Upcoming (or the most recent) talks are shown
first. Past talks are located toward the bottom.
Erdinç
Sayan (Department of Philosophy,
Middle East Technical University)
Color Incompatibility and Length Incompatibility
Time & Place: Wed 26 Nov 2008 at 16:40 in G160
It would seem that an object cannot be both red and green all over at the same time. That the entire surface of an object cannot be uniformly colored with more than one color simultaneously is known as the color incompatibility
phenomenon, and the problem of explaining why this is so is known as the color
incompatibility problem. The majority of philosophers who have dealt with the
issue (including Wittgenstein who gave a lot of thought to the "logic of
colors") have argued that color incompatibility is a necessary, and not merely
accidental, truth. The "color incompatibilists," as I call them, differed on
the nature of that necessity, some arguing that it is an analytical necessity
deriving from the meanings of color terms, others arguing that it is an
example of metaphysical necessity, still others contending that color
incompatibility is an example of the synthetic a priori. I join the minority
of philosophers who think that the color incompatibility claim is just a
contingent truth, if truth indeed. I offer a speculative evolutionary account
of why we have the color incompatibility phenomenon. A, to my mind, more
intriguing question -- which is not asked very often, if at all -- is whether an
object can have more than one length (or volume, or mass, etc.) at the same
time. This analogous problem about lengths, I submit, is a more puzzling one.
It leads us to the question of whether it is possible to have a consistent
geometry which assigns more than one shortest distance between a pair of
distinct points.
Kenneth R. Westphal (Philosophy, School of European Culture and
Languages, University of Kent)
Constructivism, Contractarianism and Basic Obligations: Kant and Gauthier
Time & Place: Wed 12 Nov 2008 at 17:40 in G160
Gauthier's contractarianism begins with an idea of a rational deliberator but
"finds no basis for postulating a moral need for the justification of one's
actions to others. The role of agreement is to address each person's demand that
the constraints of society be justified to him, not a concern that he justify
himself to his fellows" (Gauthier 1997, 134–5). He contrasts his view with
Scanlon's contractualism, according to which agreement with others is the core
of morality and each agent has the burden of justifying his or her actions to
others. Both of their views count as 'constructivist' because they reject moral
realism and hold that normativity is a function of what we do, either
individually or collectively. Kant's Rechtslehre is neutral regarding moral
realism and yet constructivist about moral norms. However, the relevant acts
basic to Gauthier's and Scanlon's views concern voluntary agreements we make.
Using agreement to establish basic norms faces some serious difficulties. Kant's
Rechtslehre avoids these problems by showing how basic social norms can be
identified and justified independently of voluntary agreement. Moreover, it does
so in a way that shows that an individual's justification of his or her acts to
others and the justification of the acts of others to any individual are
inseparable aspects of one and the same justificatory reasons in which voluntary
agreement plays no role.
Wendy A. Wiseman (Comparative History of Ideas, University of
Washington)
Thinking the Abyss from Plotinus to Nietzsche
Time & Place: Wed 14 May 2008 at 9:40 in A214
Western philosophy has, according to most accounts, depended on a Platonic
ontology that identifies intelligibility and reason (Logos) as the touchstone
for that which constitutes the truly real. In this talk, I will explore the
foundations and legacy of a tradition of thought, stemming from Plato, that
posits a singularly transcendent source beyond the intelligible, and hence
"beyond being" (epekeina tes ousias). From this Neoplatonic tradition, beginning
with Plotinus in the 3rd century, we may trace the uneasy intersections of
philosophical and religious thought not only in the work of Christian, Muslim,
and Jewish mystics, but in perhaps more unlikely venues: namely Kant, Schelling,
and Nietzsche, insofar as they are thinkers of the unthinkable abyss that lies
beyond logos, reason, and (Cartesian) subjectivity.
Gordon C. F. Bearn (Department of Philosophy, Lehigh University)
The Enormous Danger
Time & Place: Thu 24 Apr 2008 at 17:40 in G160
In the midst of the well known
discussion of aspect-seeing in Part II of the Investigations,
Wittgenstein warns us of "the enormous danger of wanting to make fine
distinctions." (PI II page 200) This warning caught my attention because of the
apparent lack of fit between its urgent tone, an enormous danger, and the object
of this urgent fear, making fine distinctions. What could be the life
threatening implications of making fine distinctions? Are we to be murdered with
jewelers' tools? I argue that what Wittgenstein fears is that he will not be
able to bring his philosophical anxieties peace, and so he willfully turns his
back on experience and forces his investigations to end. If he had welcomed
these experiences, he would have found himself, not rejecting, but joining
forces with a Bergsonian account of the immediate data of consciousness, which
promises not peace, but sensual delight.
İlhan
İnan (Department
of Philosophy, Boğaziçi University)
Rigid General Terms and Essential Predicates
Time & Place: Fri 21 Mar 2008 at 16:40 in A214
What does it mean for a general
term to be rigid? It is argued by some that if we take general terms to
designate their extensions, then almost no empirical general term will turn out
to be rigid; and if we take them to designate some abstract entity, such as a
kind, then it turns out that almost all general terms will be rigid. Various
authors who pursue this line of reasoning have attempted to capture Kripke's
intent by defining a rigid general term as one that applies to the objects in
its extension essentially. I argue that this account is significantly mistaken
for various reasons: it conflates a metaphysical notion (essentialism) with a
semantic one (rigidity); it fails to countenance the fact that any term can be
introduced into a language by stipulating that it be a rigid designator; it
limits the extension of rigid terms so much that terms such as meter, rectangle,
truth, etc. do not turn out to be rigid, when they obviously are; and it wrongly
concentrates on the predicative use of a general term in applying a certain test
offered by Kripke to determine whether a term is rigid.
Can Başkent (Graduate Center,
City University of New York)
Geometrical Interpretations (or Analysis) of Knowledge
Time & Place: Tue 15 Jan 2008 at 14:40 in G160
Since 1930s the geometric and topological interpretations
of modal logics were known and studied upon, initiated by prominent
mathematicians A. Tarski and J. C. C. McKinsey. In this talk, we will briefly
mention the formal epistemological tools to analyze the knowledge referring to
Hintikka and Moss & Parikh. Then, I will recall a topological analysis of
knowledge. In the last part of the talk, I will mention the notion of common
knowledge introduced by D. Lewis. Finally, I will conclude with some geometrical
interpretations of common knowledge.
Jean Salem (Directeur
du Centre d'Histoire des Systčmes de Pensée Moderne,
Paris I
Sorbonne)
Reconstructing Democritus
Time & Place: Mon 17 Dec 2007 at 17:40 in G160
Jean Salem will present an explanatory
synopsis of his book Démocrite: Grains de poussičre dans un rayon de soleil,
which was published in Paris by Vrin in 1996 (416 pp - 2nd enlarged edition,
2002, 432 pp).
He has analysed the general principles
of Democritean atomism (Ch. 1), the cosmogony meriting a chapter to itself (2).
The treatment of the theory of knowledge (3), followed by that of the theory of
the soul, or psychology (4), will bring the audience to reflect on these very
special constructions, which have something of the nature of living beings.
After that J. Salem will attempt to show how Democritean medicine and embryology
inspired Hippocratism and elicited Aristole's marked reaction (5). The numerous
textual fragments collected by Diels and Luria deal very widely with the
specifically human domain, sometimes with markedly modern perspectives, and
anthropology (6) and ethics (7) are treated in two separate chapters. Finally,
Jean Salem will take seriously the legendary Democritean hilarity, the attitude
supposedly taken by the sage towards the spectacle of the universal folly of
mortals (8).
Örsan Öymen (Department of Philosophy,
Yeditepe University)
Scepticism in Pyrrhonism, Hume and Nietzsche
Time & Place: Thu 13 Dec 2007 at 17:40 in G160
The aim of this presentation is to explain the relationship
between the skepticism of Pyrrhonism, Hume and Nietzsche; to show the
significant influence of the Pyrrhonian arguments on Hume and Nietzsche, which
is essential for understanding the philosophies of the two.
Cem Bozşahin
(Department of Computer Engineering, Middle East Technical University)
Grammars, Programs and the Chinese
Room Argument of Searle
Time & Place: Thu 6 Dec 2007 at 17:40 in G160
The Chinese Room debate took place
between Searle, philosophers, psychologists and AI researchers, with almost no
argument from linguistics. I offer one in this paper from philosophy of
linguistics, as follows.
Searle's Chinese symbol correspondence
program in the room cannot be of infinite size, therefore the correspondences
cannot be phrase-to-phrase matching, for we know that there are infinitely many
Chinese expressions. Hence the program must contain finitely characterizable
symbols and their program-internal abstractions, i.e., a generative grammar of
Chinese.
We must assume that the program contains
a generative grammar because we can "suppose also that the programmers get so
good at writing the programs that from the external point of view [..] my
answers to the questions are indistinguishable from those of native
Chinese speakers." (Searle 1980, my emphasis).
I claim that the experimental setup is
inconsistent because of the forced assumption of having a generative grammar,
and not being able to use it for semantic interpretation; all generative
grammars are interpretable because their product, a structural description, is
there solely to provide a full array of phonetic, semantic and syntactic
interpretation.
In linguistic sense, Searle's program is
not doing computation at all, because computation is what links the expression
and the meaning at the interfaces to perceptual and conceptual systems of
cognition. It is not computation in computing science sense either, for
computing there too is to link programs (the form) with executable code (the
meaning).
There is already some progress in the
way of breaking the "semantic divide." Zettlemoyer and Collins (2005) report an
experiment in statistical learning of generative grammars, in which the training
data (for the machine) are sound-meaning pairs, and in which syntax is a hidden
variable, that is, there is no external access to the internal states of a
program such as Searle's. Therefore, the input to the room must be sound-meaning
pairs in order for computation to take place.
In summary, (i) Searle's Chinese Room is
linguistically inadequate, and (ii) it can be made consistent with bona fide
computation, in which case the unduly pessimistic belief that a computational
system cannot be made to face the same conditions for understanding as humans is
not warranted.
Saladin Meckled-Garcia (School of Public Policy, University College
London)
How to Settle Human Rights Responsibilities: The Problem of Non-State Actors
Time & Place: Fri 2 Nov 2007 at 17:40 in G160
International Human Rights Law is clear in holding only states or
state-like entities responsible for human rights abuses, yet activists and
philosophers alike do not see any rational basis for this restriction in
responsibility. Multi-national corporations, individuals and a whole array of
other 'non-state actors' are capable of harming vital human interests just as
much as states, so why single-out the latter as human rights-responsible agents?
In this paper I distinguish two ways of looking at human rights responsibility.
One is simply in terms of the outcomes that are deemed desirable to avoid (or
secure), and the other is in terms of the relationships one sees these moral
standards as governing. I argue that the peculiar form of responsibility and
responsiveness (the way of 'holding to account') inherent to human rights
principles is directed at establishing a particular type of relationship: one in
which individuals are empowered in the face of a very special form of communal
power. Other kinds of relationship and potential transgression are more
appropriately governed by different kinds of moral principles, such as those
relating to criminality. The outcomes view fails to incorporate this insight and
for that reason fails to see the distinct role played by human rights standards
in our moral reasoning: they are precisely valuable because they provide a way
to judge the relationship of individuals to the peculiar kind of power exercised
by the state.
Hülya Durudoğan (College of Arts and Sciences,
Koç University)
Sex and Gender in Judith Butler
Time & Place: Fri 20 Apr 2007 at 15:40 in G160
"Anatomy/biology is destiny" may be the most taken for granted formula
supposedly defining the relationship between sex and gender. This formula,
coming from certain premises of psychology, medicine, juridical systems, and
religion gave rise to criticism on the part of feminist thinkers. According to
the "anatomy/biology is destiny" formula, one's "natural" and "innate" sex is
what determines one's gender. Starting with Simone de Beauvoir, many feminist
thinkers gave arguments against this presupposition. This paper concentrates on
how Judith Butler defines the relationship between sex and gender but does not
claim to cover all the premises and thoughts of Butler on this topic. The
purpose here is to explain the reasons behind certain claims that make it
possible for Butler to assert that "sex is always already gender" as well as to
open up a space that will allow for further reflection on the relationship
between sex and gender.
Aydan Turanlı (Department of Humanities and
Social Sciences, İstanbul Technical University)
The Social Constructivist Critique of Technology
Time & Place:
Fri 15 Dec 2006 at 15:40 in G160
Samet Bağçe (Department of Philosophy,
Middle East Technical University)
A Fabulous Story: How Euclid Came up with the Idea of
an Axiomatic System
Time & Place:
Tue 5 Dec 2006 at 15:40 in G160
I have a simple and modest aim in this talk: to attempt to demystify the
"genesis" of Euclid's axiomatics. For example, Kolmogorov (1975), van der
Waerden (1961), Heath (1956), Neugebauer (1957), von Fritz (1955), and Szabo
(1978) give accounts of the origins of Euclid's axiomatics. However, they all
seem to share one common view: although Greeks inherited the mathematical
practice of the previous civilizations, there are basically two fundamentally
distinct periods in the development of mathematics, specifically geometry,
starting from the Babylonian and Egyptian mathematics to the Greek mathematics.
It seems to be a relatively short period of time, and yet it is the most
perplexing and important period in the history of mathematics; for geometry had
been conducted and developed in an empirical/inductive manner before the Greeks,
but with the Greeks it entered "upon the sure path of science", and became a
deductive/axiomatic science.
My story can be summarized as follows: it is true that acclimatization is
certainly a Greek achievement. However, it came about as a natural result of
carrying out the mathematical practice at philosophical schools, not that of an
intention of doing mathematics in a radically different way. It was a result of
doing and teaching geometry at these schools. So on my account it seems to be an
unintended consequence of conducting geometrical activity then, and the
"axiomatic turn" is in considerable measure pedagogical.
Oliver Leaman (Department of Philosophy, University of Kentucky)
Who Guards the Guardians? The Ethics of the Ownership of Cultural
Artifacts
Time & Place:
Tue 28 Nov 2006 at 10:40 in G160
The issue of who owns what has recently become a hotly contested issue
when it comes to cultural artifacts. Many museums are returning objects that
they have complete legal rights over. Ought they to feel guilty about owning
what amounts to the cultural heritage of other countries and cultures or should
nations unable to look adequately after heritage be dispossessed of it? An
attempt will be made to sort out some of the moral and political issues that
exist on this topic and work out an adequate moral response to a range of
relevant concerns.
Stephan Leuenberger (Department of Philosophy, Princeton University)
Metaphysical Probability
Time & Place: Thu 25 May 2006 at 10:00 in EA409
Barry Stocker (Department of Philosophy, Yeditepe University; Department of
Philosophy, University College London)
Kierkegaard and Moral Psychology
Time & Place: Wed 20 Apr 2005 at 16:40 in FA113
The aim of the paper is to construct
Kierkegaard's contributions to questions of free will, and motivations to
goodness or evil. For Kierkegaard, there is free will, as consciousness exists
as an autonomous power of self-reflection and decision-making. That leaves the
question of what leads us to good or evil acts and principles. There is a
potential conflict here, which was very much an issue for Kant. The conflict is
between the autonomy of the self, which makes the self a moral agent, and
morality as what is externally legislated. The Concept of Anxiety is
centrally concerned with this issue particularly as it arises with regard to
evil. Kant himself was concerned with how the autonomous rational self can will
evil for its own sake (in Religion within the Boundaries). Kierkegaard's
approach is to emphasise that free will itself creates its own constraints. The
apparent approach of The Concept of Anxiety is to deal with a theological
question of how there can be an evil will in humans, but essentially the book is
concerned with the moral consequences of free will. Morality means there is
agency according to Kierkegaard and it also means following universal
rules. Free will gives rise to anxiety because it is where agency faces with the
infinity of its choices (both in their quantity and the scope of certain
choices). This picture of consciousness owes a great deal to Fichte. Faced with
the infinity of its own possibilities free will lacks a basis for choice, for
seeing where it is itself. That difficulty in distinguishing between choices,
some infinite, or universal, moral choices is what creates anxiety and melancholy. In that state we may choose evil, and in that stage there is
something intrinsically evil, for it is a state of mind where no choice is
ethically significant, and subjectivity only seeks to enjoy the variety of
subjective moments. In Either/Or Kierkegaard suggests stages of the
aesthetic-subjective, the moral-ethical and the absolute-religious. Kierkegaard
after McIntyre has performed a great service by drawing attention to the
ethics in Either/Or, but suffers from treating the stage of anxiety, or
melancholy, as superseded by the ethical. The ethical can only have a place in
Kierkegaard if it connects with anxiety, because the ethical in itself is
universal laws abstracted from the self. Ethics must rest on the absolute, that
is a subjectivity which recognises an absolute within itself which integrates
all the passing moments of aesthetic melancholia. Kierkegaard claims that ethics
rests on a personality, which is necessarily struggling to integrate itself.
Yujin Nagasawa (Department of Philosophy, University of Alberta;
Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Australian National University)
Proxy Consent and Counterfactuals
Time & Place: Tue 8 Mar 2005 at 13:40 in EA409
When patients are in vegetative states and their lives are maintained by
medical devices, their surrogates might offer proxy consents on their behalf in
order to terminate the use of the devices. The so-called 'substituted judgment
thesis' has been adopted by the courts regularly in order to determine the
validity of such proxy consents. The thesis purports to evaluate proxy consents
by appealing to putative counterfactual truths about what the patients would
choose, were they to be competent. The aim of this paper is to reveal a
significant limitation of the thesis, which has hitherto been recognized only
vaguely and intuitively. By appealing to the metaphysics of counterfactuals I
explain how the thesis fails to determine the validity of proxy consents in a
number of actual cases.
İlhan
İnan (Department
of Philosophy, Boğaziçi University)
The Map and the Treasure: Reflections on Meno's Paradox
Time & Place: Fri 17 Dec 2004 at 15:40 in FA113
Meno's
Paradox reveals important issues with respect to philosophical inquiry in
particular, and human curiosity in general. It should not be dismissed as a
verbal quibble, as some have suggested, and it is not at all clear that Plato
had a satisfactory solution to it. As has been noted by Plato scholars there are
two issues raised by Meno: how is it possible to inquire into something? (The
Paradox of Inquiry); how is it possible to discover the right answer to an
inquiry? (The Paradox of Discovery). The Theory of Recollection does not provide
us with an answer to the Paradox of Inquiry, even if we countenance immortal and
omniscient souls, and it is not clear whether Socrates thought it did. There are
the two standard approaches that have been suggested in the literature to
resolve the paradoxes. The first has it that having true beliefs (but no
knowledge) about something is sufficient to inquire into it (which was
presumably Socrates' own solution to the first paradox), whereas the second
approach finds fault in the underlying assumption that knowledge is an
all-or-nothing affair. I will argue that
neither account is fully satisfactory. A
more substantial solution to the Paradox of Inquiry requires us to investigate
how it is possible for one to represent an object in his mind without being
acquainted with that object. Such a form of representation, I shall argue, is
made possible by a certain type of concept formation that I shall call
"inostensible". It is through the use of an inostensible concept that
one is able to inquire into something (empirical or a priori) even in cases when
that person has no de re beliefs (let alone knowledge) about that thing. In the
light of this I will try to show how the Paradox of Inquiry can be resolved in
the case of Platonic questions such as "what is virtue?" Such a
solution does not seem to be available to Plato, for it is quite doubtful that
Plato distinguished between concept and object, let alone having the notion of
an inostensible concept. Inostensible concept formation will also provide a
resolution to the Paradox of Discovery for empirical inquiries, though I shall
argue that for the kind of philosophical issues that Plato raises, the Paradox
of Discovery opens up a deeper issue with respect to the possibility of
metaphysical knowledge, which is perhaps what led Plato to endorse the Theory of
Recollection.
Christopher
Ryan (Cambridge University)
Empirical
Metaphysics: Schopenhauer and the Will as Thing-in-itself
Time & Place:
Wed
10 Nov 2004 at 15:40 in FA113
Erdinç
Sayan (Department of Philosophy,
Middle East Technical University)
Shadows and Other Things of No Substance
Time & Place: Fri 15 Oct 2004 at 13:40 in FA113
In this day and age we should know everything there is to
know about shadows and ordinary holes, right? Well,
not if you look at the different views among philosophers concerning what
shadows and holes are, and how or whether they move. For starters, is the
circular hole in a donut part of the donut? When
the donut rotates does its hole also rotate? What
is a shadow made out of? Does the shadow
cast by a spinning disc spin too? How
about a silhouette? I present my own
theory of the structure of holes and of shadows, and the nature of their motion. I reply to Roy Sorensen’s criticisms in a forthcoming paper of my
views, and solve some puzzles he poses concerning shadows and their motion.
Patricia
O'Grady (Department of Philosophy, Flinders University of South Australia)
Hippias
of Elis
Time & Place: Mon 27 Sep 2004 at 14:40 in EB309
Hippias
of Elis cut an elegant figure as he strolled through the crowds at Olympia,
dressed entirely in garments and accessories he had, himself, made. But there
is more to Hippias than the man Plato portrays as vain in Hippias Minor.
Hippias was not only the exemplar of self-sufficiency but ranks among the most
talented and versatile of the sophists. He was perhaps the earliest
chronologist, a prolific writer, and lectured on poetry, grammar, history,
politics, mythology, and archaeology. It has been said that Hippias's only
contribution to mathematics was the discovery of the quadratrix, but what a
discovery that was! Hippias's discovery of the quadratrix was a remarkable
achievement. In addition, he held a view on social law, relating to positive
law and convention. Mention will be made of Plato's portrayal of Hippias. It
will be seen that Hippias was more than an extremely rich and successful
sophist, but that his work warrants his inclusion amongst the philosophers.
David
Grünberg (Department of Philosophy,
Middle East Technical University)
Three
Basic Ontological Relations Concerning the Physical Realm
Time & Place: Mon 17 May 2004 at 14:40 in EA409
The purpose of this
paper is to establish a classification of the main ontological categories based
on the predication, subsumption, and inherence relation. The classification is inspired by Aristotle's fourfold division of things
into objects (primary substances), object kinds (secondary substances),
attributes, and attribute kinds. It is
argued that first, properties and relations are respectively meanings of monadic
and polyadic predicate expressions, and second, (determinate) attributes are
recurrent abstract particulars so that they are neither monadic nor polyadic. It follows that attributes constitute a category quite different from
that of properties and relations. On the
other hand, both object kinds and attribute kinds are considered to be
non-semantic universals in contradistinction to properties and relations that
are semantic.
Barry Stocker (Department of Philosophy, Yeditepe University; Department of
Philosophy, University College London)
Philosophy
of Literary Form: Lukács and Benjamin
Time & Place: Thu 1 Apr 2004 at 17:40 in A130
This
paper is work in progress for a book with the provisional title of
'Philosophy of Literary Judgement', which looks at aesthetic philosophy, and
philosophy and literature, since Vico and Kant with regard to developing a
framework for reading Joyce and Beckett, and considering what they have to
tell us about aesthetic and literary philosophy.
In Lukács and Benjamin themes established by Kant and Vico, then developed
in German Idealism, the Jena Romantic Ironists, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche,
are continued and in some respects reach a culmination. For Lukács and Benjamin literary form still expresses historical
categories and the growth of consciousness, but also in ways which suggest a
dissolve of the original synthesis, and maybe gives some clues to the rise
of the kind of literature we see in Joyce and Beckett. Indeed there is an evolution in the thought of Lukács and Benjamin,
which suggests an awareness of this dissolve. Lukács adopted Marxism, establishing an influential Marxist social
and historical philosophy and Benjamin came to emphasise Marxism more over
time, together with interests in mass culture. The work considered here, is still clearly German Idealist in
emphasis. That is Lukács Theory of the Novel and Benjamin's Origin of
German Tragic Drama. That their
greatest work came early may say something about the problems in their later
evolution, though they did of course continue to produce remarkable work. An incapacity to accept the kind of literature written by Joyce and
Beckett is an issue for Lukács already in Theory of the Novel, and
continues to be in the Marxist work which provides a moral-historical
condemnation of this kind of 'alienation'. Benjamin emphasised Kafka and Proust positively and was closer to
literary Modernism than Lukács, nevertheless his reading of Proust in
apocalyptic-Marxist terms and of Kafka in Judaic allegorical terms may
suggest some perplexity about how to deal with this work in every dimension. We might get a better grasp of Beckett and Joyce with reference to
the earlier work of both. Benjamin's
discussion of the Baroque and of tragic-drama and Lukács discussion of
reflection in the novel, are highly suggestive and should lead us to think
about how we can categorise modernism, when it seems anticipated by
Romanticism in the novel and a reading of the Baroque from the point of view
of Romantic aesthetics. In both
cases a dissolve of given literary structure is important. In Lukács, there is a historical progress clearly inspired
by Hegel, according to which the Homeric epic represents an ideal In which
the individual feels at home in the world and does not even contemplate
alienation from the world. The
novel is partly seen in terms of a Hegelian critique of Kant, in a sense
that the novel as a form is determined by the universality of abstract law
alien to particularity. The
novel is examined in a way which Hegel did not, and could not given its
development since his time, according to the suggestion that increasingly
only exist as a law breaker and outsider, and that the novel can
increasingly only find unity of a non-organic kind through pure time and so
on. In Benjamin, the struggle
of the hero in Ancient Tragedy, and the unity of its structure, is
contrasted with the passivity of the hero of the 'mourning play' in a modern
world without natural justice and in which justice has become abstract
divine law. A contrast itself
rooted in Hegel. The shift
between Tragedy and Tragic Drama parallels that in Lukács from epic to
novel, but the epochs considered and other terms in the opposition, differ
in exposition and need to be explored.
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