-
150The Master-slave dialectic and the 'sado-masochistic entity': Some ObjectionsAngelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 14 (3): 11-25. 2009.Hegel’s famous analyses of the ‘master-slave dialectic’, and the more general struggle for recognition which it is a part of, have been remarkably influential throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Bound up with the dominance of this idea, however, has been a corresponding treatment of sadism and masochism as complicit projects that are mutually necessary for one another in a manner that is structurally isomorphic with the way in which master and slave depend on one another. In clini…Read more
-
141Touched by Time: Some Critical Reflections on Derrida’s Engagement with Merleau-Ponty in Le ToucherSophia 47 (3): 311-25. 2008.The philosophical relationship that obtains between the work of Merleau-Ponty and Derrida has continued to intrigue and preoccupy many of us despite, or perhaps even partly because of, the fact that Derrida did not accord the work of Merleau-Ponty much attention during his remarkably prolific career. Two relatively recent books of Derrida’s have addressed this gap: Memoirs of the Blind and, more recently, On Touching. However, although Derrida proposes an “entire re-reading” of the later Merleau…Read more
-
139Merleau-Ponty: Key ConceptsAcumen Publishing. 2008.Having initially not had the attention of Sartre or Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty's work is arguably now more widely influential than either of his two contemporaries. "Merleau-Ponty: Key Concepts" presents an accessible guide to the core ideas which structure Merleau-Ponty's thinking as well as to his influences and the value of his ideas to a wide range of disciplines. The first section of the book presents the context of Merleau-Ponty's thinking, the major debates of his time, particularly existen…Read more
-
138Time, Philosophy and ChronopathologiesParrhesia (15): 64-80. 2012.This essay is an elaboration on some central themes and arguments from my recent book, Chronopathologies: Time and Politics in Deleuze, Derrida, Phenomenology and Analytic Philosophy (Rowman and Littlefield 2012). There is hence an element of generality to this essay that the book itself is better able to justify. But a short programmatic piece has its own virtues, especially for those of us who are time poor (which is pretty much everyone in contemporary academia). Moreover, it adds a dimension…Read more
-
129Continuum Companion to Existentialism (edited book)Continuum. 2011.The Continuum Companion to Existentialism offers the definitive guide to a key area of modern European philosophy. The book covers the fundamental questions asked by existentialism, providing valuable guidance for students and researchers to some of the many important and enduring contributions of existentialist thinkers. Eighteen specially commissioned essays from an international team of experts explore existentialism’s relationship to philosophical method; ontology; politics; psychoanalysis; …Read more
-
122Merleau-Ponty: Key ConceptsRoutledge. 2008.Having initially not had the attention of Sartre or Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty's work is arguably now more widely influential than either of his two contemporaries. "Merleau-Ponty: Key Concepts" presents an accessible guide to the core ideas which structure Merleau-Ponty's thinking as well as to his influences and the value of his ideas to a wide range of disciplines. The first section of the book presents the context of Merleau-Ponty's thinking, the major debates of his time, particularly existen…Read more
-
121Understanding ExistentialismRoutledge. 2005.This book discusses the work of the existential phenomenologists - Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and de Beauvoir - and the final chapter looks at the legacy of existentialism upon the thought of Derrida and other post-structuralist thinkers.
-
121Possible and Impossible, Self and Other, and the Reversibility of Merleau-Ponty and DerridaPhilosophy Today 48 (1): 35-49. 2004.This essay examines some of Derrida’s most famous ‘possible-impossible’ aporias, including his discussions of giving, hospitality, forgiveness, and mourning. He argues that the condition of the possibility of such themes is also, and at once, the condition of their impossibility. In order to reveal the shared logic upon which these aporias rely, and also to raise some questions about their persuasive efficacy, it will be argued that of the two polarities evoked by each of his possible-impossible…Read more
-
117The fate of transcendental reasoning in contemporary philosophyIn James Williams, Jack Reynolds, James Chase & Edwin Mares (eds.), Postanalytic and Metacontinental: Crossing Philosophical Divides, Continuum. 2010.A significant methodological difference between analytic and continental philosophers comes out in their differing attitudes to transcendental reasoning. It has been an object of concern to analytic philosophy since the dawn of the movement around the start of the twentieth century, and although there was briefly a mini-industry on the validity of transcendental arguments following Peter Strawson’s prominent use of them, discussion of their acceptability – usually with a negative verdict – is fa…Read more
-
117Dreyfus and Deleuze on L’habitude, Coping, and Trauma in Skill AcquisitionInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 14 (4). 2006.One of the more important and under-thematized philosophical disputes in contemporary European philosophy pertains to the significance that is given to the inter-related phenomena of habituality, skilful coping, and learning. This paper examines this dispute by focusing on the work of the Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger-inspired phenomenologist Hubert Dreyfus, and contrasting his analyses with those of Gilles Deleuze, particularly in Difference and Repetition. Both Deleuze and Dreyfus pay a lot of a…Read more
-
116Existentialism, Philosophy ofIn Michael T. Gibbons (ed.), Encyclopedia of Political Thought, Wiley-blackwell. 2014.This chapter examines the connections between French existentialism and politics. Fellow travellers like Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and de Beauvoir saw themselves as engaging with two theoretical trajectories that for them dominated the mid-twentieth century intellectual milieu, one of which was ostensibly apolitical (phenomenology), the other of which involved a politicised understanding of philosophy (Marxism). Part of the motivation behind renewing phenomenology as existential phenomenology, as o…Read more
-
113Park, J. Y., ED., buddhisms and deconstructions Lanham, maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006, 290+ XXII pp., IBSN: 0742534189, pb (review)Sophia 46 (2): 211-213. 2007.Jack Reynolds has written Merleau-Ponty and Derrida, coedited Understanding Derrida, taught at the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies, and shaken hands with HHDL. He remains in the realm of samsara
-
109Habituality and undecidability: A comparison of Merleau-ponty and Derrida on the decisionInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 10 (4). 2002.This essay examines the relationship that obtains between Merleau-Ponty and Derrida through exploring an interesting point of dissension in their respective accounts of decision-making. Merleau-Ponty's early philosophy emphasizes the body-subject's tendency to seek an equilibrium with the world (by acquiring skills and establishing what he refers to as 'intentional arcs'), and towards deciding in an embodied and habitual manner that minimizes any confrontation with what might be termed a decisio…Read more
-
106The Analytic/Continental Divide: A Contretemps?In Graham Robert Oppy & Nick Trakakis (eds.), The Antipodean philosopher, Lexington Books. 2011.In the late 1980s, the American economist Jeremy Rifkin claimed that “a battle is brewing over the politics of time” because he felt that the pivotal issue of the twenty first century would be the question of time and who controlled it. I argue in this chapter that a battle over the politics of time (and the metaphysics of time) is also a major part of what is at stake in the differences between analytic and continental philosophy. Very different philosophies of time, and associated methodologi…Read more
-
105Embodiment and Emergence: Navigating an Epistemic and Metaphysical DilemmaJournal of Transcendental Philosophy 1 (1): 1-25. 2020.In this paper, I consider a challenge that naturalism poses for embodied cognition and enactivism, as well as for work on phenomenology of the body that has an argumentative or explanatory dimension. It concerns the connection between embodiment and emergence. In the commitment to explanatory holism, and the irreducibility of embodiment to any mechanistic and/or neurocentric construal of the interactions of the component parts, I argue there is (often, if not always) an unavowed dependence on an…Read more
-
103Maurice Merleau-pontyInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2001.Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s work is commonly associated with the philosophical movement called existentialism and its intention to begin with an analysis of the concrete experiences, perceptions, and difficulties, of human existence. However, he never propounded quite the same extreme accounts of radical freedom, being-towards-death, anguished responsibility, and conflicting relations with others, for which existentialism became both famous and notorious in the 1940s and 1950s. Perhaps because of th…Read more
-
100Reply to GlendinningInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 17 (2). 2009.This "reply" continues the debate with Simon Glendinning regarding his book The Idea of Continental Philosophy, and pursues my claim that there is a distinctive 'temporal turn' associated with twentieth century continental philosophy. I also offer some family resemblance criteria for continental philosophy.
-
99Philosophy’s Shame: Reflections on an Ambivalent/Ambiviolent Relationship with ScienceSophia 55 (1): 55-70. 2016.In this paper, I take inspiration from some themes in Ann Murphy’s recent book, Violence and the Philosophical Imaginary, especially her argument that philosophy’s identity and relation to itself depends on an intimate relationship with that which is designated as not itself, the latter of which is a potential source of shame that calls for some form of response. I argue that this shame is particularly acute in regard to the natural sciences, which have gone on in various ways to distance themse…Read more
-
98Merleau-Ponty’s Gordian knot: Transcendental phenomenology, science, and naturalismContinental Philosophy Review 50 (1): 81-104. 2016.In this paper I explore a series of fertile ambiguities that Merleau-Ponty’s work is premised upon. These ambiguities concern some of the central methodological commitments of his work, in particular his commitment to transcendental phenomenology and how he transforms that tradition, and his relationship to science and philosophical naturalism and what they suggest about his philosophical methodology. Many engagements with Merleau-Ponty’s work that are more ‘analytic’ in orientation either defla…Read more
-
97Chronopathologies: The Politics of Time in Deleuze, Derrida, Analytic Philosophy and PhenomenologyLexington Books, Rowman and Littlefield. 2011.A battle over the politics of time is a major part of what is at stake in the differences between three competing currents of contemporary philosophy: analytic philosophy, post-structuralist philosophy, and phenomenological philosophy. Avowed or tacit philosophies of time define representatives of each of these groups and also guard against their potential interlocutors. However, by bringing the temporal differences between these philosophical trajectories to the fore, and showing both their met…Read more
-
96Phenomenology and Science (edited book)Palgrave-Macmillan. 2016.This book investigates the complex, sometimes fraught relationship between phenomenology and the natural sciences. The contributors attempt to subvert and complicate the divide that has historically tended to characterize the relationship between the two fields. Phenomenology has traditionally been understood as methodologically distinct from scientific practice, and thus removed from any claim that philosophy is strictly continuous with science. There is some substance to this thinking, which h…Read more
-
94Direct Perception, Inter-subjectivity, and Social Cognition: Why Phenomenology is a Necessary but not Sufficient ConditionThe New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Research 333-354. 2015.In this paper I argue that many of the core phenomenological insights, including the emphasis on direct perception, are a necessary but not sufficient condition for an adequate account of inter-subjectivity today. I take it that an adequate account of inter-subjectivity must involve substantial interaction with empirical studies, notwithstanding the putative methodological differences between phenomenological description and scientific explanation. As such, I will need to explicate what kind of …Read more
-
92Review of Michael Marder, The Event of the Thing: Derrida's Post-Deconstructive Realism (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2010 (2). 2010.In this review we consider Michael Marder's association of Derrida with realism.
-
86Dan Zahavi, ed. , The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Phenomenology . Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 33 (6): 500-506. 2013.
-
83Transcendental Pragmatics? Pragmatism, Deleuze, and MetaphilosophyIn Sean Bowden, Simone Bignall & Paul Patton (eds.), Deleuze and Pragmatism, Routledge. pp. 235-46. 2014.In this chapter I juxtapose the methodological commitments of Gilles Deleuze with some different forms of contemporary neo-pragmatism developed by Nicholas Rescher, Sami Pihlstrom and Joseph Margolis. Focusing upon their respective conceptions of transcendental reasoning, naturalism, and common sense, I conclude that Deleuze’s philosophy challenges some core aspects of contemporary neo-pragmatism, and hence also the prospects for a rapprochement that might warrant the name of "transcendental pra…Read more
-
82Kirby, Merleau-Ponty, and the Question of an Embodied DeconstructionContretemps (3): 133-47. 2002.In Telling Flesh: the Substance 0f the C0rporeul, Vicki Kirby suggests, among other things, that it is not in the interests of feminism to propound what she describes as an ‘inessentialist’ position in regards to embodiment. While she objects to undifferentiating biological givens that might, for example, attempt to construe women as confined to a nurturing role, she also does not want to simplistically insist that embodiment has nothing to do with subjectivity. To pose the problem in terms more…Read more
-
80The master–slave dialectic and the “sado-masochistic entity”Angelaki 14 (3): 11-26. 2009.Hegel's famous descriptions of the “master–slave dialectic,” and the more general analysis of the struggle for recognition that it is a part of, have been remarkably influential throughout the nine...
-
79Understanding Derrida (edited book)Continuum. 2004.The essays cover language, metaphysics, the subject, politics, ethics, the decision, translation, religion, psychoanalysis, literature, art, and Derrida's ...
Geelong, Victoria, Australia
Areas of Specialization
Metaphilosophy |
Continental Philosophy |
Perception |
Philosophy of Science, Miscellaneous |
Perception and Phenomenology |
PhilPapers Editorships
20th Century Philosophy |