Law nowadays very much tries to solve crimes with the help of the body material found on the scene of crime (like blood or adn). Some experts are, however, giving fraudulent testimonies in court. The article analyses these testimonies with the help of psychoanalysis. It wonders whether in some cases we cannot observe neurotic and perverse enjoyment of the expert when he or she condemns an innocent person to long prison sentences.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1623630
The paper analyses the specific logical structure of an argument used by Erasmus of Rotterdam in his Praise of Folly in his attempt to prove the paradoxical rationality of madness/stupidity. The argument has two key characteristics. Firstly, it is possible to show that almost the same logic also underlies the Cartesian Cogito (there from the term a-cogito). And secondly, the paper shows that on the basis of a minimal transformation of the argument, it is in fact possible to prove the existence of stupidity with exactly the same certainty as Descartes proves the existence of thought as such. Thereby the paper intervenes in one of the most topical debates in contemporary philosophy, namely the dilemma (speculative realism, eliminitivist materialism) of whether philosophy can after all make objective statements on noumenal reality, that is, reality as independent from its subjective perception, or is it necessary that philosophy in all respects relinquishes its ontological function to sciences. In this context, the paper, mostly on the basis of Deleuze’ critique of the standard model of thought, focuses on those segments of the structure of thought as such, which still elude scientific epistemological apparatus. In this manner the paper critically points out to perhaps in some cases over-optimistic views on the possibility of complete scientific explanations of human behaviour. In the year 2014 the modified version of the paper will be published by the English journal Critical Engagements under the title: “A-cogito. The Ontological Proof of Stupidity.”
COBISS.SI-ID: 35609133