The Cultural Power of Personal Objects: Traditional Accounts and New Perspectives

416 Pages·2021·6.43 MB·English

by  Jared Kemling (editor)

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SUNY series in American Philosophy and Cultural Thought
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Randall E. Auxier and John R. Shook, editors
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Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2021 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
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For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Kemling, Jared, editor.
Title: The cultural power of personal objects : traditional accounts and new
perspectives / Jared Kemling, editor.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2021] | Series:
SUNY series in American Philosophy and Cultural Thought | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: ISBN 9781438486178 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438486185
(ebook)
Further information is available at the Library of Congress.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Part 1: Traditional Accounts
Chapter 1
Mereology: Wholes, Parts, and the Big Thicket 11
Pete A. Y. Gunter
Chapter 2
Personality in Seagoing Ships 27
Marc M. Anderson
Chapter 3
Personified Objects and Objectified Persons in Ancient Egypt 53
Martin Pehal
Chapter 4
Seeing and Time: Personal Divinity in the Object of
Hindu Devotion 75
John W. August III
Chapter 5
Convergence and Divergence of Spirit: Tsukumogami and the
Personality of Objects 95
Kevin C. Taylor
vi Contents
Chapter 6
The Journey of the Javanese Keris 105
Alan G. Maisey
Chapter 7
Cherokee Nonhuman Persons in Dual Realms 119
Carrie McLachlan
Chapter 8
The Quilt as Personal Object 143
Sasha L. Biro
Part 2: New Perspectives
Chapter 9
The New Materialism: A Critique 165
Michael Jackson
Chapter 10
Constituting Personal Objects, Constituting Persons 185
Dwayne A. Tunstall
Chapter 11
A Personalized Cultural World: A Cassireran Phenomenology
of Personalized Intuition 197
Jared Kemling
Chapter 12
The Comfort of Things: Personal Objects, Possession, Dwelling,
and the Desire to Be God in Sartre and Levinas 221
James McLachlan
Chapter 13
Have We Effectively Made Money a Person and Ourselves Its
Corporeal Embodiment? 241
Helen Grela
Chapter 14
Wampum, Person, and the Life of Exchange 267
Randall Auxier
Contents vii
Chapter 15
How My Piano Uses Gendlin’s Focusing Method 303
Ralph D. Ellis
Chapter 16
Meditating on the Vitality of the Musical Object: A Spiritual
Exercise Drawn from Richard Wagner’s Metaphysics of Music 319
Eli Kramer
Chapter 17
Bring Out Your Dead: Human Bodies, Cultural Objects,
and Personality 341
Laura J. Mueller
Chapter 18
Sex Robots and Solipsism: Towards a Culture of Empty Contact 367
Charles W. Harvey
Contributors 385
Index 391

Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers who saw the value in this project
and provided helpful feedback on how to improve it. I would also like to thank
the editorial and production staff at SUNY; without them this volume simply
would not exist. Versions of several chapters in this volume have been published
elsewhere, and I would like to thank those publications for their permission to
include the following works in this volume:
An earlier version of chapter 9, Michael Jackson’s “The New Materialism: A
Critique,” was originally published as “The New Materialisms,” in Critique of
Identity Thinking (Berghahn: New York, 2019): 56–72.
An earlier version of chapter 16, Eli Kramer’s “Meditating on the Vitality of the
Musical Object: A Spiritual Exercise Drawn from Richard Wagner’s Metaphysics
of Music,” was originally published in Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture
3, no. 3 (2019).
An earlier version of chapter 18, Charles W. Harvey’s “Sex Robots and Solipsism:
Towards a Culture of Empty Contact,” was originally published in Philosophy in
the Contemporary World 22, no. 2 (Fall 2015/Spring 2016).
On a personal note, I would like to thank my wife Larissa and my daughter
Florence for their tremendous love, support, and guidance. Every day they inspire
me, and gently remind me of the true value of philosophy.
Jared Kemling
December, 2021
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