Monday, November 19, 2012

Are We Postsecular?


Lady Shri Ram College for Women

in association with
International Research Network on Religion and Democracy

presents an international conference

‘Are We Postsecular?’
Contesting Religion & Politics in Comparative Contexts

13–14 December 2012

Time: 9.30am–6.00pm
Venue: Auditorium, Lady Shri Ram College for Women,
Lajpat Nagar IV, New Delhi 110024 India

To REGISTER, please email at lsr.postsec@gmail.com
with your name, affiliation & email ID. Registration is free.

For the full programme, please visit www.arewepostsecular.blogspot.com


Thursday, April 26, 2012

A Deleuzian Century?: Session V


We will consider a field of experience taken as a real world no longer in relation to a self but to a simple 'there is'. There is, at some moment, a calm and restful world. Suddenly a frightened face looms up that looks at something out of the field. the other person appears here as neither subject nor object but as something that is very different: a possible world, the possibility of a frightening world.

Next week, we engage with Chapter One: What Is a Concept from What is Philosophy [Deleuze & Guattari]

Date: 1 May 2012 (Tuesday)
Time: 2.30 pm
Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of delhi

A Deleuzian Century?: Session IV


A rhizome as a subterranean stem is absolutely different from roots and radicles. Bulbs and tubers are rhizomes.

This week we read the 'Introduction: Rhizome' from A Thousand Plateaus

Date: 24 April 2012 (Tuesday)
Time: 2:30 pm
Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi

Monday, April 16, 2012

A Deleuzian Century?: Session III


We meet tomorrow, for the third session of our readings. The text is Chapter IX: The Doctrine of Eternal Return from Tracy B. Strong's Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration

Date: 17 April 2012 (Tuesday)
Time: 2:30 pm
Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi

Monday, April 9, 2012

A Deleuzian Century?: Session II


“What is an event?” is, of course, a quintessentially Deleuzian question. And Whitehead marks an important turning-point in the history of philosophy because he affirms that, in fact, everything is an event.

Next week we discuss Steven Shaviro's article titled Deleuze's Encounter With Whitehead. The article is available here.

Date: 10 April 2012 (Tuesday)
Time: 2.30 pm
Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi.

Monday, April 2, 2012

A Deleuzian Century?: Session I

To consider a pure event, it must first be given a metaphysical ba­sis. But we must be agreed that it cannot be the metaphysics of sub­stances, which can serve as a foundation for accidents; nor can it be a metaphysics of coherence, which situates these accidents in the en­tangled nexus of causes and effects. The event-a wound, a victory-defeat, death-is always an effect produced entirely by bodies colliding, mingling, or separating, but this effect is never of a corpo­real nature; it is the intangible, inaccessible battle that turns and re­peats itself a thousand times around Fabricius, above the wounded Prince Andrew. The weapons that tear into bodies form an endless incorporeal battle. Physics concerns causes, but events, which arise as its effects, no longer belong to it Let us imagine a stitched causal­ity: as bodies collide, mingle, and suffer, they create events on their surfaces, events that are without thickness, mixture, or passion; for this reason, they can no longer be causes. They form, among them­selves, another kind of succession whose links derive from a quasi-physics of incorporeals-in short, from metaphysics.

Michel Foucault, Theatrum Philosophicum

Tomorrow, we begin reading Deleuze. All are invited!

Date: 3 April 2012 (Tuesday)
Time: 2.30 pm
Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi

Monday, March 26, 2012

A Deleuze April

The Philosophy Reading Group commences next week. And this time we read Deleuze! Here are the course details:

COURSE: A Deleuzian Century, was it?
[Every Tuesday (starting 3 April 2012), 2.30 pm]

Michel Foucault, in the Theatrum Philosophicum prophesized that ‘one day, perhaps, this century will be called Deleuzian’. Why might that be!

READINGS:

1. Michel Foucault, Theatrum Philosophicum
2. Gilles Deleuze & FĂ©lix Guattari, ‘Introduction: Rhizome’, A Thousand Plateaus
3. Gilles Deleuze & FĂ©lix Guattari, selections from, Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature
4. Gilles Deleuze & FĂ©lix Guattari, selections from What is Philosophy?
5. Gilles Deleuze, selections from The Logic of Sense
6. Gilles Deleuze & FĂ©lix Guattari, selections from Anti-Oedipus
7. Gilles Deleuze, ‘Introduction: Repetition and Difference’, Difference and Repetition

Those interested, please email me at silikamohapatra@gmail.com to confirm your participation.



© Gerard Uferas: Gilles Deleuze

Monday, March 5, 2012

Session VI - Challenging Theories of Justice: The Capability Approaches of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum

In the last session with Professor Jay Drydyk, the participants made presentations which was followed by discussion. The short papers will be available for reading at Journal of the Forum for Philosophical Studies (JFPS).






Friday, February 10, 2012

Session V - Challenging Theories of Justice: The Capability Approaches of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum


Further to our discussion last Tuesday, we now move to pages 69-95, from Martha Nussbaum’s 'Social Contracts and Three Unsolved Problems of Justice’.

Date: 14 February 2012 (Tuesday)
Time: 3.00 pm - 5.00 pm
Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi

Reading/lecture questions: 
  • What alternatives to social contract theory do Sen and Nussbaum propose?
  • How would public reason support Nussbaum’s 10 capabilities?
  • What logic leads from equal human dignity to preventing shortfalls in the 10 capabilities, for all?
  • Does Nussbaum succeed in showing that the capability approach does not face the same roadblocks that social contract theory faces at the three frontiers of justice?
Discussion questions: This week Prof. Drydyk invites your questions. Ideally they should be questions that would be challenging for Martha Nussbaum to answer. Please email your questions to him at JayDrydyk@gmail.com, and he will select some to begin the discussion period.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Session IV - Challenging Theories of Justice: The Capability Approaches of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum


We now resume our sessions with Professor Jay Drydyk, and meet tomorrow to read Martha Nussbaum’s 'Social Contracts and Three Unsolved Problems of Justice’ (pages 9-35).

Date: 7 February 2012 (Tuesday)
Time: 3.00 pm - 5.00 pm
Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi

Reading/lecture questions:
  • What challenges do Sen and Nussbaum pose for theories of justice?
  • What is Nussbaum’s argument against social contract theories?
  • What are the assumptions she attributes to the social contract tradition?
  • What problems result from those assumptions at the ‘frontiers of justice’?

Discussion questions:
  • Is it not sufficient to treat disabled people with benevolence rather than justice?
  • Why can’t a just world simply be a world made up of just countries?
  • As Sen noted, equality claims can by made for people because they deserve equal consideration. But if we gave fully equal consideration to all other species, we would not eat any of them, and we as a species would cease to exist. So does it make any sense to discuss justice for other species? Would it be self-defeating for humans to act justly in relation to other species?

Monday, January 23, 2012

Sessions IV to VI: Challenging Theories of Justice: The Capability Approaches of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum


Over the next three sessions with Professor Jay Drydyk, we would be reading the first chapter from Martha Nussbaum’s Frontiers of Justice, titled 'Social Contracts and Three Unsolved Problems of Justice’.


The text has been divided into three parts to spread over the three sessions:
07 February 2012 : Pages 9-35
14 February 2012 : Pages 35 - 69
21 February 2012 : Pages 69-95

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Session III - Challenging Theories of Justice: The Capability Approaches of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum



For Session III of the course On Justice, the reading is: ‘Introduction’ from Amartya Sen’s The Idea of Justice.


Date: 17 January 2012 (Tuesday)
Time: 3.00 pm - 5.00 pm

Venue: Room 56, First Floor, Arts Faculty Building, University of Delhi


Reading/lecture questions
  1. What is Sen’s idea of justice, anyway? What does reasoning have to do with it?
  2. What is Sen’s feasibility argument, and is it sound?
  3. What are Sen’s redundancy arguments, and are they sound?
  4. Can a comparative approach escape these problem
Discussion questions
  1. Is Sen’s assessment of the difference between niti and nyaya sound?
  2. Is Sen’s assessment of the discussion between Arjuna and Krishna sound?
  3. Does the social contract tradition have a future?

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Session II - Challenging Theories of Justice: The Capability Approaches of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum


Many thanks for being there yesterday. It was great to see you all!


The reading for the next session is: 
Amartya Sen, 'Capability and Well-being', Chapter 2 of The Quality of Life edited by Sen and Nussbaum, 1993.



Date: 10 January 2012 (Tuesday)

Time: 3.00 pm - 5.00 pm

Venue: Room 56, First Floor, Arts Faculty Building, University of Delhi

Reading/lecture questions
1. What is meant by 'advantage'?
2. What does Sen mean by 'capabilities', 'capability', well-being freedom, well-being achievement, agency freedom, agency achievement?
3. Which goods constitute advantage?
4. Why is it capabilities that matter most for distributive justice?

Discussion questions
1. Who is to decide which capabilities are valuable? Experts? The people?
2. For Germans, eating well might involve rye bread, not rotis, while for Indians, eating well might involve rotis, but not rye bread. How can there be a single capability, if there is no single standard for its achievement?
3. Nussbaum's challenge: Don’t we need a single list of all essential capabilities?
4. Sen has discussed only individual capabilities. Aren’t group capabilities also important – for instance the capability of a tribal or ethnic group to maintain their culture?

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Session I - Challenging Theories of Justice: The Capability Approaches of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum



Thank you everybody who registered for the course On Justice: Sen and NussbaumPlease note that we begin our first session on 3 January 2012 (Tuesday) at 2:30 pmWe will be meeting at the Library, Department of Philosophy, Arts Faculty Building, University of Delhi.

The lecture, followed by discussion — a two hours programme — will be based on the first chapter of Amartya Sen's Inequality Reexamined, titled 'Equality of What?'. The speaker, Professor Jay Drydyk will presume a prior reading on the part of all the participants.

Questions to be addressed in the lecture

1.  What was the context of debate in which Sen wrote this piece?
2.  What are his arguments for the claim that every significant theory of justice must answer the ‘equality of what’ question? (Please consider this while reading Sen’s chapter.)
3.  What is the significance of these arguments, in the wider context of debate?

Questions for the discussion period

1.  Questions about the lecture.
2.  Concerning Sen’s first, historical argument that every significant theory of social arrangements calls for equality of something: are there further counter-examples? From Indian traditions?
3.  Concerning Sen’s second, theoretical argument, from impartiality or equal consideration:
(a) Is it just a Western idea that equal consideration matters?
(b) Is it just a modern idea that equal consideration matters?
(c) Does justice sometimes require that one is not impartial, but partial, for example towards one’s own family? Towards one’s own country?
(d) Is there also a question, ‘Equal consideration of what?’ For instance, libertarians would call for equal consideration of everyone’s liberty, utilitarians would call for equal consideration of everyone’s happiness, and so on. Would that undermine Sen’s argument?
4.  Other questions arising from the reading or from the discussion.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

On Justice: Sen & Nussbaum

Course Duration: 3 January - 21 February, 2012: A series of six weekly lectures (on Tuesdays)
ByJay Drydyk, Professor, Department of Philosophy, Carleton University, Ottawa

Challenging Theories of Justice: The Capability Approaches of Amartya Sen and Martha NussbaumThis series of lectures/discussions focuses on challenges posed to prevailing liberal theories of justice (especially that of John Rawls) by the capability approach as developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. The first three sessions will be devoted to the capability concepts that Sen introduced to provide an alternative ‘informational base’ for social choice and deliberation, followed by his arguments that social contract theories are neither necessary nor sufficient nor even very useful for achieving greater justice in the world. Then attention shifts to Martha Nussbaum’s arguments that social contract approaches are typically unable to account for injustices to disabled persons, to global injustice, or to injustices towards non-humans - the three ‘frontiers of justice’. Readings and discussion questions will be proposed for each session.

Reading List
1. Sen, 'Equality of What?' [chapter 1] of Inequality Reexamined, 1992.
2. Sen, 'Capability and Well-being' [chapter 2] of The Quality of Life, [eds] Sen and Nussbaum, 1993.
3. Sen, 'Introduction', The Idea of Justice, 2009.
4. Nussbaum, 'Social Contracts and Three Unsolved Problems of Justice', [chapter 1] of Frontiers of Justice, 2006, pp. 9-35.
5. Nussbaum, 'Social Contracts and Three Unsolved Problems of Justice', [chapter 1] of Frontiers of Justice, 2006, pp. 35-69.
6. Nussbaum, 'Social Contracts and Three Unsolved Problems of Justice', [chapter 1] of Frontiers of Justice, 2006, pp. 69-95.

To register for this course please email silikamohapatra@gmail.com


There are no registration or course charges. At the end of the course, you will receive a certificate of participation.

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Reading Group: 5 December 2011


Abide with me;
Fast falls the eventide

Given that this Tuesday is an official holiday, we meet tomorrow, i.e. Monday, to read Chapter 7: God and the World, the last remaining chapter of the text.

Date: 5 December 2011 (Monday)
Time: 2:30 pm
Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Reading Group: 29 November 2011


A detailed discussion of Descartes, Locke, and Hume may make plain how deeply the philosophy of organism is founded on seventeenth-century thought and how at certain critical points it diverges from that thought. [Whitehead, Process and Reality]

This Tuesday, we deliberate on how Whitehead is positioned vis-Ă -vis other philosophers such as Plato, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant and Newton. We read Chapter 6: Whitehead and Other Philosophers


Date: 29 November 2011 (Tuesday)
Time: 2.30 pm
Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi

Monday, November 21, 2011

Reading Group: 22 November 2011

What is Perception?

Whitehead says: Perception in its primary form is consciousness of the causal efficacy of the external world by reason of which the percipient is a concrescence from a definitely constituted datum. Perception, in this primary sense, is perception of the settled world in the past as constituted by its feeling-tones, and as efficacious by reason of those feeling-tones. Perception, in this sense of the term, will be called 'perception in the mode of causal efficacy'.

Tomorrow we read Chapter 5: Perception from A Key to Whitehead's Process and Reality.

Date: 22 November 2011 (Tuesday)
Time: 2.30 pm
Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi

Monday, November 14, 2011

Reading Group: 15 November 2011


So far we were engaged in understanding the nature of actual entities that are conceived by Whitehead as the building blocks of the universe. Now we make the transition from a microcosmic analysis to the macrocosmic picture.

Tomorrow we read Chapter 4: Nexus and the Macrocosmic. The project of this chapter is to understand aggregates of actual entities — nexus and societies, types and levels of social organization.

Date: 15 November 2011 (Tuesday)
Time: 2:30 pm
Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi



And if you think of Brick, for instance.
And you say to Brick: What do you want Brick?
And Brick says to you: I like an Arch.
And if you say to Brick: Look, arches are expensive and I can use a concrete lentil over you. What do you think of that? Brick?
Brick says: …I like an Arch.

[Louis Isadore Kahn]

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Reading Group: 01 November 2011


Next Tuesday we continue with the second half of Chapter 3: The Phases of Concrescence, pages 54 to 70.

Last time, we discussed the first two phases, namely (a) conformal feelings and (b) conceptual feelings. The constitution of an actual entity is a product, both of other actual entities that form its environment (physical feelings) and the potentiality embodied by eternal objects (conceptual feelings). The former gives the object an element of contingency, while the latter crafts the necessity of its being.

Now we move to the third phase, i.e., (c) comparative feelings, which may be either simple or complex.

Date: 01 November 2011 (Tuesday)
Time: 2:30 pm
Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Reading Group: 18 October 2011


After the riveting debate over the meaning of 'potentiality' last week, we now move to Chapter 3: The Phases of Concrescence. Since it is a lengthy chapter, we will be breaking it into two sessions. For next Tuesday we read pages 36 to 54. 

Date: 18 October 2011 (Tuesday)
Time: 2:00 pm
Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi

What is concrescence?
[It] is the name given to the process that is any given actual entity; it is the 'real internal constitution of a particular existent'. Concrescence is the growing together of a many into the unity of one. 


Ek Chidiya, Anek Chidiya
Films Division, Doordarshan

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Reading Group: 11 October 2011

Whitehead conceives of three formative elements:
1. Eternal object is always a potentiality for actual entities; but in itself, as conceptually felt, it is neutral as to the fact of its physical ingression in any particular actual entity in the temporal world. 
2. God is the organ of novelty, aiming at intensification. He is the lure for feeling, the eternal urge of desire. The primary element in the 'lure for feeling' is the subject's prehension of the primordial nature of God. 
3. Creativity is the principle of novelty. An actual occasion is a novel entity diverse from any entity in the 'many' which it unifies. Thus 'creativity' introduces novelty into the content of the many, which are the universe disjunctively. 
Next week, we read Chapter 2: The Formative Elements (pp. 20-35) from A Key to Process and Reality.

Date: 11 October 2011 (Tuesday)

Time: 2.30 pm

Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Neutrino and Whitehead

Last Tuesday, doing philosophy over rounds of tea and cookies, we considered K's suggestion that Whitehead's elaboration of the nature of an actual entity may primarily be a theory of causation, albeit not in the standard vocabulary of cause and effect. There was however a general discomfort over the use of anthropomorphic language such as 'feeling' to explain an ontology (of things, not all of which are human). I think Whitehead makes it sufficiently clear what he means by 'feeling', and the definition is by no means merely psychological (i.e., restricted to human psychology) even if it seems to carry that baggage. Feeling is the term used for the basic generic operation of passing from the objectivity of the data to the subjectivity of the actual entity in question (PR 83, 65). Whitehead may be a vitalist, but he is also a realist, celebrating the dynamic character of a plurality of things: apples, cinema, genomes, gnomes! For him, therefore, vitalism is not restricted to human beings or even living organisms; everything in the universe is living. Perhaps this is what Thales meant when/if he said 'all things are full of gods' and thought that magnets have soul. Even the seemingly static and lifeless have a life of their own, and are affected by their own histories, their environment and the inherent potentiality to become.

It remains to be seen how this position holds through subsequent readings.


However, to go back to the question of causeeffect, the hypothesis of the faster-than-light flight of Neutrino (ghostly subatomic particles) is both destabilizing and thrilling because: particles that move faster than light are essentially moving backwards in time, which could make the phrase cause and effect obsolete. How will actual entities moving faster than the speed of light affect other actual entities, their slower comrades?




The Persistence of Memory, Salvador Dali, 1931, Oil on canvas, 24 × 33 cm


Thursday, September 22, 2011

An Overview: The Actual Entity, Chapter One

Text: Whitehead, Alfred North and Donald W. Sherburne. 1981. A Key to Whitehead's Process and Reality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Process and Reality is Whitehead’s attempt at describing reality and this description contains ‘the becoming, the being and the relatedness of actual entities’ (p. 7), i.e. what a caterpillar is (being), what a caterpillar can be (becoming), and how a caterpillar can affect a white mulberry leaf (relation).

Immediately, one is curious as to what ‘actual entities’ are. Actual entities (where actual is used in the sense of ‘existent’) are the generically uniform, but specifically different, vital microcosmic units that compose reality — the building blocks (if blocks sounds too blocky to be palatable to Whitehead, let’s say processes) of Whitehead’s ontology. 

Given that actual entities are dynamic rather than static, what gives unity to each of them is called ‘concrescence’, the internal constitution of actual entities. What Whitehead calls the diversity of the many, must therefore be temporally diverse and yet successive. Concrescence is then nothing but the process that is to be understood as a unit of reality, a process that is striving towards ‘satisfaction’.

Whitehead’s actual entities seem like Leibniz’s monads, but they differ from them in so far as they are constantly in the process of becoming. Also, they are not windowless as in the case of Leibniz; in fact they are all windows, and in that sense every actual entity is a ‘mode of the process of feeling the world’ (p. 8).

Experience of the world from the available data (derived from the objectification of other actual occasion), then constitutes every actual entity. The transition of the objective data into subjectivity is termed as ‘feeling’. Feeling is the process of the absorption of the so-called ‘others’ of the universe, of transforming the external into a form of internality. 

An actual entity is a product of its interaction with various elements of the universe. Its being is constituted by what the universe is for it. It appropriates some of these elements, and excludes others. Whitehead’s cosmology is then absolutely relational, and the concrete and definite bonds of relatedness are called prehensions. A subject prehends a data by giving it a subjective form (subject, data and the subjective form then being three factors of prehension). Prehensions may be positive or negative, depending on whether the subject excludes or includes the datum. The case of inclusion is called feeling. An actual entity is the subject of feelings.

The initial datum, which we have been discussing, is nothing but another actual entity and the moment of its objectification occurs when it becomes a feeling for the subject. The feeling is constituted of five factors (p.12): (a) the subject which feels (b) the initial data which are to be felt (c) the elimination in virtue of negative prehensions (d) the objective datum which is felt (e) the subjective form, which is how that subject feels the objective datum.

The politics of actual entities governs how one entity will be objectified for the other, i.e. how much power it holds over the other. Feelings are the manner in which elements of nature immortalize themselves.

Every actual entity has a point of termination which is concomitant with the attainment of what Whitehead calls satisfaction. When an actual entity has successfully established a concrete relationship with every other entity in the universe, either positively or negatively, it is satisfied and complete. This completing is also a termination of the process. In every phase of the process of concrescence, something new is added to the process until it is completely satisfied. This integration is essential to the character of actual entities, and there is a telos towards which they move — the final cause being a complete determination, a definiteness. To attain this definiteness, completeness and satisfaction is to become objectively immortal. Now, even though its own existence has evaporated, the actual entity can still affect other entities, and showcase its power.

What is central to the system of Whitehead, is the relatedness of actualities. Things that have seemingly perished, are absorbed into the living and that is how reality continues to become. Mr Caterpillar is immortalized in becoming a butterfly. Each actual entity has a potentiality for process and must perfect itself. Once perfect, and satisfied, the entity seems to close-up. And yet, in spite of the dead, there is no real death for the satisfied entity is objectively immortal — a being beyond itself, for the future, potentiality. 

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Reading Group: 20 September 2011

Next week we read Chapter 1: The Actual Entity from A Key to Whitehead's Process and Reality.
Date: 20 September, 2011 (Tuesday) 
Time: 2.00 pm 
Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi


'Actual entities', also termed 'actual occasions', are the final real things of which the world is made up. There is no going behind actual entities to find anything more real. (A. N. Whitehead. 1978. Process and Reality. New York: Free Press. p. 18)



I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them. But they answered: Frighten? Why should any one be frightened by a hat? My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. But since the grown-ups were not able to understand it, I made another drawing: I drew the inside of a boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to have things explained. My drawing number two looked like this.



[Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince]




Monday, September 12, 2011

Process and Reality: Course


Primary Text: Whitehead, Alfred North and Donald W. Sherburne. 1981. A Key to Whitehead's Process and Reality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Schedule (tentative): September to November

Chapter 1: The Actual Entity - 20.09.2011                       
Chapter 2: The Formative Elements - 27.09.2011                       
Chapter 3: The Phases of Concrescence - 11.10.2011; 18.10.2011                                           
Chapter 4: Nexus and the Macrocosmic - 25.10.2011                       
Chapter 5: Perception - 01.11.2011                       
Chapter 6: Whitehead and Other Philosophers - 08.11.2011; 15.11.2011                      
Chapter 7: God and the World - 22.11.2011                       
Chapter 8: In Defense of Speculative Philosophy - 29.11.2011