psychology – Fractal Ontology

All posts filed under: psychology

Simondon in English: “Two Lessons on Animal and Man”

Thursday, January 19, 2012

It is my great delight to help announce the publication of one of the first book-length English translations available of the writings of French philosopher of technology Gilbert Simondon (1924-1989), published by Univocal. The volume is available under the title Two Lessons on Animal and Man and was translated by Drew Burk. The work is composed of a series of lectures intended for undergraduates interested in the humanities, especially philosophy, sociology and psychology. As the translator […]

Notes on Eros and Civilization

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

by Joseph Weissman

comments 6

alienation / death drive / Eros / eros and civilzation / freud / herbert marcuse / metaphysics / pleasure / psychology / reality / superego / unconscious

Notes on Eros and Civilization In Eros and Civilization, Herbert Marcuse presents Freud at the level of metaphysical psychology. That is: we find Freud engaged in overturning “conventional” metaphysics through psychoanalysis — methodically substituting pleasure and imagination for reason and logic — but paradoxically in so doing he produces a “theoretical” practice which, through its “diagnostic” methodologies and even in its “axiomatic” structure, still reflect profoundly traditional conceptions of humanity. For example, Freud analyzes the […]

The Monstrosity of Dreams: Beauty after Surrealism

Sunday, December 30, 2007

by Joseph Weissman

comments 6

aesthetics / beauty / birth / decay / learning / leonardo da vinci / light / noise / parasite / psychology / semiotics / surrealism / truth

If narcissism could in any sense be said to be the basis for a proto-aesthetics, a necessary condition for the production of any aesthetic intervention whatsoever — if not the outer eclipse of the primordial movement of creativity itself… Then this is because beauty captures, absorbs, exhumes. It fascinates. It opens up new distances, illuminates novel depths, original styles. It pierces a depth whose distance is infinite, the absolutely other. Beauty, what else? –but null […]

Beyond Desire: Remarks on Nietzsche and Becoming

Monday, December 10, 2007

by Joseph Weissman

comments 5

Anaxagoras / becoming / being / chaos / cosmos / desire / discourse / freedom / infinity / intensity / lacan / morality / morphology / Nietzsche / nous / ontology / phenomenology / psychology / Theory / Philosophy / unconscious

Topos (biocosm) In the beginning all things were mixed together; then came understanding and created order. Anaxagoras [1] What had to be accomplished in that chaotic pell-mell of primeval conditions, before all motion, so that the world as it now is might come to be, with its times of day and times of year, all conforming to law, with its manifold beauty and order, all without the addition of any new […]

Simondon and the Machine: Technology, Individuation, Reality

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

by Joseph Weissman

comments 4

biology / crystal / cybernetics / form / individuation / knowledge / machine / physics / psychology / Science / Mathematics / Technology / Simondon / structure / technology / tension

Fractal Effervescence (2006), David April Simondon and the Theory of Individuation There is something eternal in a technical scheme… and it is that which is always present, and can be conserved in a thing. Gilbert Simondon Gilbert Simondon’s reformulation of information theory on the basis of a new philosophy of technology has, in comparison to earlier attempts, at least the following major advantages to its credit: – His thought introduces us to an entirely […]

Nietzsche and Psychology

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

by Joseph Weissman