as Ricoeur does
Primal Screams: The Infantile Cry in Simone Weil
Full text linkThe main thesis of this essay is that non-linguistic infantile cries towards the nondefinable constitute, for Simone Weil, the essence of the human. The author begins by surveying, for the first time, Weil’s depiction of the infant’s cry as a scream of an infinite desire towards nothing definite. In the second part, in which the author analyzes the infantile cry introduced in Weil’s later writings this desire, it will be presented as fundamental to being. The infantile cry expresses mutely a desire for the indescribable good. Since it is cried from birth till death, its designation as infantile is revealed to indicate not one’s age but one’s nonlinguistic essence. While recent scholarship emphasized the importance of silence in Weil’s thought, no attention had been given to the significance of the ineffable to her philosophy. By studying the infant and infantile cry, this essay will show how the inarticulate desire towards the unattainable comprises the truth of being