Barry Stocker

Bogazici University, Philosophy, Faculty Member

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Teaching philosophy at Boğaziçi (Bosphorus) University since January 2023. Before that I was teaching Philosophy in the Department of Humanities and Social Science at Istanbul Technical University from 2006 to 2022, in the Department of philosophy at Yeditepe University in Istanbul (1997 to 2006) and in the Department of English Literature and Humanities at Eastern Mediterranean University, Famagusta (Northern Cyprus 1997). I have a BA in Philosophy from the University of Warwick (1987) and an MA in Philosophy and Literature from the same place (1989). I was have a D.Phil for thesis work in Philosophy and Literature from the University of Sussex (1997). Before relocating to Famagusta and then Istanbul to take up job offers I did tutorial work at a few universities in London and the southeast of England. My philosophical approach follows that of post-Kantian Continental philosophy and related philosophical texts from earlier periods, particularly Montaigne and Vico. My publications include the monographs *Derrida on Deconstruction* (Routledge 2006) and *Kierkegaard on Politics* (Palgrave Macmillan 2014). I edited *Post-Analytic Tractatus* (Ashgate 2004) and *Derrida: Basic Writings* (Routledge 2007). I co-edited *Nietzsche as Political Philosopher* (de Gruyter 2014). Major current projects under contract are writing the monograph *Philosophy of the Novel* and co*-editing a *Handbook in Philosophy and Literature* (both for Palgrave Macmillan). Further projects I'm developing include *Foucault on Liberty* (the most developed), pluralistic virtue ethics (second most developed), law and legislation, philosophy of war, idea of Europe, Montaigne, Vico. My teaching focuses on Introduction to Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Ethics, Philosophy and Literature, Aesthetics.
Address: Boğaziçi University
Department of Philosophy
Bebek
34342
Istanbul
Turkey

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Papers by Barry Stocker

SINGULARITY, VIOLENCE AND UNIVERSALITY IN DERRIDA’S ETHICS: DECONSTRUCTION’S STRUGGLE WITH DECISIONISM

Philosophy and Society , 2024

The starting point of the paper is Derrida’s early discussion of Lévinas, focusing on the suggest... more The starting point of the paper is Derrida’s early discussion of Lévinas, focusing on the suggestion that violence is paradoxically magnified in Lévinas’s attempt to articulate ethics as first philosophy within a metaphysics ostensibly free of violence. The next step is an examination of Derrida’s thoughts on Lévi-Strauss and Rousseau in Of Grammatology. Derrida’s comments on names and violence in Lévi-Strauss establish that ethics emerges through a distinction between the “good” interior and the “bad” exterior. Derrida’s subsequent remarks on Rousseau bring up his view of pity as a pre-social morality and the emergence of a social world that enacts violence upon the fullness of nature and the spontaneity of pity within a system of organized, competitive egotism. In his engagement with Celan, Derrida explores a poetics that conveys the sense of a particular, singular self as essential to ethics—defining itself in its separation yet inevitably caught up in universality. This theme develops into an examination of mass slaughter around the Hebrew Bible story of the “shibboleth”, highlighting the violent consequences of exclusionary conceptions of identity. In The Gift of Death, Derrida discusses the relationship between Paganism, Platonism, and Christianity through Patočka’s perspective, then returns to Judaism via Kierkegaard’s discussion of Abraham and Isaac. Derrida’s reflections on secrecy, the sacred, ethical paradox, the violence of ethical absolutism, and the aporetic nature of ethical decisions converge around a discussion of political decisionism in Schmitt and the broader ethical significance of decisionism, as it also appears in Benjamin.

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Stendhal and Rousseau Habit, Interiority and Exception

Itinera, Jan 8, 2024

Le Rouge et le Noir is taken as an example of a novel in which the hero, and some other character... more Le Rouge et le Noir is taken as an example of a novel in which the hero, and some other characters, experience strong tension between inner consciousness and social habits. Stendhal's novel is a particularly significant example because it is shaped by the immediate afterlife of the French Revolution and the writings of Rousseau. The revolutionary rupture with habit intersects with the themes of a consciousness looking for inner existence and the role of inner passions. The Revolution was an exception, prolonged by the rise of Bonaparte which appeals to a hero frustrated by the habitual conformity of anti-revolutionary France after the fall of Bonaparte. He seeks a great career, and he seeks grandeur in love, always combining passions with strategy in an unstable mix. He moves from love with a comparative innocent to love with a woman who shares his obsessions though they have different objects. The final crisis of the novel leads to a breakdown of the hero's habitual self, in an ending in which passions becomes both destructive violence and an idyllic solitary resignation. The journey into an interiority, through exceptional breaks with habit finds a culmination. This achievement rests on Stendhal writing in a world after Rousseau and understanding the full extent of this requires a rounded understanding of Rousseau, along with his context.

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Foucault Parrheisa Liberty Discourse

If there is a question of what liberty is then liberty should be argument, provocation and the ae... more If there is a question of what liberty is then liberty should be argument, provocation and the aestheticisation of perspective. There is an art of politics as there is a style of living and technique of existence explored by Foucault in The Hermeneutics of the Self. If parrēsia is part of the government of self and others in antiquity, we can see it present in the aesthetic subjectivity and Enlightenment reason of modernity. The aesthetic subjectivity and the Enlightenment reason have precedents in antique parrēsia and style of living, which acquire new meaning in Foucault’s discussion of Enlightenment and the modern. Foucault’s thoughts Parrēsia is at the centre of a modern ethos of Enlightenment and aesthetic subjectivity. Risk taking speech, reason in argument and respect for the aesthetic nature of individual perspective are the desirable aspects of modern politics. He does not look for a return to parrēsia in modern politics, but we can think of his extensive discussions of parrēsia as an invitation to think about politics in terms of a public speech which communicates inner truths regardless of danger and death, distinct from any search for consensus about truth or public reason. The emphasis on inner truth in parrēsia does suggest a convergence with the aestheticised subjectivity Foucault discusses in the modern world.

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Foucault Tragedy Liberty

The aesthetic and poetic run through Foucault’s work in ways which add to the understanding of li... more The aesthetic and poetic run through Foucault’s work in ways which add to the understanding of liberty, but often in ways which require some effort at making the explicit implicit. The aesthetic in Foucault is often a way of showing as well as, or even instead, of showing which itself says something about the aesthetic. A very telling example comes at the end of Chapter IX of Birth of the Clinic ‘The Visible Invisible’: ‘Death left its old tragic heaven and became the lyrical core of man: his invisible truth, his visible secret’ (1973, 172). The chapter title and the quotation hint at Foucault’s interest, in Merleau-Ponty’s work in his last years, on a phenomenology of interplay between visibility and invisibility. What the quotation also suggests is Foucault’s concerns with the changing status of tragedy and the aestheticism necessary to comprehend human existence and lived experience. This carries on in later work in which ancient care of the self is discussed in terms of the aesthetics of existence and styles of living; and in this way as connected with more recent forms of aestheticism. What Foucault suggests in this quotation is that the lyricism of existence is not a matter of some purely subjectivist sensationalist aesthetic. The aesthetics of life is deeply connected in the late eighteenth century with an awareness of death in medical science, which was key to seeing the human body more as a unified organism and less as a combination of discrete medical dysfunctions. Foucault suggests elsewhere in the book that we put this in the context of Friedrich Hölderlin’s play The Death of Empedocles, along with later discussion of death in Nietzsche and Heidegger. Suprisingly Foucault does not bring in Hegel in this context, but he was undoubtedly aware of the role of death in Hegel’s philosophy, most famously in the discussion of master and slave in the Phenomenology of Spirit.

These remarks towards the end of Birth of the Clinic make clear the centrality of tragedy in Foucault’s thought. The understanding of the tragic aspect of Foucault’s thought, has so far been very limited. It is, however, very significant in understanding Foucault as a thinker about liberty, as it is concerned with the relation of the individual to external forces, political and otherwise.

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Foucault on Negativity, Violence and Myth

One way in which negativity as embodied suffering appears in Foucault is through punishment, whet... more One way in which negativity as embodied suffering appears in Foucault is through punishment, whether in the horror of the execution of Damiens that opens Discipline and Punish, or the non- spectacular disciplining of the body in the prison. This contrast can be followed in Foucault, back to the way he thinks of madness in relation to Nietzschean theory of tragedy in History of Madness, or followed forward in the place compelled veridical speech has in later lectures. The transition from an antique tragic understanding of madness to an understanding of madness as unreason, anticipates the transition from spectacular to disciplinary punishment. It can also be seen in the ancient Athenian transition from a mythical understanding of justice to a a focus on veridical speech. In all cases, there is a rationalistic negation of mythical violence. The spectacular violence of public execution, the awareness of madness as a form of reason outside normal experience, the idea of divine intervention in trial by contest in archaic Greece are all examples of mythical forces negating normal experience of the conscious world. Disciplinarity, biopolitics, legal and psychiatric veridical speech are all forms of negation of myth and of the body. The body, and mind, are subjected to more internal negation compare with the external nature of violence in the mythically oriented world. This is combined with themes of self-care, aesthetics of existence, singularity. and the modern as subjective, in Foucault which offer possible alternatives to negativity.

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VICO ON THE END OF ART

The work of the 18th century Neapolitan philosopher Giambattista Vico includes a major focus on t... more The work of the 18th century Neapolitan philosopher Giambattista Vico includes a major focus on the role of Homeric epic in interpreting societies where law has not fully developed as a public institution applying to all citizens. Vico advances the view that poetry, whether as Homeric epic or in a more general sense, has less importance in societies where rationality and law ground institutions and condition public language. In

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Vico Reading Homer

Vico’s achievement has a reading of Homeric epic and an understanding of its historical context a... more Vico’s achievement has a reading of Homeric epic and an understanding of its historical context at its heart. Vico pioneered the idea that the Iliad and the Odyssey owe more to oral tradition than any single writer, even claiming that there was no individual Homer, only a tradition of bards grouped together as ‘Homer’. This is itself a significant anticipation of a later eighteenth century interest in folkish traditions in literature. His work as a whole anticipates both the rationalism of Enlightenment and the Romantic idealisation of myth. Vico’s anticipations and underlying influence has been largely hidden from view, but there are significant exceptions which lead to an appreciation of his place.

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Tragedy, Myth and Liberty in Interstate Theory

This paper does not offer a new liberty oriented theory of interstate relations. It offers some t... more This paper does not offer a new liberty oriented theory of interstate relations. It offers some thoughts about the parameters of any liberty oriented theory, which plays full regard to the tragic aspects of political and social existence in relation to the tragedies0 of individual human lives. It argues that tensions between states are endemic and always have the potential for violence. Violence can be restrained by an internationalist or cosmopolitan understanding of law. This does not have to mean transnational or global institutions, and these are possibilities rejected by some liberty oriented thinkers. The perspective of this paper is that humanity is inevitably divided between political communities and that rationalistic top down homogenising transnational or global institutions are bad for human flourishing. The perspective is also that absolute sovereignty is bad both at the transnational and national levels. A liberty oriented view is best expressed through multiple sources of sovereignty, which to some degree are co-ordinated at the transnational level, but to some degree always challenge the co-ordination in a constantly evolving network of centres of sovereignty. The main purpose of this paper is to look at the tragic roots of the understanding of individual freedom, conflict and interstate relations, looking at how this evolves over time and is best understood from perspectives which maximise tragic tensions and the energy of individual human activity, seeking the struggles and the laws which best feed on and intensify tensions in creative energy and positive activity.

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FOUCAULT'S ETHICAL AGONISM

The idea of agon, of struggle, is fundamental to Foucault’s ethics and to his politics. His two ... more The idea of agon, of struggle, is fundamental to Foucault’s ethics and to his politics. His two most obvious predecessors on this issue are Nietzsche and Machiavelli. Unfortunately he is inclined to take Machiavelli as ‘Machiavellian’ in the familiar sense, and does not seem to notice Machiavelli the Republican idealist and the admirer of conflict within a political community, as a strengthening of republican self-government, behind the cynical rhetoric of The Prince. Foucault does not say a great deal directly about Nietzsche, and does not need to since everyone understands the connection. His account of ethics and politics in his texts on the Ancient world (History of Sexuality Volumes II & III, Hermeneutics of the Subject, The Government of Self and Others, Fearless Speech), can be taken as formed in an implicit transformation of Nietzsche’s view of the master-slave relation in antiquity, as established in the Genealogy of Morality.

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STYLE AND ONTOLOGY OF LIVING FOUCAULT ON ANTIQUE ETHICS

Foucault's use of the term 'style of living' with reference to antique ethics, and sexuality, has... more Foucault's use of the term 'style of living' with reference to antique ethics, and sexuality, has been frequently misunderstood; and the role of ontology has largely been overlooked. Style of living, or aesthetics of existence, in Foucault, does not referred to unconstrained subjectivity, acting from pure arbitrariness. Foucault's account embeds style and aesthetics in the ontology of nature, and in social ontology. He refers directly to the guiding role of natural existence for antique thought about ethics, and style of living. He refers directly to the ontological basis of style of living, along with structure, knowledge, and instrumentality. The social ontology Foucault builds up refers to a civic public life of parrhesia, free speaking, as a part of the style of living; and develops and account of care of the self, which puts the self in social and public context. Care of the self promotes the pleasure, and health, of the self, while constraining it with regard to the consequences of acts for the self, and with regard to status in the social world.

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Baghdad Zoom Presentation

Foucault does not have an explicit theory of liberty, and accordingly he does not have an explici... more Foucault does not have an explicit theory of liberty, and accordingly he does not have an explicit account of where he is looks for theories of liberty. We have to look the main fields in which Foucault does work related to ideas of liberty. Seven major fields are discussed here: aesthetics, discourse, the self, law, sovereignty, institutions, political economy. These are not of course completely distinct fields of inquiry, in general, and certainly not in Foucault's writing. This is an arrangement particularly suited to the fields Foucault covers. Aesthetics comes first, because there are ways in which Foucault begins with aesthetics and stays with it in later work. History of Madness, his first major work, is in part, a prolongation of, and reflection on, Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy. The direct references to Nietzsche and to tragedy are brief but significant. At one end are the references to Nietzsche and modern art in the Marquis de Sade, Van Gogh, and Antonin Artaud, so Nietzsche as part of the modern thought which brings back the experience of madness after its exile from reason in the early modern era. At the other end are references to the tragedies of 'classical France' (the seventeenth century), which set up a contrast between the exclusion of madness in Jean Racine and the place of madness within ancient Greek tragedy. This develops a component of liberty, the sense of inner space, the inner self

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Foucault and Insult

This article examines Foucault's thought about parrhesia. Foucault discussed the importance in At... more This article examines Foucault's thought about parrhesia. Foucault discussed the importance in Athenian democracy, and in antiquity as a whole, of the kind of speech which has deep connections with democracy and equality between citizens. He also points out that it came into conflict with Athenian tradition and the views of the democratic majority, in its commitment to fearless honesty.

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Derrida Escaping the Deserts of Moral Law Poetics, Sacrifice, Judaism, and the Limits of Decisionism

An account of the most significant elements of Derrida’s ethical thought, drawing on the desert o... more An account of the most significant elements of Derrida’s ethical thought, drawing on the desert of the Hebrew Bible, which Derrida associates with a moral law that is ethically troubling. Partly with reference to Kierkegaard’s account of the story of Abraham and Isaac, Derrida examines how ethical law can become subordination to the sovereignty of the power apparently at the source of ethics which may then destroy moral law. The political equivalent of this is the decision proposed by Carl Schmitt, drawing on Kierkegaard. Derrida’s famous statement that ‘deconstruction is justice’ is the recognition that justice, and ethics in general, is caught between the formality of law and the violence of the sovereign power. One outcome of this is sacrifice as substitution, where ethics becomes recompense for violation through sacrifice. Sacrifice is the offering of a substitute. The substitution becomes repeated and itself is then the source of violence contravening some sense of ethics. Derrida’s attempts to escape from these deserts include a poetics which recognises the subjective and the aesthetic in the interpretation of law. It also includes the development of a form of sacrifice which is the individual responding to violation in an individualised way which cannot be substituted.

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Stendhal and Rousseau Habit, Interiority and Exception

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Lukács on Subjectivity and History (Introduced Through Nietzsche)

The chapter begins with what Nietzsche contributes to the philosophy of his novel through his rem... more The chapter begins with what Nietzsche contributes to the philosophy of his novel through his remarks on Stendhal and Dostoevsky, along with his view of how the novel emerges from the death of tragedy in antiquity. These thoughts are considered as what opens the way for Lukacs. Lukacs is mostly considered for his Romantic work on the novel, though his Marxist phase is also considered. His view of the novel as a fall from epic unity between individual, and the world is emphasised along with other historical aspects.

Liberalism after Nietzsche and Weber

Angelaki, 1997

Keith Ansell��Pearson, An Introduction to Nietzsche as Political Thinker (Cambridge: Cambridge U... more Keith Ansell��Pearson, An Introduction to Nietzsche as Political Thinker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) hb: 0��521��41722��8. pb: 0��521��42721��5. Paul Patton, ed., Nietzsche, Feminism and Political Theory (London: Routledge. 1993) 0��4150��8256��0. Lester M. Hunt, Nietzsche and the Origin of Virtue (London: Routledge, 1993) 0��4150��9580��8. David Owen, Maturity and Modernity. Nietzsche, Weber, Foucault and the Ambivalence of Reason (London: Routledge, 1994) 0��4150��5398��6. Peter Lassmann and Ronald Spiers ...

Crisis in politics

Angelaki, 1996

Recently the theme of political crisis , has been raised. The crisis is taken to be that there is... more Recently the theme of political crisis , has been raised. The crisis is taken to be that there is a growing gap between citizens and party politics. Representative institutions have become remote from the concerns of the people. Their claim to represent is therefore at risk. A culture of political participation is becoming marginalised, so that the definition of citizens as belonging to a political community is losing its reality. A history can be traced of humanity defined by the existence of communities of political interest. What can be discerned in this history is that ...

Kierkegaard's absolute decision dialectic of ethical law in fear and trembling

Angelaki, May 1, 1999

Fear and Trembling (Kierkegaard's Writings^ VI) deals with the possibility of decision. The ... more Fear and Trembling (Kierkegaard's Writings^ VI) deals with the possibility of decision. The possibility of decisions depends on the absolute possibility of making a decision. The absolute possibility is in opposition to the contingency of decisions. As the absolute it is beyond any contingent representation, so Fear and Trembling attempts to represent the unrepresentable and itself deals with the dilemma of the event of presentation. The possibility of decision is the possibility of deciding on'laws of representation and writing, ...

Lukács on Subjectivity and History (Introduced Through Nietzsche)

Derrida, Jacques (1930–2004)

Encyclopedia of Anthropology

Barry Stocker

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