Philosophy

By reading into the mythical moment of Śiva’s encounter with Kāmadeva, I interpret the way in which a yogin gains knowledge in “operating” his own autonomic nervous system; through such yogic powers, it might be possible to manipulate one’s own bodily functions. I will claim that such an ability is perfected through the esoteric technique of Śambhavī mudrā; Furthermore, my reading implies that a yogin who is well trained in this technique can pacify sexual arousal in a matter of minutes, or perhaps even seconds.

Walter Benjamin's designation of the structure of objects of history as 'monadological' in Convolute N of the Arcades Project, calls into question the role of G.W Leibniz's metaphysics in Benjamin's philosophy of history and knowledge. By alluding to Leibniz's monad, Benjamin highlights the discontinuity of history, from which self-contained objects must 'spring out'. In 'On The Program of the Coming Philosophy', written years earlier, Benjamin insisted on continuity as an epistemological principle, describing a concept of experience within which eternal knowledge and ephemeral experience form a continuum. If we consider Convolute N as an expression of Benjamin's late epistemological theory, how may his early emphasis on the necessity of continuity of experience be understood in light of his later highlighting of its rupture? This problem will be explored through recourse to the principle of continuity in Leibniz's writing, which in itself is challenged when applied to a theory of consciousness, arguably allowing fractures in the continuum. Benjamin's reformulation of Leibniz's principle of continuity, mediated by Hermann Cohen's principle of origin, internalises and accentuates these ruptures, it will be argued.

In a letter from 1917 Walter Benjamin ascribed to the philosophy of history a unique capacity for expressing metaphysical truths. His lifelong pursuit of such truths through philosophically engaging with history finds its early expression in several fragments. Therein he contests several key philosophical opponents; namely Kant, the Historical School of Law, and the German Romantics. A central critique Benjamin levels against all three relates to their conception of history as relying on a logic of ends. As Kant writes in 'Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Perspective', this conception of history is founded on an 'idea of how the course of the world would have to progress if it is to be adequate to certain reasonable aims'. Benjamin's own philosophy of history, this paper will suggest, relies rather on a logic of origins, through a reformulation of Hermann Cohen's principle of origin and J.W Goethe's concept of Urphänomen. In his later work, specifically Convolute N of the Arcades Project, Benjamin recasts Cohen and Goethe's philosophy of origin as the principle of montage which enables the 'construction' of history. He thereby transforms the teleological, universalising vision of history into a constructed, disjointed account that emphasises the significance of singular historical experiences.

“In this incisive and beautifully lucid work, Oshrat Silberbusch provides the first English language study of Adorno’s orienting concept: the nonidentical.  As she persuasively demonstrates, the nonidentical is at stake in all the central moments of Adorno’s philosophy: the caesura of Auschwitz which defies the attempt to draw meaning from it; the unsaid of conceptual thought; the somatic; the torturable body; the silenced victims of historical progress; the trace of repressed history in the present; the utopian impulse; the artwork as the stand-in for absent sensuous particularity; the shudder; and on.  Essential reading for all students of Adorno’s thought.” (J.M. Bernstein, New School for Social Research, USA)

“Oshrat Silberbusch has written an elegant and incisive meditation on the nonidentical, one of the most compelling and illuminating terms in Adorno’s philosophy.  She traces the reverberations of the nonidentical through Adorno’s three main works: Dialectic of Enlightenment, Negative Dialectic, and Aesthetic Theory.  This is a work of deep reflection and sensitive comprehension, accessible to those just coming to Adorno but so too unavoidably rich and insightful for any supposed expert.  Here is a book at once both surprising and reassuring, and a brilliant addition to the recent literature on Adorno.” (Tom Huhn, School of Visual Arts, USA)

https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783319956268

1984 is not an easy read. The world it depicts is desolate, the ending bleak. Indeed, as the book
relentlessly shatters every last one of its protagonist’s (and with it the reader’s) hopes, one may
legitimately ask whether its gloom does not defeat the “political purpose” that Orwell himself
called one of his reasons for writing. Doesn’t a book in which every way out of the wretchedness
is methodically walled shut discourage rather than encourage political activism? Where is the
crack where the possibility of another ending, and with it the will to resist, could take hold?
Starting out from these questions, I develop two different arguments – both heavily indebted
to the work of the German philosopher Theodor W. Adorno (who himself never wrote about
1984). At first, I argue that the above diagnosis is right, that indeed, 1984 leaves no room for
the possibility of another ending. Orwell mercilessly destroys every last glimmer of hope until
there is nothing left to hold onto, Winston’s final defeat but the logical conclusion in a logic that
is inescapable. Yet it would be wrong to conclude that because it doesn’t provide any easy
answer, 1984 involuntarily sides with the gloom. Following Adorno, I claim that the
opposite is true: that precisely by facing the horror in all its inexorability and refusing to release
the tension until the bitter end, Orwell holds on to the possibility of a better world. Drawing
mainly from Adorno’s writings on Samuel Beckett, and from his reflections on exaggeration and
normalcy, I argue that 1984 is a call to action precisely because in it, all action is stultified,
that it is by portraying a world that is all grey that Orwell saves the colors. The very worst that
1984 depicts shines a glaring light on the bad that is happening now (in Orwell’s now, and in
ours), the shock it produces a wake-up call to stand up and fight before it is too late.
In a second part, I attempt another possible reading that partially challenges the initial
diagnosis. Without disqualifying the earlier analysis, I claim that in the midst of the utter
bleakness, and of Winston’s seemingly inescapable doom, there are, in 1984, some tiny flickers
that even the ending cannot completely erase. Inspired by Adorno’s philosophy of the
nonidentical, I look at instances where – to use Adorno’s language – the nonidentical breaks
into all-consuming identity: through the look on someone’s face, the song of a bird, Winston’s
dreams, and maybe most importantly, what O’Brien contemptuously calls “human nature”
and what Winston experiences as “the mute protest in your own bones” – an “ancestral
memory that things had once been different”, and that therefore they could be again.
Orwell admittedly does a thorough job of showing how human nature can be brutalized into
submission, ancestral memory silenced. Yet by allowing these infinitely small reprieves in the
suffocating uniformity, he also shows where the cracks are, where resistance slumbers, and most
importantly, what we, in our nominally free world where Big Brother is not yet all-powerful,
must more than anything protect and strengthen: nonidentity, difference, diversity, and the ability
and will to fight for a different ending.

This paper is part of a larger project that attempts to explain meaning as a complex network consisting in the relationship between different modes of presentation. This may be clarified by the understanding of the multiplicity of modes of imagination, and the uniqueness of each imaging which contains the following three elements: the intention – the presence of the agent for which this relationship may be meaningful; the infiniteness of the process – seen in the fact that new texts are still being written despite the fact that they use the same finite vocabulary, along with the continuous evolution of language and thought; and finally, the relationships which are determinant of the particular elements (including the agent of intention) – these define and are defined in terms of the meaning they are made to evoke by those who understand them.