Suchergebnisse

""I didn't even know that was a question I could ask." That remark from a student in an introductory philosophy course points to the primary body of knowledge philosophy produces: a detailed record of what we do not know. When we come to view a philosophical question as well-formed and worthwhile, it is a way of providing as specific a description as we can of something we do not know. The creation or discovery of such questions is like noting a landmark in a territory we're exploring. When we identify reasonable, if conflicting, answers to this question, we are noting routes to and away from that landmark. And since proposed answers to philosophical questions often contain implied answers to other philosophical questions, those routes connect different landmarks.

The result is a kind of map: a map of the unknown.

Yet when it comes to the unknown, and all the more so to its cartography, might it not make sense to take our orientation from Borges: What's in question here, with respect to philosophical questions, is an incipient, unlocalizable threshold—a terrain neither subjective, nor entirely objective, one neither of representation, nor finally of simple immediacy—there where the map perceptibly fails to diverge from the territory. Amid Inclemencies of weather and fringed, as per Borges, with ruin and singular figures—with Animals and Beggars—what's enclosed is an attempt to chart the contours of this curious immanence."

"No longer imminent, the End is immanent." "Ends are ends," Frank Kermode goes on to clarify, "only when they are not negative but frankly transfigure the events in which they were immanent." From its imminence to its immanence, not "negative," "no longer," but transformative, how is "the End" in turn "transfigured"? In what may ending be said then to consist? To "the end times" of apocalypse and eschatology Giorgio Agamben, following Gianni Carchia, opposes messianism and "messianic time"—to the end of time, in a formula, the time of the end. To the writings of those for whom to philosophize is to learn how to die—from Plato to Montaigne and beyond—one may oppose, in like manner, the writings of Spinoza, who "thinks of death least of all things"—"for nature is Messianic by reason of its eternal and total passing away," as Benjamin writes—and so in whose pages "wisdom," transfigured, "is a meditation on life."

In a 1917 letter to Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin writes, "Theory is like a surging sea." This small book takes more than its title from that line—it takes that line as a point of departure in Erich Auerbach's sense, an Ansatzpunkt, as a compositional principle so that what follows can be read in its entirety as a gloss on the remainder of Benjamin's sentence: "Theory is like a surging sea, but the only thing that matters to the wave […] is to surrender itself to its motion in such a way that it crests and breaks." That motion, in the pages to follow, takes up in its sweep two threads: it folds an episodic meditation on the negative and the problematic into a series of singular interrogations exemplary of the positive being of the problematic, the objective being of problems and questions, in a movement of implication and explication between poetry and philosophy in the tradition of what's come to be known as theory. Theory is like a surging sea because it's as part of a revolutionary tradition that it crests and breaks.

The Communism of Thought takes as its point of departure a passage in a letter from Dionys Mascolo to Gilles Deleuze: "I have called this communism of thought in the past. And I placed it under the auspices of Hölderlin, who may have only fled thought because he was unable to live it: 'The life of the spirit between friends, the thoughts that form in the exchange of words, by writing or in person, are necessary to those who seek. Without that, we are by our own hands outside thought.'" What, in light of that imperative, is a correspondence? What is given to be understood by the word, let alone the phenomenon? What constitutes a correspondence? What occasions it? On what terms and according to what conditions may one enter into that exchange "necessary," in Hölderlin's words, "to those who seek"? Pursuant to what vicissitudes may it be conducted? And what end(s) might a correspondence come to have beyond the ostensible end that, to all appearances, it (inevitably) will be said to have had?

What is a problem? What's asked in that question, and how does one even begin to take its measure? How else could one begin, except as one does with any other problem—by way of its impulsion. Of Learned Ignorance: Idea of a Treatise in Philosophy is about philosophy because philosophy is about problems: philosophy, in a word, is where problems become a problem. After Anti-Oedipus, in the Kafka book and in A Thousand Plateaus, what Deleuze and Guattari counsel, strikingly, is sobriety. Sobriety is what they praise in Kafka. And it is sobriety that seems above all else to be necessary here. (Steven Shaviro has pointed out the prominence of structure in Deleuze's writing: "even when Deleuze's prose, by himself or with Guattari, seems to be ranging anarchically all over the place, in fact it has a rigid and unvarying architecture, which is what keeps it from falling apart.") Of Learned Ignorance is a dead letter because it names a problem. It's a dead letter because it is, cautiously, a love letter. It's a dead letter because it lovingly stages an experiment in whimsy, and perhaps above all, because it is problematic (in the Kantian sense): It is a (sober) attempt at exemplifying what it talks about — and what eludes it: A series of footnotes, with blank (transcriptive) pages above, effects something like the integration of a differential, the reciprocal determination where the sources enter into in relation to one another in order to produce a paper, essay, or (inexistent) (chap)book. Of Learned Ignorance, in facing down a problem, makes a wager; it courts failure; it puts it all on the line. All, yes, for love — a kind of love … (of wisdom?)

"Every written work," Giorgio Agamben opens the preface to Infancy and History, "can be regarded as the prologue (or rather, the broken cast) of a work never penned, and destined to remain so." Although that observation applies to any work of writing, the exemplary case is that of a work of philosophy. While every written work is put to work in its nonexistent successor, a work of philosophy is bereft of even that recourse: philosophy is written in the breakdown of destiny, so that every work of philosophy must first and foremost confront the absolute abandonment of its writing. At work in each and every work of philosophy is the question, "What is a work of philosophy?" More concretely, although well-formed and rigorously structured, What is Philosophy? abstains from work. On even a quick reading that fact must be palpable. A seminar paper? An article, or book chapter? Not in the least. Nor, essentially, may the individual pieces that compose it be so developed. Fragments unrecognizable as at one time a cast, inconceivable at a future time as anything else, the position of each piece with respect to the others thwarts development in order to preserve, in its place, the tension of its absence. As such, the articulations internal to each of the three divisions, and between them, are essential. The first division — What is Philosophy? — takes seriously Deleuze and Guattari's contention in their book of the same title that "The nonphilosophical is perhaps closer to the heart of philosophy than philosophy itself, and this means that philosophy cannot be content to be understood only philosophically or conceptually, but is essentially addressed to nonphilosophers as well" — including the nonphilosopher in every philosopher. The second division — On Argument — interrogates the status and value of evidence, and self-evidence. The third division — On Not Knowing — generalizes a parenthetical observation of Agamben's on Heidegger, "If we may attempt to identify something like the characteristic Stimmung of every thinker, perhaps it is precisely this being delivered over to something that refuses itself that defines the specific emotional tonality of Heidegger's thought": Might not philosophy be defined, the phil of sophia, precisely, as what it is to be delivered over to something that refuses itself?

Introduction: This research followed the lead of an initial validation study and responded to the call from the state education agency–endorsed Service Intensity Subcommittee of the Texas Action Committee for the Education of Students with Visual Impairments to conduct a larger scale validation study on the Visual Impairment Scale of Service Intensity of Texas (VISSIT). Methods: The authors collected survey data from 77 respondents using a mixed-methods survey research design. These data were used to determine the VISSIT's validity and reliability. Participants represented urban, suburban, and rural geographic regions across 20 U.S. states. Results: The results of the national study showed that the VISSIT has social validity, which was supported by both ease of use and acceptability of the tool. The VISSIT's consequential and content validity were also supported by the data collected. The internal consistency reliability showed reliability for the VISSIT with a Cronbach's alpha calculated as being .935. Based on the results presented here, in which the social, consequential, and content validity of the VISSIT have been confirmed, it can also be confidently asserted that the VISSIT is construct valid. Discussion: The findings of this national study indicate an overall positive response to the usability and understandability of the VISSIT. Participants used the tool to provide quantifiable documentation to identify accurate student need for service across all expanded core curriculum areas as well as to provide administrators and families with research-based data to justify service type and time. Implications for practitioners: Respondents in the national study saw the VISSIT as an effective way to take student evaluation data and convert those results into a measurable recommendation for service type and intensity. The VISSIT helps a teacher of students with visual impairments to document how much time is needed for both direct and collaborative consultation services, as appropriate for each individual student.

Introduction The purpose of this study was to begin validation of a scale that will be used by teachers of students with visual impairments to determine appropriate recommended type and frequency of services for their students based on identified student need. Methods Validity and reliability of the Visual Impairment Scale of Service Intensity of Texas (VISSIT) were evaluated using a mixed-methods survey research design. Participants used the VISSIT to determine services for at least one student and then completed an electronic survey regarding the use of the tool. Results Twenty-five participants completed at least one VISSIT and completed the electronic survey. Social validity was supported by 92% of the participants stating that the tool was easy to use as a way to determine service time and was also supported by 96% of the participants stating that they would use the VISSIT for determining the type and amount of service recommended for their students. Consequential validity was supported by 71% of the participants stating that the tool's results matched their professional judgment regarding student need and recommended service time and was also supported by 75% of the participants stating that the tool's results directly translated into type and amount of service they would recommend. Internal consistency reliability was demonstrated by the result of a factor analysis of Cronbach's Alpha statistic of .747 for the entire set of VISSIT items. Discussion The results demonstrate that the VISSIT is a moderately valid and reliable tool for helping teachers of students with visual impairments determine the type and amount of visual impairment services based on individual student need. Implications for practitioners The VISSIT is a tool that itinerant teachers of students with visual impairments can use to determine the appropriate amount of service for all students on their caseloads and offers a more objective way to recommend service intensity based on student need.

Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank the parents who consented to provide samples with limited notice at an emotional and stressful time. This work was supported entirely from personal donations to the neonatal endowments fund at Aberdeen Maternity Hospital and we thank families for their continued generosity, year-on-year. The Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health receives funding from the Scottish Government (SG-RESAS). Funding: This work was funded from NHS Grampian Neonatal Endowments. The Rowett Institute receives funding from the Rural and Environmental Science and Analytical Services programme of the Scottish Government. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. ; Peer reviewed ; Publisher PDF