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13Parasite: A Philosophical Exploration (edited book)BRILL. 2022._Parasite_ presents the ethico-biological problem of parasitism in a metaphorical and artistic fashion. In this book, philosophers explore the film using sources such as the ancient satirist Lucian’s _De Parasito_, Nietzsche’s “the vengeance of the weak,” Dostoyevsky’s “Underground,” or Marxism, among others.
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8Daoism, dandyism, and political correctnessState University of New York Press. 2023.Argues that Daoism and dandyism, linked by likeminded philosophies of "carefree wandering," deconstruct the puritanism and political correctness sought by Confucianism, Victorianism, and contemporary neoliberal culture.
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8Female Tattoos and GraffitiIn Fritz Allhoff & Robert Arp (eds.), Tattoos – Philosophy for Everyone, Wiley‐blackwell. 2012-04-06.This chapter contains sections titled: A New Tattoo Space The Savage and Civilization Nothing Ladylike About Being Tattooed? Ornaments, Crimes, and the Creation of a Feminine Tattoo Space From Tattoos to Graffiti Skinscape Recuperating the Political Body.
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5The cool-kawaii: Afro-Japanese aesthetics and new world modernityLexington Books, a division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2011.The Cool-Kawaii: Afro-Japanese Aesthetics and New World Modernity, by Thorsten Botz-Bornstein, analyzes and compares African American cool culture and the Japanese aesthetics of kawaii or cute and characterizes them as expressions set against oppressive homogenizations of a technocratic world. The Cool-Kawaii sheds light on the history and development of both cultures in three main ways: First, both emerge from similar historical conditions; second, both are in search of human dignity and libera…Read more
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8Mortal Vocabularies vs. Immortal PropositionsCulture and Dialogue 1 (2): 63-78. 2011.Over thirty years ago, Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature declared the demise of epistemology and the arrival of a new post-Philosophical era. Rorty envisaged the intellectual activity of this predominantly literary culture as an unconstrained large-scale conversation that would flourish in an “ecstasy of spiritual freedom.” Having abandoned all systematic pretensions, edifying philosophers would add their voice to the conversation of mankind, fully aware of the radical incommen…Read more
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12This book shifts the focus from Critical Regionalism towards a broader concept of 'Transcultural Architecture' and defines Critical Regionalism as a subgroup of the latter. One of the benefits that this change of perspective brings about is that a large part of the political agenda of Critical Regionalism, which consists of resisting attitudes forged by typically Western experiences, is 'softened' and negotiated according to premises provided by local circumstances. At the book’s centre is an an…Read more
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24Nishida Kitarō and Muhammad ‘Abduh on God and reason: Towards a theology of placeAsian Philosophy 32 (2): 105-125. 2022.I compare the Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitaro with the Egyptian philosopher and reformer Muhammad ‘Abduh. Both philosophies emerged within similar cultural contexts. Bot...
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8The Philosophy of Lines: From Art Nouveau to CyberspaceSpringer Verlag. 2021.This book offers a philosophical exploration of lines in art and culture, and traces their history from Antiquity onwards. Lines can be physical phenomena, cognitive responses to observed processes, or both at the same time. Based on this assumption, the book describes the “philosophy of lines” in art, architecture, and science. The book compares Western and Eastern traditions. It examines lines in the works of Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Henri Michaux, as well as in Chinese and Japanese a…Read more
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24Blade Runner 2049Film and Philosophy 25 69-84. 2021.What is the “miracle” that protein farmer Sapper Morton mentions when he says to K: “You never saw a miracle”? It is the transformation of inorganic life into organic life. Rachael, who was a replicant in the old Blade Runner gave birth to twins. Tyrell had “perfected procreation,” in the words of Niander Wallace, but his knowledge has been lost. The theme of 2049 revolves around the scientific and philosophical question whether machines can become organic. Is a human only an accumulation of par…Read more
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13Micro and Macro Philosophy: Organicism in Biology, Philosophy, and PoliticsBrill | Rodopi. 2020.What role can philosophy play in a world dominated by neoliberalism and globalization? Must it join universalist ideologies as it has in past centuries? Or might it turn to ethnophilosophy and postmodern fragmentation? Universalist cosmopolitanism and egocentric culturalism are not the only alternatives.
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23Plotinus and the Moving Image (edited book)Brill. 2017.Plotinus and the Moving Image offers the first philosophical discussion on Plotinus' philosophy and film. It discusses Plotinian concepts like "the One" in a cinematic context and relates Plotinus' theory of time as a transitory intelligible movement of the soul to Bergson’s and Deleuze’s time-image. Film is a unique medium for a rapprochement of our modern consciousness with the thought of Plotinus. The Neoplatonic vestige is particularly worth exploring in the context of the newly emerging “Ci…Read more
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Book Reviews (review)Architecture Philosophy 4 (1). 2019.The Philosophy of Chinese Architecture by David Wang Thinking Like a Mall by Steven Vogel
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14Critical PosthumanismPensamiento y Cultura 15 (1): 20-30. 2012.el “Posthumanismo Acrítico” celebra la continuación de lo humano por medios no humanos , así como la creación de una realidad por medios “irreales”. Los posthumanistas intentan lograr un cuerpo más autónomo y con eficiencia energética, desarrollando la interacción del cuerpo-tecnología y la conciencia- digitalidad, la biotecnología o la bioinformática. A través de la interferencia mutua del cuerpo, la conciencia y la realidad, se crea un nuevo espacio de “Realidad Virtual”. El posthumanismo crít…Read more
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22H-Sang Seung: Design Is Not DesignJournal of Aesthetic Education 48 (1): 108-122. 2014.As a philosopher, the architectural question that fascinates me most is the extent to which architecture imposes a certain way of life on people. Some might answer that architecture should impose as little as possible on peoples’ lives and that, in the ideal case, things will work in the converse: people impose on architecture the way of being that they believe to be most compatible with their lives. I guess that the leading thought underlying the latter scheme is that we cannot trust architectu…Read more
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16Speech, Writing, and Play in Gadamer and DerridaCosmos and History : The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 9 (1): 243-264. 2013.I revisit the Derrida-Gadamer debate in order to analyze more closely the problem of the foundation of reason and of interpretation. I explore the theme of play as a metaphor of non-foundation in both philosophers and analyze how both extract this quality from their readings of Plato’s Phaedrus. Does Derrida not essentialize the game by declaring that the playful experience of a Gadamerian dialogue must produce a metaphysical presence in the form of a hermeneutic intention? I find that the circu…Read more
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29How Would You Dress in Utopia? Raëlism and the Aesthetics of GenesAlternative Spirituality and Religion Review 8 (1): 37-61. 2017.According to Claude Vorilhon, the Elohim do not effectuate miracles but are “designers” who have advanced knowledge in genetics. I approach the politics of the genetic body as it is conceived in Raëlism via a discussion on aesthetics. A genetically constructed body collides with a category that has been central to the Western aesthetic tradition: style. The Raëlian Movement has created the concept of an “artificial world beyond nature” where human existence is limited to the aistetikos. Certain …Read more
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Sh-zo Kuki et la'philosophie de la contingence'fran aise. Une communication entre l'Oreitne et l'OccidentRevue Philosophique De Louvain 97 (1): 113-126. 1999.
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53Contingency and the "time of the dream": Kuki shūzō and French prewar philosophyPhilosophy East and West 50 (4): 481-506. 2000.There are many links between Kuki Shūzō and the French philosophy of the 1920s that treated the phenomenon of contingency. Examined are (1) the problem of time as it presented itself to French philosophers at the beginning of the twentieth century and its reception by Kuki as an Oriental philosopher and a Buddhist; (2) the problem of liberty and of existence in these French philosophers and in Buddhism; and (3) the phenomenon of the dream as a psychic and aesthetic phenomenon for Kuki and for th…Read more
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67Style and Substance in The Matrix : Stacy Gillis. Ed. (2005) The Matrix Triology: Cyberpunk ReloadedFilm-Philosophy 12 (1): 107-116. 2008.
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120Genes, memes, and the chinese concept of Wen : Toward a nature/culture model of geneticsPhilosophy East and West 60 (2). 2010.The Chinese concept of wen is examined here in the context of contemporary gene theory and the "cultural branch" of gene theory called "memetics." The Chinese notion of wen is an untranslatable term meaning "pattern," "structure," "writing," and "literature." Wen hua—generally translated as "culture"—signifies the process through which one adopts wen. However, this process is not simply one of civilizational mimesis or imitation but the "creation" of a new pattern. Within a gene-wen debate we ar…Read more
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12Born in Vyborg in 1884 by parents of German descent, Vasily (Wilhelm) Sesemann grew up and studied in St. Petersburg. A close friend of Viktor Zhirmunsky and Lev P. Karsavin, Sesemann taught from the early 1920s until his death in 1963 at the universities of Kaunas and Vilnius in Lithuania (interrupted only by his internment in a Siberian labor camp from 1950 to 1956). Botz-Bornstein's study takes up Sesemann's idea of experience as a dynamic, constantly self-reflective, ungraspable phenomenon t…Read more
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86Dreams in buddhism and western aesthetics: Some thoughts on play, style and spaceAsian Philosophy 17 (1). 2007.Several Buddhist schools in India, China and Japan concentrate on the interrelationships between waking and dreaming consciousness. In Eastern philosophy, reality can be seen as a dream and an obscure 'reality beyond' can be considered as real. In spite of the overwhelming Platonic-Aristotelian-Freudian influence existent in Western culture, some Western thinkers and artists - Valéry, Baudelaire, and Schnitzler, for example - have been fascinated by a kind of 'simple presence' contained in dream…Read more
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58The Conscious and the Unconscious in History:Lévi-Strauss, Collingwood, Bally, BarthesJournal of the Philosophy of History 6 (2): 151-172. 2012.Claude Lévi-Strauss holds that history and anthropology differ in their choice of complementary perspectives: history organizes its data in relation to conscious expressions of social life, while anthropology proceeds by examining its unconscious foundations. For R. G. Collingwood historical science discovers not only pure facts but considers a whole series of thoughts constituting historical life. Also Lévi-Strauss sees this: “To understand history it is necessary to know not only how things ar…Read more
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56Realism, Dream, and 'Strangeness' in Andrei TarkovskyFilm-Philosophy 8 (3). 2004.At the centre of theories of film form is the idea that the montage of different scenes produces cinematic time. Montage creates a conflict between different shots, and time (as a purely functional relationship between shots) arises out of montage as an abstract element
Thorsten Botz-Bornstein
Gulf University For Science And Technology
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Gulf University For Science And TechnologyProfessor
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy, Misc |
Other Academic Areas |
Areas of Interest
Aesthetics |
Continental Philosophy |
Philosophy, Misc |
Other Academic Areas |