Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics is a difficult read.  It is well known that the surviving corpus of his works comprises rough drafts or lecture notes. These are known as his esoteric works while the finished, polished, crafted and accessible exoteric works are lost.  Yet there is a sense of clarity and purpose in the attempts made in this rough and disjointed prose to found, to ground and to establish.  There is a determination to mark out clearly how a science or discipline is formed and c...

Continue reading ...

Of late I have been exploring Aristotle’s thought.  Common approaches to this thinker – familiar in introductions, courses and elsewhere – focus upon Aristotle’s ethics and his teleological conception of nature.  His Four Causes also feature prominently as a source for proofs of God’s existence by much later thinkers.  These appear in the context of age-old and well-established debates about the nature and value of virtue ethics, and the problems of maintaining a teleological concep...

Continue reading ...

A review I wrote of Heidegger's The Beginning of Western Philosophy: Interpetation of Anaximander and Parmenides (Indiana University Press, 2015) has just appeared in Philosophy in Review.  In my previous blog post I talked about some of the problems and questions that arise in these lectures from 1932.  There is a danger of seeing here only an anti-scientific and mystical leaning here.  Yet Heidegger is self-aware and responds to concerns about his method of interpreting other thinkers.  Gen...
Continue reading ...

A reading of Heidegger’s The Beginning of Western Philosophy: Interpretation of Anaximander and Parmenides (trans, Richard Rojcewicz, Indiana University Press, 2015) raises some important questions about the role of science in his thought.  I am concerned with evaluating the apparently negative and unproductive role science seems to have in Heidegger’s work. 

Heidegger seems to dismiss science in his interpretation of Anaximander:

‘Indeed, what is not decisive is the magnitude in number o...

Continue reading ...

I've been working on a reading of Aquinas' architectonic which is now among the online texts section of this website. Principles for constructing an architectonic emerge as Aquinas thinks through the nature of disciplines.   
Continue reading ...

Continue reading ...

Continue reading ...

“I am not exaggerating when I say that this flood [of academic publishing] is eroding academic intellectual life. It has become impossible for anyone to maintain an overview of a single, even fairly narrow subject - let alone a discipline as a whole.  When I began work on a PhD on the philosopher Thomas Hobbes in the late 1970s, it was possible for me to keep up with almost everything new that was being published on Hobbes in Britain, the US and western Europe, while devoting most of my t...

Continue reading ...

I have just returned from a trip to the ETH in Zurich where I was talking to academics and Masters degree students working in computer-aided architectural design and the theory behind it.  This was a very enjoyable and productive interdisciplinary discussion.  I gave a talk on the history of architectonics in philosophy and how the ‘crisis of foundations’ lead to a re-thinking of architectonics.  Our discussions explored the relations between the disciplines and how these can be articul...

Continue reading ...

My book is published today.  I am keen to gage reactions to the book because it was intended to intervene in current debates including those concerning the way we read Kant, transcendental arguments and the nature of Deleuze’s thought.  I cannot help wondering what the response will be to my approach.  I give a close reading of parts of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason in an attempt to ‘return to basics’, trying to understand the starting point of this book and the nature of the ‘ar...

Continue reading ...

I am currently working on an introductory lecture on architectonics which I will be delivering in Zurich next week.  I am always struck by the way in which this subject makes one return to the basics of philosophy.  A concern with the foundation, or lack of foundation, of knowledge is refreshing.  One has to think about whether philosophy has, or should have, solid ground beneath its feet.  It may be argued that this is too simple and naïve in its approach given the advances made in philosop...

Continue reading ...

In my last post I put forward some thoughts about how disciplines are defined.  An article in the current issue of the Times Higher Education Supplement contributes to the debate when it offers a critique of aspects of business studies and business schools.  This is not an attack on the importance of studying business but rather a questioning of the way this discipline is organised, managed, taught and distinguished from other fields.  A change is traced in the history of business studies.  A...

Continue reading ...

Thinking about the relations between the disciplines and about the problems surrounding the specialisation of knowledge leads again and again to a pressing question.  How do we define a discipline?  This is not a fashionable question given that if any discipline tries to define other disciplines it opens itself to the accusation that it is setting itself above those other disciplines.  This would work against the equality of disciplines and the assemblages that result from disciplines relatin...

Continue reading ...

Edward Carr’s article ‘The Last Days of the Polymath’, published recently in Intelligent Life, raises questions that are of fundamental importance today.  My interest in architectonics stems from the same concerns but draws upon the history of philosophy to find resources to challenge the reign of specialisation that Carr is also keen to question.  He ends the article by referring to Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between ‘foxes’ who know many things and ‘hedgehogs’ who know one ...

Continue reading ...

I am currently working on a paper that begins with the notion that philosophers seek to ‘clear the ground’ – to avoid presupposing what they are seeking to account for – and then seek to walk upon the cleared ground.  They must feel that they ‘walk upon solid ground’ or are ‘in touch with reality’.  This might seem to be a statement of the obvious but if philosophy begins at all it must find the zero-point and then set forth while feeling confident that the system building ...

Continue reading ...

A recent request for information on courses being taught on 'meta-philosophy' on philos-l (the philosopher's mailing list) gave rise to a number of responses.  I found this interesting because of philosophy's singular concern with the foundations of other disciplines but also with its own - this is the job of philosophy if it is concerned with architectonics.  For Kant philosophy must provide an account of knowledge as such (propaedeutic) and then provide an organon of principles for other di...
Continue reading ...

Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics is a difficult read.  It is well known that the surviving corpus of his works comprises rough drafts or lecture notes. These are known as his esoteric works while the finished, polished, crafted and accessible exoteric works are lost.  Yet there is a sense of clarity and purpose in the attempts made in this rough and disjointed prose to found, to ground and to establish.  There is a determination to mark out clearly how a science or discipline is formed and c...

Continue reading ...

Of late I have been exploring Aristotle’s thought.  Common approaches to this thinker – familiar in introductions, courses and elsewhere – focus upon Aristotle’s ethics and his teleological conception of nature.  His Four Causes also feature prominently as a source for proofs of God’s existence by much later thinkers.  These appear in the context of age-old and well-established debates about the nature and value of virtue ethics, and the problems of maintaining a teleological concep...

Continue reading ...

A review I wrote of Heidegger's The Beginning of Western Philosophy: Interpetation of Anaximander and Parmenides (Indiana University Press, 2015) has just appeared in Philosophy in Review.  In my previous blog post I talked about some of the problems and questions that arise in these lectures from 1932.  There is a danger of seeing here only an anti-scientific and mystical leaning here.  Yet Heidegger is self-aware and responds to concerns about his method of interpreting other thinkers.  Gen...
Continue reading ...

A reading of Heidegger’s The Beginning of Western Philosophy: Interpretation of Anaximander and Parmenides (trans, Richard Rojcewicz, Indiana University Press, 2015) raises some important questions about the role of science in his thought.  I am concerned with evaluating the apparently negative and unproductive role science seems to have in Heidegger’s work. 

Heidegger seems to dismiss science in his interpretation of Anaximander:

‘Indeed, what is not decisive is the magnitude in number o...

Continue reading ...

I've been working on a reading of Aquinas' architectonic which is now among the online texts section of this website. Principles for constructing an architectonic emerge as Aquinas thinks through the nature of disciplines.   
Continue reading ...

Continue reading ...

Continue reading ...

“I am not exaggerating when I say that this flood [of academic publishing] is eroding academic intellectual life. It has become impossible for anyone to maintain an overview of a single, even fairly narrow subject - let alone a discipline as a whole.  When I began work on a PhD on the philosopher Thomas Hobbes in the late 1970s, it was possible for me to keep up with almost everything new that was being published on Hobbes in Britain, the US and western Europe, while devoting most of my t...

Continue reading ...

I have just returned from a trip to the ETH in Zurich where I was talking to academics and Masters degree students working in computer-aided architectural design and the theory behind it.  This was a very enjoyable and productive interdisciplinary discussion.  I gave a talk on the history of architectonics in philosophy and how the ‘crisis of foundations’ lead to a re-thinking of architectonics.  Our discussions explored the relations between the disciplines and how these can be articul...

Continue reading ...

My book is published today.  I am keen to gage reactions to the book because it was intended to intervene in current debates including those concerning the way we read Kant, transcendental arguments and the nature of Deleuze’s thought.  I cannot help wondering what the response will be to my approach.  I give a close reading of parts of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason in an attempt to ‘return to basics’, trying to understand the starting point of this book and the nature of the ‘ar...

Continue reading ...

I am currently working on an introductory lecture on architectonics which I will be delivering in Zurich next week.  I am always struck by the way in which this subject makes one return to the basics of philosophy.  A concern with the foundation, or lack of foundation, of knowledge is refreshing.  One has to think about whether philosophy has, or should have, solid ground beneath its feet.  It may be argued that this is too simple and naïve in its approach given the advances made in philosop...

Continue reading ...

In my last post I put forward some thoughts about how disciplines are defined.  An article in the current issue of the Times Higher Education Supplement contributes to the debate when it offers a critique of aspects of business studies and business schools.  This is not an attack on the importance of studying business but rather a questioning of the way this discipline is organised, managed, taught and distinguished from other fields.  A change is traced in the history of business studies.  A...

Continue reading ...

Thinking about the relations between the disciplines and about the problems surrounding the specialisation of knowledge leads again and again to a pressing question.  How do we define a discipline?  This is not a fashionable question given that if any discipline tries to define other disciplines it opens itself to the accusation that it is setting itself above those other disciplines.  This would work against the equality of disciplines and the assemblages that result from disciplines relatin...

Continue reading ...

Edward Carr’s article ‘The Last Days of the Polymath’, published recently in Intelligent Life, raises questions that are of fundamental importance today.  My interest in architectonics stems from the same concerns but draws upon the history of philosophy to find resources to challenge the reign of specialisation that Carr is also keen to question.  He ends the article by referring to Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between ‘foxes’ who know many things and ‘hedgehogs’ who know one ...

Continue reading ...

I am currently working on a paper that begins with the notion that philosophers seek to ‘clear the ground’ – to avoid presupposing what they are seeking to account for – and then seek to walk upon the cleared ground.  They must feel that they ‘walk upon solid ground’ or are ‘in touch with reality’.  This might seem to be a statement of the obvious but if philosophy begins at all it must find the zero-point and then set forth while feeling confident that the system building ...

Continue reading ...

A recent request for information on courses being taught on 'meta-philosophy' on philos-l (the philosopher's mailing list) gave rise to a number of responses.  I found this interesting because of philosophy's singular concern with the foundations of other disciplines but also with its own - this is the job of philosophy if it is concerned with architectonics.  For Kant philosophy must provide an account of knowledge as such (propaedeutic) and then provide an organon of principles for other di...
Continue reading ...