December 2024

In this essay, I utilise Derrida’s framework of ‘autoimmunity’ to argue that the political collapse of the United States reaffirms that democratic structures are ‘to come,’ for democracy perpetually threatens its very existence. To frame this argument, I foremost describe Derrida’s account of autoimmunity, which details the ‘death drive’ of democratic structures in remaining open to self-critique. Further, the democratic pursuit of perfectibility ensures that democracy is perpetually to come. Derrida’s framework is then utilised to describe the current collapse of democratic structures within the United States to reaffirm the aporetic nature of democracy. Given the recent presidential election—and breaches of democratic proceedings which are occurring globally—this is a timely philosophical piece. Although the collapse of democracy has left many feeling despondent, Derrida provides a philosophical framework to both rethink democratic frameworks, and the possibility for society to move forward in the face of such crises.

This essay presents a reading of Walter Benjamin’s Passagen-Werk in English translation as The Arcades Project. I focus on the work’s form and Benjamin’s theses on the construction of history. I begin by contextualising the work and then offer a “naïve” reading, considering the work’s presentation and implications read without Benjamin’s self-reflective theoretical context. I then engage with this more theoretical material to further develop the implications of my first analysis. I argue that the work exemplifies a method of writing history, by virtue of its specific fragmentary structure and Benjamin’s writings in Convolute N. I conclude with some reflections on other art historical theories and their interaction with Benjamin’s characterisation of historical perception, suggesting that The Arcades Project offers a novel historical methodology applicable to the writing of art history.

In this essay, I analyse the relationship between time and change and its bearing on identity. In particular, I focus on the way in which I believe temporal change is best understood as a matter of change in temporal parts rather than as occurring to a single entity which endures temporal change. To argue this, I establish the two main ideas of temporal change, before focusing on the work of David Lewis and his four-dimensionalist account of change. I then contrast his work in light of major criticisms from other thinkers. Finally, I argue that Lewis’ view can be successfully defended against these critiques and is able to serve as a useful way to understand the relationship between time and identity.

Kitarō Nishida and Keiji Nishitani were Japanese philosophers associated with the Kyoto School, a movement that sought to integrate Eastern and Western philosophical traditions. Nishida, the founder of the school, focused upon the concept of a negated sense of self and emphasized the philosophy of nothingness. Nishitani, a student of Nishida, expanded upon these ideas by exploring the existential and religious dimensions of nothingness, significantly advancing the dialogue between Zen Buddhism and Western existentialism. This article explores how the logic of contradiction underpinning Nisihida’s work first leads to nothingness through self-negation and subsequently to encounters with a true sense of self. It also considers the crucial question of whether these experiences are religious.

Today, even among many students of philosophy, the notion of dialectics remains enigmatic. In this essay, I aim to dispel this mystery by elucidating the dialectic’s original context in the work of Immanuel Kant. First, I clarify Kant’s solution to David Hume’s critique of inductive reasoning. In particular, I emphasise the limits that Kant imposes on cognition through reference to his basic epistemological terminology and the transcendental analytic. This account of cognition contextualises his later arguments in the transcendental dialectic, where I identify the tension within his notion of the limits of reason that ultimately gives rise to the dialectic. Second, I briefly discuss some common misconceptions and contemporary examples of the dialectic to demonstrate its enduring significance for us today.

In this essay I offer a critique of Hannah Arendt’s views on ethics, thinking, and moral taste. Following the atrocities of the twentieth century, she positions her theory as a preventative defence against the ‘banality of evil’, especially in cases of totalitarian rule. For Arendt, prevention of such evil requires a combination of reflective thinking and a sense of moral taste which is dependent on one’s community. I critique this notion, arguing that it is the very intersubjectivity of taste that permits moral corruption. In both totalitarian states, and increasingly in insular online communities, people are not afforded the diversity of alternative viewpoints to develop an effective sense of judgment. I argue that Arendt’s theory requires some incorporation of practical reason if it is to successfully prevent this banal evil.

This essay identifies a link between Georges Didi-Huberman’s dangerous plasticity in art and Catherine Malabou’s philosophical/psychological concept of plasticity. I argue that art and aesthetic experiences are sites of explosive plasticity that can trigger a transformation of the subject. To demonstrate this, I analyse the queer art done by Cassils and the abject art of Patricia Piccinini.

In this essay I argue that Duras’s novel L’Amant does not posit a relation between desire and writing so much as it collapses one within the other; L’Amant acts as a nexus for desire, writing, and the body whereby all of these entities are continually imbricated and the divisions between them destroyed within Duras’s apocalyptic textual framework. Furthermore, I argue in favour of Andrew Slade’s assertion that Duras constructs a feminine sublime (sublime féminin) in L’Amant that works to exhume corporeality from the Kantian sublime, subtending all différends and all desire, whereby “all things [are] confounded into one.” In doing so, Duras works chiastically; L’Amant writes desire, and desire writes L’Amant. The Durassian Sublime finds a way to write and re-write being that is inextricable from its own materiality and the corporeality of the text.