Monthly Archives: July 2010

Current state of the humanities in 3 minutes

Posted on July 29, 2010 by

Eva von Dassow clearly articulates the academic reality of the humanities today. I would imagine that as a professor of classical and Near Eastern studies her discipline is on the potential list of programs to be cut. Regardless, what she … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Questions of Substance

Posted on July 28, 2010 by

To treat Spinoza’s understanding of substance and how substance in turn relates to the attributes, God, and the modes, is far beyond the scope of a single post – perhaps even an entire manuscript – but a few suggestions will … Continue reading →

Posted in Deleuze, Spinoza | 7 Comments

Bye Bye Middle Class

Posted on July 25, 2010 by

22 Statistics That Prove The Middle Class Is Being Systematically Wiped Out Of Existence In America. Although this link doesn’t do much more for me than to validate what I already know, it nicely puts all the stats into one … Continue reading →

Posted in Economy | 1 Comment

Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata

Posted on July 24, 2010 by

In the next few posts I’d like to develop a few arguments concerning Spinoza’s method, hence the title of this post, then move on to Spinoza’s notion of substance as a radical aberrant monism, and finally touch upon the third … Continue reading →

Posted in Deleuze, Spinoza | 5 Comments

Deleuzian Supervenience

Posted on July 22, 2010 by

In his account of necessity David Lewis proposes that given two worlds that are exactly alike at time1, W and W*, and in which the same natural laws apply, then at any later time these two worlds will continue to … Continue reading →

Posted in David Lewis, Deleuze, Hume, Meillassoux | 4 Comments

Latour on factishes and belief

Posted on July 20, 2010 by

Before moving on to work on Spinoza and the concept of aberrant monism, I want to add one more post on Latour. I hope that between this and previous posts there may emerge a relatively coherent picture of my reading … Continue reading →

Posted in Deleuze, Latour | 4 Comments

Quick response to a quick response

Posted on July 18, 2010 by

Harman responded quite quickly to my post and I just want to add a few things that I perhaps should have added in the initial post (I’m new to blogging – I suppose it’s obvious now). First, my post was … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

In Defense of Latour (and his neo-Humean ways)

Posted on July 18, 2010 by

As most know, especially those who would be reading this post in the first place, interest in Latour has increased dramatically. No longer the eccentric novelty of being an anthropologist working at the Salk Institute and carving out a niche … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Becoming-dangerous: a philosophical agenda

Posted on July 16, 2010 by

In reading through Steven Nadler’s nice introduction to Spinoza’s Ethics I was reminded of how dangerous Spinoza’s thought was taken to be at the time. Jonathan Israel’s Radical Enlightenment also drives this point home. Spinoza himself was excommunicated from his … Continue reading →

Posted in Foucault, Spinoza | 4 Comments

Events and Objects (à la Latour)

Posted on July 14, 2010 by

In We Have Never Been Modern, Latour adopts a cartographic metaphor to explain the stabilization of the Nature-Society duality from unstable events, or the trajectory from A” to D” marks, as Latour puts it, ‘the gradient that registers variations in … Continue reading →

Posted in Latour | 2 Comments