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64Homo Sacer, Homo Magus, and the Ethics of Philosophical ArchaeologyJournal of Speculative Philosophy 31 (3): 358-371. 2017.In The Order of Things, Michel Foucault describes the task of the philosophical archaeologist: to study the incommensurable breaks and disruptions in a given history of systems of thought. Akin to the distinctive layers of soil one finds digging into the earth, Foucault analyzes what he calls an episteme: a distinctive cultural and intellectual order that shapes the character and limits of knowledge production and the parameters of experience as such.1 Where archaeology sees radical breaks betwe…Read more
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54Myth, Primitive Sign, Poetry: From Cassirer to HeideggerResearch in Phenomenology 48 (2): 244-264. 2018._ Source: _Volume 48, Issue 2, pp 244 - 264 Cassirer is important in 20th Century philosophy for the attention he gives to the fundamental relationship between myth and language. For Cassirer, myth is a non-subjective form of discourse wherein the origin of language coincides with both the human-divine encounter and the event of being itself. In this article, I trace the disagreement between Cassirer and Heidegger on the nature of the magical sign, which is at the heart of mythical discourse. Wh…Read more
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52I Nomi Degli Dei: A Reconsideration of Agamben’s Oath ComplexLaw and Critique 31 (1): 73-92. 2020.This essay offers an exegesis and critique of the moment of community formation in Agamben’s Homo Sacer Project. In The Sacrament of Language, Agamben searches for the site of a non-sovereign community founded upon the oath [horkos, sacramentum]: an ancient institution of language that produces and guarantees the connection between speech and the order of things by calling the god as a witness to the speaker’s fidelity. I argue that Agamben’s account ultimately falls short of subverting sovereig…Read more
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49Spaces of the SelfPhilosophy Today 61 (1): 189-210. 2017.This article argues that the works of Michel Foucault and Erving Goffman are complementary, specifically in their analyses of disciplinary power. This analysis would be what Foucault calls a ‘micro-physics’ of power. Micro-physics is an important concept even in Foucault’s later lectures, but it remains a sub-discipline of genealogy Foucault himself never pursues. Goffman’s works, which rely upon notions of social performance, personal spaces, and the construction of the self through these, fulf…Read more
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39The State of Example: Sovereignty and Bare Speech in Plato's LawsJournal of Speculative Philosophy 34 (3): 407-423. 2020.In Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer project, he gives an archaeology of Western political power from ancient Rome up through Carl Schmitt's model of "exceptional sovereignty," where the sovereign is "he who decides on the exception."1 Agamben takes Schmitt's thesis further, arguing that, in modern biopolitics, the "sovereign is he who decides on the value or the nonvalue of life as such," and therefore, on life and death in the state.2 Although this model also appears in Foucault's work, Penelope De…Read more
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32Beginning AI PhenomenologyJournal of Speculative Philosophy 38 (1): 62-82. 2024.ABSTRACT This dialogue with GPT-3 took place in November 2022, several weeks before ChatGPT was released to the public. The article’s aim is to find out whether natural language processors can participate in phenomenology at some level by asking about its basic concepts. In the discussion, the dialogue covers questions about phenomenology’s definition and distinction from other subbranches like metaphysics and epistemology. The dialogue discusses the nature of Kermit’s environment and self-conce…Read more
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10Proto-Phenomenology, Language Acquisition, Orality, and Literacy: Dwelling in Speech II by Lawrence J. HatabReview of Metaphysics 74 (2): 384-387. 2020.
Robert Leib
Elon University
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Elon UniversityAssistant Professor
Areas of Specialization
2 more
Martin Heidegger |
Phenomenology, Misc |
Friedrich Schelling |
Giorgio Agamben |
Michel Foucault |
Jean-Luc Nancy |
Continental Philosophy of Language, Misc |