Labour, Work, Action by Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt investigates the sources of human happiness in her essay entitled Labour, Work, Action, exploring the relation and differences between the three concepts. The text was originally a lecture delivered in 1964.[1] Since the ancient Greeks, the vita contemplativa (life of contemplation) has been considered a superior form of life than the vita activa (life of action). However, both aspects can be found in every person, as distinct but related “faculties” and are also “ways of life.”

Being in the Moment: Sovereignty in Bataille

The Accursed Share, Volume 3: Sovereignty, Georges Bataille
Chapter 1: Knowledge of Sovereignty
1.1
Bataille begins the volume by explaining what he is not describing in his concept of sovereignty. His sovereignty is not the sovereignty of states but the sovereignty of people. What is sovereign is not “servile and subordinate.” Sovereignty belonged to kings and chiefs, gods and their priests which by being close to the gods shared in their sovereignty. However, the sovereignty that Bataille is interested in is the sovereignty that all people possess.

Dialectical and Historical Materialism by Joseph Stalin

“Dialectical materialism is the world outlook of the Marxist-Leninist party,”[1] reads the first sentence of Stalin’s text, which explains the importance of his book, Dialectical and Historical Materialism. Originally published in 1938, it was a section of a chapter in a larger book entitled History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course. [https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1939/x01/]

In the year of publication, Stalin was the secretary-general of the Communist Party and already he had amassed a lot of power. He will become the premier of the Soviet Union three years later. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, he exercised dictatorial rule over the Soviet Union for a quarter of a century. Among his achievements is his industrialisation of the Soviet Union, bringing it from peasant nation to the country with the 2nd highest industrial output only behind the US. During his rule, the USSR also defeated the Nazis during the second world war, and he led the Soviet Union into the nuclear age. However, he did all these through a paranoid reign of terror that led to the deaths of tens of millions including the most powerful members of the elite closest to him. [https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Stalin]

Against Method by Paul Feyerabend

What is science? A common understanding of what differentiates science from other disciplines and pseudoscience is the scientific method. What then is this method? Philosophers of science have attempted to answer this question, and to understand what led Paul Feyerabend to his conclusions in his book Against Method, we need to understand the book in its context of prior theories put forward to answer these questions. To do this, we need a brief excursion through the history of the philosophy of science up to the time of the book’s publication in 1975.

Meno: Plato on Ethics and Epistemology

While Plato’s Meno is ostensibly about ethics since it discusses virtue, it is also about epistemology, i.e. the theory of knowledge. Written in 385 BC,[1] the plot is about a man, Meno, who is talking to Socrates about the nature of virtue. Meno wanted to know if virtue can be taught, gained through practice or is inborn.

Can’t We be Friends? Analysing Singapore’s LGBT Struggle Through a Schmittian Lens

It is often better to be a friend than an enemy of the state. This paper uses Carl Schmitt’s concept of the political and its friend-enemy distinction to analyse Singapore’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transexual (LGBT) situation. While Schmitt describes the political as a domain where participants may have to engage in physical combat when pushed to the extreme, this paper applies his concepts to politicians ‘fighting’ for their political lives, to be elected. Analysing Singapore’s laws and policies affecting the LGBT using Schmitt’s concepts suggests that the conservative segments of society belong to the friend-group and the LGBT community the enemy-group, because of greater electoral support from the former due to its larger numbers. Hence, it is coherent that Singapore’s leaders have indicated that societal acceptance of LGBTs is an important criterion to change the country’s policies affecting them. Therefore, a plausibly suitable strategy is to sway the electorate so that they will decide that the LGBT community, currently an enemy, is instead a friend. The paper suggests how this can be done and the price its members may have to pay.

Mea Culpa: Why the Developed World is Responsible for the Global Poor

The global order harms the poor. Thomas Pogge argues that the causes of global poverty are systemic, refuting the notion that the misery in poor countries are mostly self-induced. We, the developed world, are the architects of the global order and continue to run it to the detriment of the global poor. Hence, we have the responsibility to fix it. This order is comprised of economic and institutional parts. By examining both parts, we can then identify the causes of the problems and propose possible solutions.

Superabundance and Excess: Is Bataille’s Conception of General Economy Credible?

Georges Bataille’s concept of general economy strikes at the core of our prevailing understanding of economics. He posits two contrasting premises in the first volume of The Accursed Share (TAS):

1) The condition of the world is one of superabundance rather than scarcity. Bataille proposes that all life and wealth derive from the sun, which is effectively an unlimited source of energy. In the general economy, what the world faces is not scarcity, as foundationally assumed in conventional economics, but superabundance. While pockets of poverty can be found, the world on aggregate has an excess of wealth.

2) However, there are limits to growth, because there is only so much space on the planet which life can occupy. Once the limits are reached, no further growth is possible. Hence the excess cannot be used for growth; it cannot be saved and it needs to be expended. The choice we have is to either expend it well or badly.

Is Bataille’s conception of general economy credible? In addition to examining these two premises, this paper investigates Bataille’s method to reconceptualise how we can understand the world by adopting a radical position on political economy so as to derive novel insights. Specifically, I analyse his idea of limits and savings, his empirical approach and his critique of scarcity and utility in conventional economics. I contrast his views of capitalism and potlatch with Jean-Joseph Goux’s critique that Bataille’s solution of consumption has already come to pass in today’s capitalist economies and George Gilder’s notion that giving is central to entrepreneurial capitalism, and propose a possible Bataillean response. I then consider Andrew Abbott’s extension to Bataille’s theory of general economy, which Abbott draws on to argue that problems of excess are fundamentally different from problems of scarcity, hence requiring their own solutions. I conclude by assessing whether Bataille has been successful in challenging conventional economics and the applicability of TAS to political economy today.

The Paradox of Tolerance for the Faithful

A devout believer of a specific religion, given the strength of her devotion, is likely to hold that the doctrines of her religion are the monolithic truth, and that her gods are the true gods. Since there are many religions, they cannot all be true, if her religion is the true one. Therefore, she must conclude that the other religions must be false. There hence exists a tension between tolerance, pluralism and truth, with religious ideologies as a potential source of intolerance.

Johan De Tavernier examines this tension at the institutional, cultural and theological levels, explaining how our understanding of tolerance has evolved and can be justified. However, there is a paradox between a staunch religious belief and a tolerance for the belief of others. This paradox can be resolved if we understand that in tolerance, justice and love for others is more important than judging whose version of truth is right. I propose some practical measures that believers can take in the face of the challenge from tolerance, in line with De Tavernier’s belief that believers should avoid fanaticism, and instead adopt a quiet conviction. 

Types of Reasoning According to Averroes

People have different levels of ability, according to Averroes (d. 1198). They belong broadly to the demonstrative class, the dialectical class and the rhetorical class. These 3 classes correspond to the 3 types of reasoning, demonstrative, dialectical and rhetorical. 

 

 

 

How We Learn, According to Augustine

According to Augustine (d. 430), we do not learn about the things themselves through words, since if we did not already know what words like green, room and cabinet mean, the word will not teach it to us. However, words do have a function – they prompt us by directing our attention to “remind us to look for things.” (The Teacher, p. 137, l. 170) We have to be prompted, to compare what we have been told, to consult our “inner light” (p. 140, l. 31), that is, God, to make the judgement if what is told is true. 

Leibniz Explains How to Become Happy

Human beings are never at rest, not even in sleep, according to Gottfried Leibniz. We are constantly bombarded by small perceptions, most of which we are unaware of, which incline us to certain actions. Because our nature wants to be more at ease, these small perceptions give rise to small impulses to overcome small obstacles. This overcoming gives us small joys, which can translate into a larger happiness if we use our experience and our reason to guide us in deciding which small impulses to allow and which to forbid.

Leibniz’s Solution to the Mind-Body Problem

The aim of philosophy, according to Leibniz, is to explain how God does things, “how things are brought about by the Divine Wisdom in conformity with the particular concept of the subject.”[1] In his Discourse on Metaphysics, he already establishes that each substance’s nature already contains all the predicates[2] and is like a “mirror” of all that is in the universe.[3] Leibniz explicitly assumes that God is the creator of all things and the universe – He is the “architect of the machine of the universe,”[4] and being omniscient, knows all the predicates contained in each thing including the future, which is hence predetermined.

Image by John Hain from Pixabay

Each substance is acting in its own “sphere”[5] but yet there seems to be an “appearance”[6] of communication between things. For instance, when ball A hits ball B on a billiard table, it seems to cause ball B to move, even though based on Leibniz’s metaphysics, both balls are independent, each doing what it does because it is already predetermined in its nature rather than because of a causal interaction with each other. Leibniz attempts to explain how this is possible in his article, A New System of the Nature and the Communication of Substances. He then builds on this theory to explain the mind-body problem, or how can an immaterial soul and a material body of a person interact.

Leibniz’s Solution to the Problem of Evil

Leibniz believes that God is omniscient. An omniscient god would know everything about his creations including the future, which is hence predetermined. Leibniz then has to explain how evil, which is seen everywhere in the world, is possible under such a perfect God. 

 

Learning to Love the Shit-Stirrer

By London Stereoscopic Company - Hulton Archive, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30913285

The liberty to speak one’s mind is not absolute, nor is it necessarily the highest priority when it conflicts with other values. John Stuart Mill believes that free speech is valuable in creating a dynamic, creative and progressive society, even as he acknowledges the need for limits in situations such as when a society is under threat from enemies[1] or when speech can lead to harmful actions.[2] While we may seem to be able to speak more freely today than in Mill’s time, there remain threats to free speech, with the decline of the mainstream media, attacks on and detention of journalists[3], the rise of echo-chambers on social media platforms reducing the access to alternative views, and the prevalence of fake news. There are potentially also chilling effects[4] from laws putatively put in place to prevent harm but may stifle free speech, such as hate speech laws in Europe and Singapore’s Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act.

Similar Premises, Different Conclusions

Can two philosophers with similar presuppositions and argumentation end up with vastly different conclusions? Locke in Two Treatises of Government and Hobbes in Leviathan present their accounts of the State of Nature (SON). While they ground their theories on rather similar presuppositions and argumentation, they come to diametrically different conclusions on what the ideal government is. This reflects the differing historical circumstances shaping their thinking, but it also demonstrates the continuing value of studying both thinkers, as different societies may require different solutions.

Multi-Dimensional Man

By Copy of Silanion, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7831217

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.[1] Even though The Republic was written by Plato 2,400 years ago, a modern reader will sympathise with the everyman notions of justice presented by Socrates’s interlocutors in Book I who believe that:

1) Justice is “to speak the truth and to pay your debts.”[2]

2) Justice is “giving to each man what is proper to him.”[3]

3) Justice serves the “interest of the stronger.”[4]

This essay will focus on the third idea of ‘might makes right,’ Socrates’s argument against it, and formulate an alternative response of the multi-dimensional man, which Socrates may find hard to resist.

Lakatos Rationalises Kuhn

By Library of the London School of Economics and Political Science - Professor Imre Lakatos, c1960sUploaded by Fæ, No restrictions, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15336126

Both Lakatos and Kuhn recognise that history and sociology are needed to understand the scientific enterprise.[1] However, Kuhn interprets changes in paradigms as sudden and irrational in contrast to Lakatos who, examining the same history, sees instead a dynamic of progressive and degenerating research programmes (RP) while continuing to accept Kuhn’s idea of scientific revolution. This paper examines how Lakatos rationalises Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolution.

Is Socrates a Sophist?

By Sting, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3569936

Are Sophists philosophers? No. Is Socrates a philosopher? Yes. Hence, is he a Sophist? No.

Anaxagoras's Influence on Plato and Aristotle

By Eduard Lebiedzki, after a design by Carl Rahl - http://nibiryukov.narod.ru/nb_pinacoteca/nbe_pinacoteca_artists_l.htm

While Anaxagoras’s theory on the nature of things ultimately led to disappointment for Plato and Aristotle, it played a role in the formulation of Platonic Ideas and Aristotle’s four causes.