Article
Open Access
by
Mstyslav Kazakov1
1 Kyiv Polytechnic Institute named after Igor Sikorsky (Kyiv, Ukraine)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29202/phil-cosm/31/5
Received: 20 June 2023 / Accepted: 21 July 2023 / Published: 15 October 2023
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Abstract
The proposed paper recaptures the concept of Phoenix Complex introduced by Spanish philosopher Michael Marder during his eight-session seminar held in The New Centre for Research & Practice. In a nutshell, the concept denotes a set of cosmological and natural philosophical implications rooted in human psyche, precisely beliefs, persuasions and attitudes regarding the infinite rebirth, fecundity and renewability of nature, its resources, entities, space in general. To overcome this attitude, Marder iterates, this set must be worked through as if it was any other thinkable complex in psychoanalytical / psychotherapist practice. In the paper, I argue that: Marder’s concept is aligned with a tendency in history and contemporary philosophy known today as ‘correlationism’; the grounding thesis of the attitudes of Phoenix Complex is a strong metaphysical claim about the nature of time, namely, one’s postulating of time’s infinity; finally, opposing to this metaphysical claim an opposite metaphysical principle that is defined as ‘finitude principle’, I would propose my own solution, a practice and approach of overcoming the Phoenix Complex, within the realm of nihility of time and particular consequences which are legitimate to be inferred from facticity of the latter.
Keywords: phoenix complex, correlationism, philosophy of nature, philosophy of time, finitude principle, deep time, entropy, contingency.
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Kazakov, Mstyslav (2023) The Phoenix Complex and the Nihility of Time. Philosophy and Cosmology, Volume 31, 45-57. https://doi.org/10.29202/phil-cosm/31/5
