Zeta books

28/08/2024

Forthcoming
Alexander Schnell, The Philosophy of Black Mirror

This work offers the first systematic study of philosophical themes in Black Mirror and provides a vital interpretive framework for understanding its philosophical perspective. It discusses all of its six seasons from a phenomenological point of view, focusing on the fundamental question of the nature and status of reality in the digital age. Through tracing different thematic areas in the series, it examines how the new digital conception of reality affects basic aspects of human existence – time, love, and death. It shows how the series brings into play sophisticated philosophical theories from Kant down to the present day and emphasizes how it places philosophy itself in different light.

ISBN: 978‑606‑697‑171‑3 (paperback)
ISBN: 978‑606‑697‑172‑0 (ebook)

23/08/2024

forthcoming

30/07/2024

CFP: Book Symposium, Luigina Mortari's The Wisdom of the Heart

Abstract: Emotions, feelings, and passions shape the quality of our existence, but we are not always aware of the ways in which our emotional life is expressed. In fact, we tend to live irreflectively. What self-care enables us to cultivate the affective side for the benefit of the quality of existence? And how is it possible to nurture the positive affections, which generate vital feelings, and scale back the negative ones, which jeopardize our relationship with ourselves and others? Answering these questions means drawing a horizon in the light of which to assess whether and how far our beliefs are appropriate for the good life. It means creating the foundation for the best possible life. From this perspective, developing the capacity for affective self-understanding is an indispensable existential goal.

Author Bio: Luigina Mortari, PhD, is Full Professor Epistemology of Qualitative Research at the University of Verona, Italy. She is the founder and Director of Melete, Center of Ethics for Care, and of the interdepartmental Caring Education Research Center (CERC) at the same University. She is the author of several books and articles on the philosophy and ethics of care, the epistemology of qualitative inquiry, and the ecological thinking.

The Journal of Philosophy of Emotion (JPE) is planning to publish a book symposium on Dr. Luigina Mortari's latest book, The Wisdom of the Heart, and we are looking for commentators who are interested in engaging in a critical discussion of it, with the aim of moving the discourse on relevant topics highlighted by her book forward. We are hoping to publish this book symposium in the JPE’s Summer (September) 2026. If you are interested, please email submissions[dot]jpe[at]gmail[dot]com, informing us of your interest, along with a copy of your CV, by August 23, 2024. Please also make sure to specify the book symposium in the email subject line. We will contact you by September 16th, 2024, with a decision regarding your expressed interest and any further details. Commentaries will be due January 1, 2025. Invited commentators will each receive a free PDF of The Wisdom of the Heart to review for their commentary, unless a hard copy is preferred. In the meantime, we recommend that those interested in possibly commenting on Dr. Mortari's book check with their local university library. Independent scholars should also note that most local university libraries provide community access to residents.

We encourage a diversity of scholars of all ranks who are interested in participating as a commentator to respond to this CFP, provided that they are willing and able to commit to fulfilling the expectations set by the JPE's submission guidelines and the JPE’s double-anonymous peer review process. Please refer to past issues of the JPE for examples, and all submissions must adhere to the JPE’s style guideline (which includes a Google Doc manuscript template), and note that authors are responsible for providing all necessary DOIs and appropriately formatting their references. All contributors are also responsible for copyediting their own submissions and providing any requested citation information, although the JPE will also conduct a preliminary review and copyedit check of all submissions accepted to go to peer review. No submission will be sent to peer review without the appropriate formatting, in accordance with the JPE style guidelines. The JPE also requires a submission fee of $35, or you can become a member of the Society for Philosophy of Emotion (SPE), which includes a one time JPE submission fee waiver. The JPE is an independently published, open-access journal, and all manuscript submission fees go toward paying for operating costs and providing need based subventions to facilitate diverse and inclusive participation. Our completely transparent Financial Report is also made available for your review.

Commentators will be selected not only based on their qualifications, but also based on their cooperative compliance and the consideration for the value of diversity and inclusiveness among equally qualified commentators. Potential contributors are also welcome to let us know in their letter of interest that they would be willing to referee the composed book symposium if for some reason they were not invited to contribute a commentary, but would still like to contribute to the book symposium. All referees may also choose to be publicly acknowledged in a subsequent issue of the JPE. A digital copy of the book will be provided to those invited to contribute a commentary and to those interested in peer reviewing the completed book symposium. Please let us know if you will also need a hard copy.

Link to online CFP:

CALL FOR PAPERS Book Symposium

30/07/2024

OPEN ACCESS
Renxiang Liu, “Prescience and Patience: A Reassessment of Technoscience in Light of Heidegger”

Abstract: In this paper, I respond to contemporary debates on technoscience by asking about how science and technology are fusible. This directs me to Heidegger’s critique of calculative thinking in modern technology and science: it turns things into objects of representation so that they may be ordered and manipulated. The unilateral availability of objects for the subject is achieved by attending to what Heidegger called the “mathematical” in things, i.e., conceptual schemes pre‑delineated before encountering things. To imagine an alternative, I transform the phenomenological account of temporality into a thing‑centric account of the unfolding of things at their own rhythms. What matters is to be patient for such rhythms, to enter a relation of mutual availability. This is in effect becoming the paradigm in contemporary practices of technoscience. The inquiry shows what is problematic (prescience) and what is promising (patience) in the technoscience that is still taking shape in our age.

https://zetabooks.com/all-titles/studia-phaenomenologica-volume-24-2024-phenomenology-and-the-sciences/



Pagine Heideggeriane
Martin Heidegger

ALTOBRANDO, Andrea & AURORA, Simone (Eds)

29/07/2024

Johannes Vorlaufer
Hoffen und Warten. Über das Warten als Temporalität der Tugend menschlicher Hoffnung im Denken Martin Heideggers

Abstract: The article discusses the extent to which Heidegger’s thinking touches on the question of human hope and pursues the thesis: Even though the concept of hope is used only marginally in Heidegger’s work, the question of it already accompanies his early thinking and deepens in the later thinking of Being. Although Heidegger takes a critical view of the metaphysical concept of hope because of its intentional character and its immanent understanding of time, he at the same time asks for an “original” hope, i.e., for the original experience of hope and for the origin of “calculating” hope. If the temporality of care is already implicitly a temporality of hopeful existence, then waiting, as conceived by the “Feldweggespräche”, is a being awake, i.e., a being open and present in serenity. Pure waiting points into a letting that lets us hope. Waiting, i.e., letting go of all hope, we open ourselves to an affirmation that promises itself to us as gift and moment in the temporal experience of being‑given. Heidegger’s question could therefore be formulated as: What makes us hope?

https://zetabooks.com/all-titles/studia-phaenomenologica-volume-24-2024-phenomenology-and-the-sciences/



Martin Heidegger
Pagine Heideggeriane

ALTOBRANDO, Andrea & AURORA, Simone (Eds)

29/07/2024

François Jaran
What’s Hermeneutical about Heidegger’s Understanding-of-Being?

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to analyze the hermeneutical nature of the concept of the understanding‑of‑being that grounds Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. I first consider the merging between ontology and hermeneutics that takes place in Being and Time and then interpret the hermeneutical sections of Being and Time (§§ 31–32) in order to clarify the ontological scope of understanding, interpretation, and meaning. This allows me to examine the three dimensions of the “understanding‑of‑being principle” (according to which our encounter with entities is made possible by an understanding‑of‑being): the semantic, the ontological, and the transcendental. Finally, I try to make sense of the problematic use Heidegger makes of the concept of understanding for both the ontic encounter with entities and the ontological access to being.

https://zetabooks.com/all-titles/studia-phaenomenologica-volume-24-2024-phenomenology-and-the-sciences/



Martin Heidegger

ALTOBRANDO, Andrea & AURORA, Simone (Eds)

29/07/2024

Honghe Wang
Die noetischen Horizontarten des Wahrnehmens nach Husserl unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des praktischen und szenisch-phantasmatischen Horizonts

Abstract: Following Husserl, horizonality is a fundamental aspect of intentional acts, making the horizon a crucial element in consciousness across all subjective experiences. This article aims to provide a comprehensive exploration of various forms of the noetic horizon in perceiving. It not only considers the well‑known inner and outer horizons, as well as the horizon of the kinesthetic “I‑can,” but also explores the practical horizon, which has been somewhat overlooked in Husserl’s phenomenology. Furthermore, the original contribution of this study lies in the introduction of scenic‑phantasmatic representing as a peculiar type of horizon in perceiving. These latter two types of horizons have significant implications in our everyday lives. Finally, the essay examines the interaction between different types of noetic horizons.

ALTOBRANDO, Andrea & AURORA, Simone (Eds)

29/07/2024

Jassen Andreev
Notes on the Dialogue between Phenomenology and Mathematics: Husserl and Becker

Abstract: The problems of clarifying the fundamental logical and mathematical concepts, and hence of accomplishing a truly radical grounding of logic and mathematics, were precisely what motivated the very beginnings of Husserl’s phenomenology. This paper is divided into two main parts. The first part focuses on the meaning and structure of Husserl’s explanation of the “logical and psychological” nature of fundamental arithmetical concepts. Particular emphasis is placed on the strategy of Philosophy of Arithmetics (1891) of analysing cardinal numbers in concepts (pivotal yet just as much harmful to philosophy) such as Vorstellungen, mental phenomena and representations. Together with Arend Heyting and Hermann Weyl, it was the phenomenologist‑mathematician Oskar Becker who was the main actor in the second round in the complex dialogue between meta‑mathematics and phenomenological philosophy. The second part of this paper aims to clarify Becker’s attempt to apply the theory of actualization of intentionality to the problem of the mode of being of the mathematical and the criterion of mathematical existence.

https://zetabooks.com/all-titles/studia-phaenomenologica-volume-24-2024-phenomenology-and-the-sciences/

ALTOBRANDO, Andrea & AURORA, Simone (Eds)

29/07/2024

Benjamin Stuck
Zur Neufassung der Differenz von Lebenswelt, Alltagswelt und alltäglichem Leben in der Wissenschaft: Eine phänomenologische Weiterentwicklung des Lebensweltbegriffes im Anschluss an Richard Grathoff

Abstract: To establish phenomenologically whether there is an everyday dimension within the “sub‑world” of science, this paper builds on Richard Grathoff’s conceptual differentiation between “lifeworld” (Lebenswelt), “everyday world” (Alltagswelt), and “daily life” (Alltägliches Leben). Such a clarification is necessary because the notion of “lifeworld” in Husserl’s or Schutz’ oeuvre is ambiguous. It means both a universal ground and an everyday world. According to Grathoff, the lifeworld is a set of general and structural dimensions of sense that relate subjectivity and world‑structure and thereby make possible the constitution of specific “worlds,” including the everyday world. The latter, in contrast, exists due to its own cognitive style according to which lifeworldly dimensions become senseful. Still different from the everyday world is daily life, the routinized process through which certain qualities of the various cognitive styles are socially constructed. Grathoff’s distinction helps to identify an internal quality within science, which includes, on the one hand, the scientific “daily life” of routine and familiarity, such as basic methods and epistemes, and, on the other hand, needs to be understood in terms of “contextualization” (Strassheim), as a realm of the new and “extraordinary,” as in far‑reaching theorizing efforts.

ALTOBRANDO, Andrea & AURORA, Simone (Eds)

29/07/2024

Renxiang Liu
Prescience and Patience: A Reassessment of Technoscience in Light of Heidegger

Abstract: In this paper, I respond to contemporary debates on technoscience by asking about how science and technology are fusible. This directs me to Heidegger’s critique of calculative thinking in modern technology and science: it turns things into objects of representation so that they may be ordered and manipulated. The unilateral availability of objects for the subject is achieved by attending to what Heidegger called the “mathematical” in things, i.e., conceptual schemes pre‑delineated before encountering things. To imagine an alternative, I transform the phenomenological account of temporality into a thing‑centric account of the unfolding of things at their own rhythms. What matters is to be patient for such rhythms, to enter a relation of mutual availability. This is in effect becoming the paradigm in contemporary practices of technoscience. The inquiry shows what is problematic (prescience) and what is promising (patience) in the technoscience that is still taking shape in our age.

ALTOBRANDO, Andrea & AURORA, Simone (Eds)

29/07/2024

OPEN ACCESS

Jesse Lopes, Cognitive Science, Phenomenology, and the Unity of Science: Can Phenomenology Be the Foundation of Science?

Abstract: Hume once argued the basic science to be not physics but “the science of man” and the foundation of this science to be the empiricist mechanism of association governed by the law of similarity in appearance—now more popular than ever in the form of artificial neural networks. I update Hume’s picture by showing phenomenology to be centrally concerned with providing a unifying basis for all the sciences (including physics) by going beyond the psychology of associationism (passive synthesis) to reveal phenomena that are irreducibly syntactic (not associative) in structure. I therefore argue that the language of thought (LOT) is the necessary mechanism at the basis of these descriptive phenomena. I conclude by sketching a new picture of all the sciences unified by LOT based on Husserl’s opposition to Galilean “physicomathematical” science vis‑à‑vis the life‑world (Lebenswelt).

https://zetabooks.com/all-titles/studia-phaenomenologica-volume-24-2024-phenomenology-and-the-sciences/

ALTOBRANDO, Andrea & AURORA, Simone (Eds)

24/07/2024

Martina Properzi
Body, Constitution, and Natural Computing. A Phenomenological Exploration

Abstract: Digital technologies are significantly changing the way our bodies constitute, or make sense of, the world around us. This article explores the impact of a largely unexplored generation of nature‑inspired digital technologies on bodily constitution. After explaining the scientific background, namely the unconventional field of computer science known as natural computing, the article analyzes a case study of related digital innovation. The selected case concerns biomimetic artificial organs that restore and often enhance the visual experience of non‑congenital blind people. Genetic phenomenology provides the conceptual framework for the analysis of the case study. The genetic phenomenological approach taken in this article is presented in the context of current phenomenological and postphenomenological research on human‑robot interaction and human‑machine hybrid intentionality.

ALTOBRANDO, Andrea & AURORA, Simone (Eds)

24/07/2024

Prisca Amoroso
Space, Movement, and the Mirror Neuron Theory. From Phenomenology to Neuroscience and Back

Abstract: In its first part, this paper is devoted to presenting Maurice Merleau‑Ponty’s phenomenology of space through some of his texts. Between 1942’s The Structure of Behavior and the 1953 courses, Merleau‑Ponty is refining a philosophy of movement, the most important concept of which is that of motor intentionality, which articulates the phenomenological theme of intentionality in relation to the problem of a subject’s understanding of observed movement. Movement is thus related to intersubjectivity and Einfühlung. Next, we present the general aspects of and some problems with mirror neuron theory, which were already addressed elsewhere in Merleau‑Ponty’s phenomenology: the brain‑body relation, the definition of the capability of mirroring in the other individual, the role of the environment in intersubjectivity, and the idea of meaning as “direction” toward goals. We suggest that a transdisciplinary approach can help solve some of the problems wrongly attributed to mirror neuron theorists.

ALTOBRANDO, Andrea & AURORA, Simone (Eds)

24/07/2024

Stanford Howdyshell
The Relationship between Truth, Inference, and the Sciences in Hermeneutic Phenomenology

Abstract: This paper seeks to bring together two trends in contemporary phenomenological research: an investigation of the sciences and a re‑examination of Martin Heidegger’s understanding of logic and inference. I will do so by examining the foundations of the “just‑as” truth found in the sciences, finding that scientific truth claims rest on apophantic speech, the contextual nature of disclosure, and, ultimately, the as‑structure of Dasein. This leads to the implication that the laws of inference for the sciences are based on how beings show themselves within a science rather than preceding the sciences. I will finish by showing that this implies logical and scientific pluralism and the rejection of philosophical naturalism.

ALTOBRANDO, Andrea & AURORA, Simone (Eds)

22/07/2024

Jesse Lopes
Cognitive Science, Phenomenology, and the Unity of Science: Can Phenomenology Be the Foundation of Science?

Studia Phaenomenologica, Volume 24/ 2024: Phenomenology and the Sciences

Abstract: Hume once argued the basic science to be not physics but “the science of man” and the foundation of this science to be the empiricist mechanism of association governed by the law of similarity in appearance—now more popular than ever in the form of artificial neural networks. I update Hume’s picture by showing phenomenology to be centrally concerned with providing a unifying basis for all the sciences (including physics) by going beyond the psychology of associationism (passive synthesis) to reveal phenomena that are irreducibly syntactic (not associative) in structure. I therefore argue that the language of thought (LOT) is the necessary mechanism at the basis of these descriptive phenomena. I conclude by sketching a new picture of all the sciences unified by LOT based on Husserl’s opposition to Galilean “physicomathematical” science vis‑à‑vis the life‑world (Lebenswelt).

22/07/2024

Bruno Frère, Sébastien Laoureux
Founding Phenomenological Sociology with Alfred Schütz and Max Scheler

Studia Phaenomenologica, Volume 24/ 2024: Phenomenology and the Sciences

Abstract: In this paper we want to re‑examine the traditional belief that phenomenological sociology owes its pedigree primarily to Alfred Schütz. More specifically, we will try to show that Max Scheler is equally worthy of the title of founder of phenomenological sociology. Our argument has three interlocking themes. First of all, we will recognize, like many others before us, the undoubtedly essential contribution made by Schütz, who is generally viewed as the father of phenomenological sociology. Our second step, however, will be to return to the foundations of this approach and to show that it throws up certain difficulties. As is widely known, Schütz’s project is nothing less than to apply the Husserlian transcendental to the empirical. But, we will show that because Schütz remains caught in a king of egologic sociology, reducing intersubjectivity—and the social—to a face‑to‑face relationship, he fails to give to phenomenology a real sociological dimension. Nevertheless this does not mean that phenomenology does not have a powerful sociological dimension. By exploring concepts insufficiently explored by Schütz in a third step, such as Husserl’s notion of intentionality and its equivalent in Max Scheler’s thought (the frame of mind), we will explore the empirical potential of phenomenology. Scheler, considering a social environment independent (and even constitutive) of the subject, gives the final form to a phenomenological sociology, a sociology which gives us even the mean to think a sympathetic relationship with the natural world, critical of capitalism and prefiguring ecology.

22/07/2024

Harald A. Wiltsche, Transcendental Approaches to Quantum Mechanics. Lessons from Bohr

Studia Phaenomenologica, Volume 24/ 2024: Phenomenology and the Sciences

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to offer an analysis of several key elements within Niels Bohr’s transcendental interpretation of quantum mechanics. After some stage setting, I will demonstrate that a transcendental perspective on Bohr offers several advantages over alternative interpretations. Specifically, I will argue that some of his most contentious claims become more plausible when viewed through a transcendental lens. However, despite these strengths, Bohr’s approach faces challenges. Following an evaluation of what I consider to be the primary weakness in his framework, the final section of the paper will explore potential avenues for enhancing the viability of the Bohrian project, with a specific focus on the role of phenomenology as a potential solution.

22/07/2024

Emiliano Trizio, Outline of a Phenomenological Metacritique of Philosophy of Science

Studia Phaenomenologica, Volume 24/ 2024: Phenomenology and the Sciences

Abstract: This article is a reflection on the present state of philosophy in light of Husserl’s crisis‑concept. First, I will introduce a tentative classification of philosophical research areas, and stress the significance of philosophy of science for the present state of philosophy. Subsequently, I will use the phenomenological theory of science as a foil to illuminate some distinctive features of philosophy of science, and to argue that these features can be understood as a consequence of the fragmentation of philosophy. Finally, I will show that, drawing on transcendental phenomenology, it is possible to bring to the fore some fundamental shortcomings of philosophy of science. These shortcomings stem from its inability to address in a rigorous way the philosophical question of the being of the world, which is, nevertheless, inescapable for any radical investigation concerning its own object.

22/07/2024

Andrea Altobrando, Simone Aurora
Editors’ Introduction. Phenomenology and the Sciences: Foundations, Clarifications, and Material Contributions

OPEN ACCESS

Studia Phaenomenologica, Volume 24/ 2024

08/07/2024

forthcoming

10/06/2024

RIP Frank Schalow

EMAD, Parvis Edited by Frank Schalow

10/06/2024

https://www.uno.edu/news/2024-05-30/in-memoriam-philosophy-prof-frank-schalow?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3ajmXBqJXslQFrmRht_HE_6gTY5wYp0D9a-XR7CohNGsjPyFdyAwyCOvI_aem_AVoRAJI9UsAIpcOj2n5iEf3gZwf6_NLr_j6frTpH7lir0SIjIK7zUcfXdiXtupCEpfkk4_4fIlqmRWIoNS40cTty

Frank Schalow, a University of New Orleans philosophy faculty member for nearly three decades and an internationally renowned authority on German philosopher Martin Heidegger, died on May 25 at the age of 68. Schalow started his career at UNO in 1995 as an adjunct faculty member. In 2001, he was pro...

29/05/2024

Reviews
JEAN-CÔME CHALAMON
Vincent Carraud, Pascal: de la certitude, Paris, PUF, « Épiméthée », 2023.

THOMAS BELLON
João F. N. B. Cortese, Infini et disproportion chez Pascal, Honoré Champion, Paris, « Lumière classique », 2023.

RUXANDRA VIȘAN
Laetitia Sansonetti and Rémi Vuillemin (eds.), Language Commonality and Literary Communities in Early Modern England: Translation, Transmission, Transfer, series Polyglot Encounters in Early Modern Britain, vol. 1, Turnhout: Brepols, 2022.

Ce livre propose, à partir du constat de difficultés importantes et de paradoxes dans la conception heideggérienne de la vérité comme décèlement (aletheia), une nouvelle interprétation du fameux « tournant » qui sera compris comme la nécessité d’une structure d’inversion réciproque ...

29/05/2024

JEAN DHOMBRES: Sur les interprétations de « tout un autre côté » de Pascal
Abstract: In 1696, in the Preface to the Analyse des infiniment petits pour l’intelligence des lignes courbes, L'Hôpital wrote, "As for Mr. Pascal, he turned his views completely to another side: he examined the curves themselves." Through the examination of this "completely different side," this article confronts the various possible meanings of a legacy that has been overlooked until today, notably during the Enlightenment era but also at the beginning of the 20th century, in the mathematical realm of infinity applied to the study of curves.

29/05/2024

YOEN QIAN-LAURENT: Walk the Line. Pascal on Meaning, Rules and Skepticism
Abstract: The relation of Pascal’s philosophy to language is well-known. Pascal’s rhetorical considerations, his reflections on the language of “honnêteté,” and the analysis of definition in De l’Esprit géométrique have been the focus of many commentaries. But these texts remain relatively undetermined in their epistemological dimension, and, especially, in the context of a more abstract reflection on the nature of meaning, truth, and language. In this article, I show how Pascal’s reflection is confronted with a particular challenge regarding the meaning of words and uncertainty. This problem can be restated with the help of the concept of rule and involves our ability to assess what it means to follow a rule. I trace Pascal’s evolution in the face of this problem, adopting successively a dogmatist position, a skeptical position and finally a contextualist position in three different texts where this challenge emerges. This development underlines the sense in which Pascal’s pragmatism is a fundamental principle of his thinking about human knowledge and how it should be addressed by philosophers.

29/05/2024

SYLVAIN JOSSET: Heart, Intelligence and Intuitus: Arnauld and Nicole, Cartesian Interpreters of Pascal
Abstract: In a famous fragment of the Pensées, Pascal explains that it is through the heart that we know first principles. But what is the meaning of this knowledge? The editors of Port-Royal took the radical decision to replace the occurrences of “heart” in this fragment with the expression “feeling and intelligence [sentiment et intelligence]”, thus marking the equivalence of these two notions. However, given that Pascal contrasts the heart with reason, and that intelligence is, for both Pascal and Descartes, synonymous with reason, how are we to understand this modification? Some commentators have seen it as an absurdity, proving that it could not have been made by interpreters like Arnauld and Nicole. In this article, I first show, on the contrary, that it is precisely a chapter of the second edition of The Logic of Port-Royal that offers the key to the difficulty. While Arnauld and Nicole are faithful to the Cartesian synonymy of intelligence and reason everywhere else, in this chapter they distinguish between these two notions, taking Descartes’ distinction between intuitus and reason from the Rules for the Direction of the Mind. Secondly, I contest this interpretation of the Pascalian heart: the heart, as an originally passive capacity of feeling, differs from the Cartesian intuitus.