Dimitris Vardoulakis

Ancient monism matters today because it reveals an alternative answer to a problem faced by ontology “after the death of god,” namely, how to distinguish between good and bad actions after the disappearance of transcendence. The modern answer in Continental philosophy was systematized by Heidegger and consists in positing that the everyday is permeated by instrumentality whereas there is a different kind of action that is noninstrumental, such as art or the thinking of being. By contrast, ancient monism holds that all actions are instrumental and employs on a typology of action that relies on the distinction between techne and phronesis. Recognizing a different answer from the dominant Heideggerian one has the potential to renew the conception of the ethical and the political in Continental philosophy.

The paper examines the importance of monism in Heidegger’s thought. Monism is understood here as the supposition of one kind of existence, or a single mode of being. Monism matters for a better understanding of Heidegger’s approach to practical philosophy. The paper explains that monism always faced the question of how to account for action. If there is a single, unified being, then aren’t all actions merely modifications of that being? The paper traces Heidegger’s answer to this question to argue that it faces two problems: Heidegger’s solution is similar to the solution in onto-theo-logy; and, it appears to make action trivial or self-contradictory. Despite that, the paper highlights the importance of Heidegger’s answer for continental philosophy.

This article examines the connection between lying and the concept of freedom, especially in the wake of the social contract tradition. I show that the liar poses a particular threat to the social contract. As a result, lying has been portrayed as a pernicious threat to the political. This culminates in Kant’s outright rejection of lying under any circumstance. From the Kantian perspective, one can be free only if one does not lie. Conversely, Spinoza’s co-implication of virtue and power entails that lying is acceptable under certain circumstances, which enhance one’s freedom. The contrast between Kant’s and Spinoza’s response to lying reveals two fundamentally different ways of conceiving freedom

This book questions what sovereignty looks like when it is de-ontologised; when the nothingness at the heart of claims to sovereignty is unmasked and laid bare. Drawing on critical thinkers in political theology, such as Schmitt, Agamben, Nancy, Blanchot, Paulhan, The Politics of Nothing asks what happens to the political when considered in the frame of the productive potential of the nothing? The answers are framed in terms of the deep intellectual histories at our disposal for considering these fundamental questions, carving out trajectories inspired by, for example, Peter Lombard, Shakespeare and Spinoza. This book offers a series of sensitive and creative reflections that suggest the possibilities offered by thinking through sovereignty via the frame of nihilism. This book was originally published as a special issue of Culture, Theory and Critique

How baroque was Spinoza in his treatment of the prophets? I examine this question by comparing the pictorial treatments of Moses from the Netherlands to Spinoza’s treatment of Moses at the beginning of the Theological Political Treatise. I concentrate on two representations of Moses descending from mount Sinai, one by Ferdinand Bol and the other by Rembrandt. Of particular importance is the idea of hierarchy. I will argue that Spinoza takes an ambiguous position in relation to baroque, on the one hand following the baroque’s drastic spatiotemporal condensation that questions hierarchies, but on the other refusing the baroque’s representation of unmediated or unjustified sovereign violence.

The Doppelgänger or Double presents literature as the “double” of philosophy. There are historical reasons for this. The genesis of the Doppelgänger is literature’s response to the philosophical focus on subjectivity. The Doppelgänger was coined by the German author Jean Paul in 1796 as a critique of Idealism’s assertion of subjective autonomy, individuality and human agency. This critique prefigures post-War extrapolations of the subject as decentred. From this perspective, the Doppelgänger has a “family resemblance” to current conceptualizations of subjectivity. It becomes the emblematic subject of modernity. This is the first significant study on the Doppelgänger’s influence on philosophical thought. The Doppelgänger emerges as a hidden and unexplored element both in conceptions of subjectivity and in philosophy’s relation to literature. Vardoulakis demonstrates this by employing the Doppelgänger to read literature philosophically and to read philosophy as literature. The Doppelgänger then appears instrumental in the self-conception of both literature and philosophy.

The difficulty with democracy is always how to define the demos—the people. Can we think of democracy in a different way? My starting point is to ask what it would mean to take kratos (power) rather than demos as the starting point of the thinking of democracy. I will argue that this is consistent with Solon’s first democratic constitution and that it leads to a thinking of democracy in terms of agonism. Maybe such a conception of agonistic democracy will allow us to conceptualize as well as actualize a political space not predetermined by the “fickle multitude” that can be manipulated and is pray to the forces of populism.

In the first few pages of chapter 4 of his Theological Political Treatise (1670), Spinoza defines his conception of the law. In fact, he defines the law twice, first in terms of compulsion or necessity and then in terms of use. I would like to investigate here these definitions, in particular the second one, as it is Spinoza’s preferred one. The difficulty with understanding this definition is that it contains an expression, ratio vivendi, that is repeated several times in the first few pages of chapter 4, but, unless it is taken as a technical term referring to law as use, it is easy to mistake it as a casual expression that might mean different things each time. As a result, it is indispensable to turn to the Latin text to unlock the technical meaning of ratio vivendi. The result will be that Spinoza's conception of the law aligns with the epicurean conception of the law understood in terms of use.

Oliver Marchart constructs an elaborate ontologization of the political that builds on theories developed by the Essex School while relying on Heideggerianism and Hegelianism. This original thought is a powerful and convincing attempt to think the ontology of the political without lapsing into a celebration of essentialist grounding or complete groundlessness, which are equally metaphysical and mutually supporting positions. Tensions arise within Marchart’s own thought when the notion of instrumentality appears to be inscribed solely on the side of politics or the ontic. I suggest that a theory of practical judgment that is inchoate in Marchart’s own position can resolve the tensions toward constructing a genuinely materialist ontology.

In Shame and Necessity, Bernard Williams recounts that colleagues often ask why he analyses literary texts – why can’t he use examples from “real life”? He responds that “it is a perfectly good question, and it has a short answer: what philosophers will lay before themselves and their readers as an alternative to literature will not be life, but bad literature.” This anecdote contains an argument that would be readily embraced by any proponent of “post-structuralism.” Namely, it suggests that no theory can solely be based on reason. Any rational account needs an – acknowledged or repressed – fictional support. We do not rely on pure concepts but rather on conceptual fictions.