The chapter explores how Aristotle wants to account for perception’s essentially receptive nature. It focuses on Aristotle’s commitment to the passivity of perception, namely, the idea that perception is a certain kind of being affected (paskhein) by perceptual objects. It provides a classification and preliminary critical analysis of existing interpretations of the passivity of perception. I argue that Aristotle’s first general account of perception in An. 2.5 is systematically pre-causal in the sense that makes it impossible to directly infer from it anything specific about the respective roles of the body and the soul (against both Material and Psychic Interpretation). Furthermore, I contend that Aristotle develops a robust conception of passivity here that successfully encapsulates, on the most general level, what perception is (against Deflationary and Aporetic Interpretation). More specifically, I argue that An. 2.5 is centrally aimed at reconciling perception’s passivity and completeness (the perceiver has both seen and is seeing the same object) and that this task is motivated by the need for capturing the difference between genuine (‘continued’) perceiving and mere appearance within an assimilation model of perception.

The Introduction sets out the argument of the book, and distinguishes the approach taken from those of Louis Althusser and Daniel Brudney. It offers a preliminary assessment of the difference made by reading Marx’s project as that of the actualization of philosophy, and of the implications for understanding his relationship to his philosophical predecessors.

This chapter examines the genuine dialectic at work in Capital Volume 1 (to be contrasted with the failed dialectic of Hegel). A focus of the chapter is the role of opposition and contradiction in this non-pre-determined dialectic. Attempts to read Marx as if he meant to speak of opposition instead of contradiction are rejected; opposition is, instead, shown in much of the material in question to develop into contradiction. Contradiction does not follow one pre-established pattern; but Marx, throughout, works under the aegis of the Principle of Non-Contradiction. In a sense, the chapter outlines the methodology of Marx’s mature work, but only insofar as it is recognized that this methodology cannot be spelled out other than by retracing actual arguments in Marx.

This chapter examines the underlying logical failures that produce the strange effects on the surface of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right examined in the previous chapter. It turns out that Hegel did not merely make logical errors, but that his very logical procedures are philosophically defective. This is shown to rest on problems shared with Plato’s diairesis (method of division). The problem with Hegel’s treatment of the state is not that he has chosen to take a dialectical approach, but that his conception of dialectic is itself deficient.

The chapter outlines key principles in Cognitive CDA, which inherits its social theory from CDA and from cognitive linguistics inherits a particular view of language and a framework for analysing language (as well as other semiotic modes). In connection with CDA, the chapter describes the dialectical relationship conceived between discourse and society. Key concepts relating to the dialogicality of discourse are also introduced, namely intertextuality and interdiscursivity. The central role of discourse in maintaining power and inequality is described with a focus on the ideological and legitimating functions of language and conceptualisation. In connection with cognitive linguistics, the chapter describes the non-autonomous nature of language, the continuity between grammar and the lexicon and the experiential grounding of language. The key concept of construal and its implications for ideology in language and conceptualisation are discussed. A framework in which construal operations are related to discursive strategies and domain-general cognitive systems and processes is set out. The chapter closes by briefly introducing the main models and methods of Cognitive CDA.

This chapter discusses noetic contemplation proper, that is, seeing Intellect as he sees himself by virtue of our vertical participation. We see the entire intelligible world, consisting of the Forms, and we see the unfolding of the Great Kinds, the highest of the Forms in it. Our contemplation of Intellect has an unfolding character, although this doesn’t mean that we see Intellect as being in time. Plotinus shows the limitations of our individual perspective on this and other cosmic principles in contemplation. We see both the unity and the multiplicity of Intellect but in a way that transcends dialectical, discursive, and conceptual thinking. Contemplation doesn’t abolish our ability to think discursively but rather enriches that ability. Dialectical search for the truth is harmonised with a direct, intuitive vision of Intellect. On the one hand, the vision is expressed through dialectic and, on the other, dialectic leads us to and strengthens our intuitive, noetic experience of reality. Philosophy and contemplation become two sides of the same life.

A growth point captures the moment of speaking, taking a first-person view. It is thought in language, imbued with mental/social energy, and unpacked into a sentence. It is not a translation of gesture into speech. It is a process of processes. One is the psychological predicate (a notion from Vygotsky), a differentiation of context for what is newsworthy, the growth point’s core meaning – the context reshaped into a field of equivalents to make the differentiation meaningful. The core meaning has dual semiosis – opposite semiotic modes – a global-synthetic gesture and analytics-segmented speech, synchronized and coexpressive of the core. The gesture phases foster the synchronization. Cohesive threads to other growth points (a “catchment”) enrich it. A dialectic provides the growth point’s unpacking – the gesture becoming the thesis, the coexpressive speech the antithesis. Jointly, they create the dialectic synthesis. The dialectic synthesis and the unpacking are the same summoned construction-plus-gesture. The growth point, its processes fulfilled, inhabits the speaker’s being, taking up a position in the world of meaning it has created (conception from Merleau-Ponty).

In Constitutional Identity, Gary Jacobsohn highlights the tension both within constitutional systems and between constitutions and societal norms (culture). In this essay, we explore the first tension and glance at the second. One objective of the essay is to enumerate a set of “disharmonies” that appear with some frequency within constitutions and, employing historical data, identify the constitutional systems that contain them. Appealing to formal logic, we develop a taxonomy that helps us understand the kinds of disharmonies on display; a taxonomy that points to their sources. The essay thus generalizes Jacobsohn’s notion of disharmony and extends his insights from a small set of cases that begin with the letter “I” to a larger set.

Ambrose of Milan’s pastoral project of ‘building up the faith’ (adstruere fidem), evident in his preaching, is exemplified best in his hymns. Relating this project to his suspicions about dialectic, I argue that the hymns aim less to ‘destroy’ through analysis than to ‘construct’ through compelling imagery and a programme of sensitisation. By comparing the presentation of Christ’s miracles in his Expositio on Luke and in his hymn for the Epiphany, ‘Illuminans Altissimus’, I show how Ambrose renders abstract, narrative, and conceptual claims by means of personal, concrete, and actualising exempla that present his congregation with objects for ‘real assent’ (in the words of John Henry Newman). Such an approach distinguishes Ambrose’s hymns from the verse compositions of his Latin-speaking contemporaries, Hilary of Poitiers and Augustine of Hippo.

This chapter examines the operation of dialogue and reciprocal exchange between the ST and the translator. Dialogue ensures that this relationship will always be incomplete, unfinished. By translational dialogue, one art extends the expressive capacities of another. The motor of dialogue is dialectics, and the chapter goes on to evaluate different versions of dialectical progression, while itself opting for a dialectic which releases a semanticity, as opposed to a semiology, a dialectic of participatory subjecthood. The chapter closes with an assessment of David Bohm’s vision of dialogue, since its concern with implicate and explicate orders lead into the chapter following. The chapter also contains indicative translations of Lamartine and Hugo.

Hegel dedicates ‘Teleology’ in his Logic to resolve Kant’s antinomies about causality: the third antinomy of reason and the antinomy of judgement. This chapter first connects these distinct Kantian antinomies. I argue that Hegel is right that the opposition of the causal concepts involved in them is substantially the same. I also advocate that Hegel is right too in supposing that for Kant the conflicting concepts remain opposed after the ‘solution’ to the different logical conflicts in the various Critiques is reached. I argue that, in contrast, Hegel’s own resolution tries to deliver a proper unification of these concepts.

Chapter 4 begins by exploring the productive tension that can exist between gestural articulation and formal continuity in Schubert’s music, and its affinity with Schubert’s paratactic forms which exploit unexpected disjunction as a formal premise. It focuses on the expositional interpolations in Schubert’s sonatas that exhibit characteristics normally associated with development sections. The three analytical case studies that follow have been chosen for their distinctive approach to this formal practice, and demonstrate its early stages of development in D36/i and D353/i as well as a mature example, D804/i. Three fundamental questions underline my analyses: first, in what sense do the interpolations in Schubert’s first-movement expositions function as development (D353/i); second, the question of whether or not synthesis of the formal dialectic is achieved (D36/i), and finally, what the implications of this are for the articulation of a lyrically conceived teleology (D804/i). This chapter also contains a methodological interlude wherein I define my extension of Edward T. Cone’s concept of stratification to Schubert’s music and its relevance to the sonatas.