John Sallis

_The Verge of Philosophy_ is both an exploration of the limits of philosophy and a memorial for John Sallis’s longtime friend and interlocutor Jacques Derrida. The centerpiece of the book is an extended examination of three sites in Derrida’s thought: his interpretation of Heidegger regarding the privileging of the question; his account of the Platonic figure of the good; and his interpretation of Plato’s discourse on the crucial notion of the chora, the originating space of the universe. Sallis’s reflections are given added weight—even poignancy—by his discussion of his many public and private philosophical conversations with Derrida over the decades of their friendship. This volume thus simultaneously serves to mourn and remember a friend and to push forward the deeply searching discussions that lie at the very heart of that friendship. “All of John Sallis’s work is essential, but [this book] in particular is remarkable.... Sallis shows better than anyone I have ever read what it means to practice philosophy on the verge.”—Walter Brogan, Villanova University

V članku skušam opredeliti vlogo pojma protislovnosti v zgodovini metafizike. Podrobnejši vpogled v Aristotelovo mišljenje o tem pojmu pokaže, v kolikšni meri je načelo neprotislovnosti zakoreninjeno v metafiziki. V nadaljevanju se osredotočam na Kantovo razvijanje transcendentalne logike in Heglovo izenačenje logike z metafiziko. V zaključku razmišljam o možnosti drugačne logike – logike preobilja – onkraj heglovske afirmacije protislovnosti, ki razkriva mejo principa protislovnosti znotraj določenih struktur ali elementov.This paper traces the role that the concept of contradiction plays in the history of metaphysics. By investigating the way that this concept was taken up by Aristotle, it shows how thoroughly the principle of non-contradiction belongs to metaphysics. The paper then traces Kant's development of a transcendental logic and Hegel's identification of logic and metaphysics. The paper explores, finally, the possibility that even beyond Hegelian affirmation of contradiction another logic--an exorbitant logic--can be conceived that exposes the limits of the principle of non-contradiction and accordingly affirms contradiction whithin certain domains of structures or elements.

By applying the tools of deconstruction to crucial texts of German Idealism, John Sallis reveals the suppressed but essential role of imagination in even the most ambitious attempts to represent pure reason. Sallis focuses on certain operations of "spacing" in metaphysics—textual lapses and leaps in which reason is displaced or suspended or abridged. In the project of establishing priority of reason, such operations can appear only in disguise, and Sallis reveals the play of imagination and metaphor that masks them. Concentrating on what has been called the closure of metaphysics, he examines texts in which the suppression of spacing would be carried out most rigorously, texts in which even metaphysics itself is seen as only an errant roaming, a spacing that must still be secured, to be replaced by a pure space of truth. And yet, in these very texts Sallis identifies outbreaks of spacing that would disrupt the tranquil space of reason. Rather than closure, he finds an opening of reason to imagination. Sallis's reading of a metaphorical system in the _Critique of Pure Reason_ reveals a fissuring and historicizing of what would otherwise be called pure reason. Next he traces in Fichte's major work as well as in several lesser-known texts a decentering from reason to imagination, which he characterizes as a power of hovering between opposites and beyond being. Sallis then returns to the _Critique of Pure Reason_ to expose, in relation to the famous question of the common root of reason and sensibility, a certain eccentricity of reason. Proceeding to the Critique of Judgment, he traces a divergence of sublime nature away from that supersensible space of reason to which Kant would otherwise assimilate it—a withdrawal toward an abyss. Finally, Sallis turns to Hegel's _Encyclopedia_, supplementing his reading with previously unknown notes from Hegel's lectures on those sections dealing with imagination; his reading of those sections serves to expose, within the most rigorous reduction of spacing in the history of metaphysics, an irrepressible and disseminative play of imagination.

Boldly contesting recent scholarship, Sallis argues that The Birth of Tragedy is a rethinking of art at the limit of metaphysics. His close reading focuses on the complexity of the Apollinian/Dionysian dyad and on the crossing of these basic art impulses in tragedy. "Sallis effectively calls into question some commonly accepted and simplistic ideas about Nietzsche's early thinking and its debt to Schopenhauer, and proposes alternatives that are worth considering."--Richard Schacht, Times Literary Supplement.

On se propose ici de reconstituer les étapes du dialogue que l’auteur a entretenu avec Jacques Derrida au sujet de la question et de l’importance de la chora dans le Timée de Platon, dialogue qui s’est poursuivi pendant plus de deux décennies. On tente, en revenant aux textes de Derrida, de renouveler les questions qui ont fait l’objet de ce dialogue, en particulier celles qui ont trait au statut métaphorique ou non métaphorique de la chora et au rapport que celle-ci entretient avec le bien en tant qu’il est situé « au-delà de l’être » et qu’il unit donc en soi générosité et réserve.

John Sallis dismantles the traditional conception of nature in this book of imagination and the cosmos. In the thought of Emerson, Hegel, and Schelling, Sallis discerns the seeds of an understanding of nature that goes against the modern technological assault on natural things and opens a space for a revitalized approach to the world. He identifies two fundamental reorientations that philosophical thought is called on to address today: the turn to the elemental in nature and the turn from nature to the cosmos at large. He traces the elusive course of the imagination, as if coming from nowhere, and describes the way in which it bears on the relation of humans to nature. Sallis's account demonstrates that a renewal of our understanding of nature is one of the prime imperatives we demand from philosophy today.

In this book, internationally recognized scholars in philosophical hermeneutics discuss various aspects of language and linguisticality. The translations of Hans-Georg Gadamer's two recent essays provoke a preliminary discussion on the philosopher's polemic claim in Truth and Method—"Being that can be understood is language." Topics addressed by the contributors include the relationship of rituals to tradition and the immemorial; the unity of the word; conversation; translation and conceptuality; and the interrelationship between the art of writing and linguisticality. This work is of critical importance to anyone interested in Gadamer's claims regarding the boundaries of language, the transition from the prelinguistic to linguistic realms, and the role of rituals in this transition

This interpretation directed at certain passages in Plato’s Theaetetus explicates the close relation that the dialogue establishes between memory, thought, and speech. It shows that all of these means contribute to the soul’s capacity to stretch beyond mere perceptions. The interpretation also shows that comedic elements play a major role in the dialogue, most notably, in the well-known passage that purportedly explains knowledge and memory by means of the image of birds flying about in an aviary. Through close examination of the relevant passages, the interpretation shows that the Theaetetus is not aporetic but rather achieves a positive advance that prepares the way for the Sophist.

I would like to celebrate this beautiful setting, which has been set into the work of one of England's foremost painters, set beautifully, I would want to say. I would like in deed to celebrate it by setting what I shall say within the orbit of a word used by Plato to refer to the beautiful, one to which Heidegger has paid special attention, the word τò εxφαvεστατov, in German, das Hervorscheinendste, in English, the most radiant, that which most shines forth.1 I would like also to offer most sincere thanks to David Krell for arranging this colloquium in this lovely setting; also for many other things, not the least being the phrase that I have borrowed from him and used as the first of the two titles for this lecture, a debt on which I have now, however inadequately, to try to make good.