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James R Williams

Honorary Professor of Philosophy
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Category: Process philosophy

General, Process philosophy, Sublime

Step Right Up

Post By James Williams 14th May 2021

Step Right Up (Don’t be fooled by cheap imitations) The Egalitarian Sublime: a Process Philosophy is out in paperback this May. Edinburgh University Press will give you 30% off with the code PAPER30 if you buy direct from them

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General, Process philosophy

Fantastic pragmatism

Post By James Williams 3rd February 2021

[Discussion paper for Philosophy as a Method of Thinking Practices: Phenomenology, Hermeneutics and Post-Structuralism in the Light of Pragmatism, Università degli Studi di Milano, 10 Feb 2021] The argument of this paper is a tautology: To be fantastic, pragmatism must be fantastic But tautologies are vulnerable to the multiple and…

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Process philosophy Pragmatism, William James

First Principle of Pragmatics: Everything Evolves Amidst a Shared Problem

Post By James Williams 15th January 2021

This is an edited text from the Pragmatism and the Analytic-Continental Split Conference, University of Sheffield, ​09/08/17 – 11/08/17. I’d held it back, partly due to my reservations about the idea of a split, but I’m returning to it here, since its definition of pragmatics prepares for a later post…

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Deleuze, Process philosophy Deleuze, logic, time

Deleuze’s Timed Logic (II)

Post By James Williams 31st December 2020

Drawing on his philosophy of time, we can deduce Deleuze’s logic of events as processes. Taken fully, this logic is also the logic of his metaphysics, when it is considered as a system about the creation, encounter with, relations between, and changing of events. To develop this metaphysics, Deleuze doesn’t…

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General, Process philosophy, Signs

Risky Signs: Philosophy and Covid-19

Post By James Williams 3rd July 2020

In an earlier post, I discussed the politics of the restrictions of freedom during the Covid-19 pandemic in Tom Sorell’s new interpretation of Hobbes. Here, I consider the risks involved in the use of signs during the pandemic. Communication about Covid-19 and political responses to the pandemic have been dominated…

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Deleuze, Process philosophy

Deleuze’s Timed Logic (I)

Post By James Williams 4th June 2020

Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy can accommodate any number of logics in a subspace of its metaphysics. By accommodate, I mean that any given logic can be observed, operated and considered for consistency within that subspace. The fact that we can isolate part of Deleuze’s system and consider its logics does not…

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General, Process philosophy, Sublime

Is There a Virtual Sublime?

Post By James Williams 28th April 2020

[Text and images for a talk on the virtual sublime at Ulster University, April 29, 2020. The talk itself became virtual due to global pandemic] A virtual sublime? Why ever not? The second question should guide any response to the confident dismissal of this or that as sublime, but it…

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General, Process philosophy, Signs

Signs and Democracy

Post By James Williams 21st March 2020

In this post I argue that signs are necessarily democratic. My reasoning depends on the definition of process signs from A Process Philosophy of Signs. It expands the meaning of democratic beyond a narrow political sense, before returning to the interdependence of two types of democracy: democracy of intervention and…

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General, Process philosophy

Language and Process: Words, Whitehead and the World by Michael Halewood

Post By James Williams 18th March 2020

If you are interested in process philosophy and language, I recommend Michael Halewood’s new book on Language and Process. The book is the first in my new series as editor (with Jeffrey A. Bell and Paul Livingston) for Edinburgh University Press, Intersections in Continental and Analytic Philosophy. We have other…

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General, Process philosophy, Signs, Sublime

The Nostalgic Sublime

Post By James Williams 23rd January 2020

There is a strong argument against the idea of the nostalgic sublime. If the sublime leads to a drive to act in new ways, due to the enthusiasm released by simultaneous feelings of terror and attraction to a strange and inexplicable event, then the backward looking and stultifying qualities of…

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Recent blog posts

  • Modes of Explanation: Semiology of Autopoiesis (IV) 22nd January 2023
  • Fantastic Pragmatism (published version) 29th November 2022
  • Claire Colebrook on Time and Autopoiesis: Semiology of Autopoiesis (IV) 4th November 2022
  • Autopoiesis and Time: Deleuze’s Timed Logic (V)/Semiology of Autopoiesis (III) 17th October 2022
  • Diagrams of Shame 14th June 2022

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About James Williams

James is Honorary Professor of Philosophy and member of the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalization at Deakin University.

 

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Recent posts

  • Modes of Explanation: Semiology of Autopoiesis (IV)
  • Fantastic Pragmatism (published version)
  • Claire Colebrook on Time and Autopoiesis: Semiology of Autopoiesis (IV)
  • Autopoiesis and Time: Deleuze’s Timed Logic (V)/Semiology of Autopoiesis (III)
  • Diagrams of Shame
  • Graphic Events: a Realist Account of Graphic Design
  • Deleuze’s Timed Logic (IV): Passive to the Past
  • Semiology of Autopoiesis (II)
  • They can remove a monument, but they can’t erase the sign
  • Semiology of Autopoiesis (I)

Contact Info

  • Currently based in Scotland and France
  • hello@jamesrwilliams.net
James R Williams | © www.jamesrwilliams.net 2023
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