Philosophical traditions and schools of thought Books

Book SynopsisThough Tocqueville is the main subject, this book also examines Augustine, Hobbes, Rousseau, Hegel and Nietzsche. It offers an interpretation of Tocqueville as a moral historian, concerned less with history as an objective record than as a disclosure of the trajectory of the human spirit.

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Book SynopsisThe newest in our lectures series, this one is from 1976 and ’77 and covers Marx and Heidegger and prefigures Derrida’s work in Specters of Marx.

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Book SynopsisThis volume begins by taking up a central theme noted by the late Allan Bloom - Rousseau's critique of the bourgeois as the dominant modern human type and as a being fundamentally in contradiction, caught between the sentiments of nature and the demands of society.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Clifford Orwin, Nathan Tarcov. 1: The Problem of the Bourgeois Werner J. Dannhauser 2: Rousseau and the Case against (and for) the Arts Christopher Kelly 3: Rousseau, Kant, and the Beginning of History Susan Shell 4: The Tension in the Beautiful: On Culture and Civilization in Rousseau and German Philosophy Richard Velkley 5: Rousseau and Freud on Sexuality and Its Discontents Joel Schwartz 6: Rousseau and the Rediscovery of Human Nature Roger D. Masters 7: Rousseau's Critique of Liberal Constitutionalism Allan Bloom 8: Rousseau and the French Revolution Francois Furet 9: Rousseau and the Origins of Nationalism Marc F. Plattner 10: Rousseau and the Theory and Practice of International Relations Pierre Hassner 11: Rousseau, Ethnicity, and Difference H. D. Forbes 12: Privacy and Community Steven Kautz 13: Rousseau and the Modern Cult of Sincerity Arthur M. Melzer 14: Rousseau and the Discovery of Political Compassion Clifford Orwin Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisNietzsche's work has had a significant impact on the intellectual life of non-Western cultures and elicited responses from thinkers outside of the Anglo-American philosophical traditions as well. These essays address the connection between his ideas and philosophies in India, China and Japan.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"This is a beautifully written account of Nietzsche's 'final teaching, ' engaging the rich intersection of Nietzsche's thinking with the major twentieth-century interpretations of his thought from Heidegger and Klossowski to Lampert and Strauss. Gillespie brings the resources of political philosophy to situate this final teaching together with nihilism, in its real world-historical context, and the transhumanity of the bermensch, toward the ambitious project of articulating a 'musical politics, ' very literally in sonata form, and including a masterful discussion of Plato. In this way, Gillespie finalizes Nietzsche's teaching of eternal return as a political project."--Babette Babich, Fordham University "Nietzsche's Final Teaching is the work of a seasoned scholar whose thorough mastery of Nietzsche's notoriously difficult writings, especially the notebooks and letters, informs a remarkably consistent view of his philosophy. In admirably clear and accessible prose, Gillespie argues that the idea of the eternal recurrence forms the basis of what he calls Nietzsche's (anti-)metaphysics and sketches the terrifying practical consequences Nietzsche hoped would follow from this idea." --Paul Franco, Bowdoin College "Nietzsche's Final Teaching is the product of the author's decades-long consideration of Nietzsche's work. Gillespie takes seriously the primacy for Nietzsche of his teaching of eternal recurrence, and explores with novelty and precision Nietzsche's attempt to unify philosophy with music. The result is an impressive discussion of Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and other works, and a thought-provoking view of Nietzsche as a whole." --Mark Blitz, Claremont McKenna College

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"This is a splendid translation of one of Derrida's most challenging seminars, one that relates, in unprecedented ways, the vocabulary and concepts of historical and contemporary biology and genetics with selected and relevant works of Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Freud."--Dawne McCance, author of The Reproduction of Life Death: Derrida's La Vie la Mort "Derrida's 1975-76 seminar, Life Death, is surely one of his greatest achievements. It begins with a deconstructive reading of Francois Jacob's Logic of the Living, advancing to a critique of scientific 'models' in general. It then takes up Nietzsche's notions of life and the living in terms of both biography and biology. Finally, it reads Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle in an exciting and challenging way. The translation by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas is reliable and eminently readable."--David Farrell Krell, author of The Sea: A Philosophical EncounterTable of ContentsForeword to the English Edition General Introduction to the French Edition Editorial Note Translators’ Note First Session: Programs Second Session: Logic of the Living (She the Living) Third Session: Transition (Oedipus’s Faux Pas) Fourth Session: The Logic of the Supplement: The Supplement of the Other, of Death, of Meaning, of Life Fifth Session: The Indefatigable Sixth Session: The “Limping” Model: The Story of the Colossus Seventh Session Eighth Session: Cause (“Nietzsche”) Ninth Session: Of Interpretation Tenth Session: Thinking the Division of Labor—and the Contagion of the Proper Name Eleventh Session: The Escalade—of the Devil in Person Twelfth Session: Freud’s Leg(acies) Thirteenth Session: Sidestep Detour: Thesis, Hypothesis, Prosthesis Fourteenth Session: Tightenings Index of Proper Names

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Book SynopsisAlthough Hegel consideredScience of Logicessential to his philosophy, it has received scant commentary compared with the other three books he published in his lifetime. Here philosopher Stanley Rosen rescues theScience of Logicfrom obscurity, arguing that its neglect is responsible for contemporary philosophy's fracture into many different and opposed schools of thought. Through deep and careful analysis, Rosen sheds new light on the precise problems that animate Hegel's overlooked book and their tremendous significance to philosophical conceptions of logic and reason. Rosen's overarching question is how, if at all, rationalism can overcome the split between monism and dualism. Monismwhich claims a singular essence for all thingsultimately leads to nihilism, while dualism, which claims multiple, irreducible essences, leads to what Rosen calls the endless chatter of the history of philosophy. TheScience of Logic, he argues, is the fundamental text to offer a new conception of rationaTrade Review“This volume will be of enduring interest to students and scholars seeking a lucid companion to Hegel’s most difficult work.” * Choice *“Combines comprehensive exegesis and philosophical penetration more successfully than any other study so far published on Hegel'sScience of Logic. No one who is seriously interested in Hegel can afford to neglect Rosen's book.” * Philosophical Review *“Combines comprehensive exegesis and philosophical penetration more successfully than any other study so far published on Hegel'sScience of Logic. No one who is seriously interested in Hegel can afford to neglect Rosen's book.” * Philosophical Reviews *“Stanley Rosen’s undertaking in The Idea of Hegel’s 'Science of Logic' is an important and unique contribution to philosophical literature. It closes an important circle to his earlier and much-remembered work, Nihilism, a book that analyzed the problem announced by its title but was not as ambitious as to suggest a solution—it is precisely this ambition to which this newest book returns.” -- Omri Boehm, New School“Reflection on Hegel as one of the supreme minds of the philosophic tradition has always been central to the work of Stanley Rosen, but with this study of Hegel’s Science of Logic he has produced his definitive account of this formidable treatise, which exhibits the categorical structure of all being as it develops the conceptual fractures of Western philosophy. Lucid, thorough, and historically informed, this study is not merely a commentary but an effort to understand Hegel by rethinking the problems that animate his speculative logic. In exemplary fashion it shows how one can think about philosophy with Hegel’s assistance, and it deserves to be considered Rosen’s magnum opus.” -- Richard Velkley, Tulane University“In this latest book, Stanley Rosen offers lucid commentary on the work that is at once the most abstruse and the most central to Hegel’s thought: the Science of Logic, in which Hegel wanted to build a coherent whole out of whatever was true in previous thought. Rosen, who has taught and written on almost every philosopher, can assess the value of Hegel’s claims with perfect competence. Beyond historical pursuits, however, he brings out the relevance of Hegel’s logics for our present-day problems by showing that most contemporary solutions correspond to moments that Hegel has shown to be merely provisional and which degenerate when isolated. Hegel’s full articulation of rationality is a powerful antidote to the rampant nihilism of our time.” -- Remi Brague, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne and University of MunichTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction ONE / The Historical Context TWO / The Prefaces THREE / The Introduction FOUR / The Beginning of Logical Science FIVE / From Being to Existence SIX / Transitional Remarks SEVEN / Quantity EIGHT / Quantitative Relation NINE / Transition to Book Two TEN / The Fichtean Background ELEVEN / The Nature of Essence TWELVE / Contradiction THIRTEEN / Absolute Ground FOURTEEN / Foundationalism and Antifoundationalism FIFTEEN / Appearance SIXTEEN / Actuality SEVENTEEN / Introduction to Book Three EIGHTEEN / Subjectivity NINETEEN / Judgment TWENTY / Objectivity TWENTY-ONE / The Idea NotesIndex

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Book SynopsisExamining Levinas's texts and readings by Derrida, Blanchot, and Bataille, this text shows how the thread of the literary leads to the internal tensions of Levinas's ethical discourse. It provides a critical account of Levinas's early and mature philosophy as well as later transitional essays.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“An intricate, gripping new book. . . There is a strangeness—an uncanniness, even—to the Descartes emerging from Gadberry’s treatment. It is a reading that is at once convincing and utterly unexpected: Descartes as upside-down, inside-out love poet. . . Cartesian Poetics is a coup all its own. It ought to change the way we read Descartes.” -- Ross Wilson * Los Angeles Review of Books *"Gadberry offers a dazzling reinterpretation of Descartes’s relation to poetry. Written in beautiful and witty prose, this book argues that Cartesian philosophy is underpinned, shaped, and, in important ways, determined by the pressures and forces of literary genre: poetry is a vital form of thinking that is in no way confined to literary texts.. . . . [An] excellent and evocative book." -- Timothy M. Harrison * Critical Inquiry *“Gadberry’s engaging book defends Descartes against the charge of being the evil genius of modernism. . . . What makes reading Gadberry’s book a rewarding experience is not, as one might expect, a literary deconstruction of Descartes’s text. . . It is rather the way in which, by bringing Descartes’s carefully coded feelings to light, it humanizes both the philosopher and the twists and turns of thinking as such.” -- Christopher Braider * French Studies *"In this brilliant book, Gadberry thinks about the poetic forms that shape Descartes’s thinking. Her close attention to form has perhaps led her to give similar consideration to the forms of academic writing, and the result is exemplary within that genre: the book is a pleasure to read. Throughout, Gadberry conducts a conversation with many of the thinkers and scholars who have thought with and against Descartes. . . . Cartesian Poetics offers a compelling new way of understanding an author whose claims—and style—remain provocative today." -- Emma Claussen * H-France Review *“Cartesian Poetics is an original, hard-nosed, gorgeously written, and compelling book. For a book on the aesthetics of thinking, it is suitably beautiful and intelligent. . . . Gadberry’s artful reconstruction and probing of Descartes’s sentences reveal the poetry flowing beneath and within his philosophy.” * Jonathan Kramnick, Yale University *“Cartesian Poetics brilliantly integrates historical sensitivity and speculative boldness. Tracing a ‘literary life of concepts’ through the riddle, the love lyric, the elegy, and the anagram, Gadberry gives us a new history of Descartes’s philosophical coming of age. Her nuanced close readings, which make dazzling use of wit as an engine of literary-critical investigation, awaken us to a conception of poetic form that lives in and between thoughts—that makes ‘thinking,’ in the largest sense, possible.” * Gerard Passannante, University of Maryland, College Park *"Gadberry joins the chorus of recent scholars whose work rehabilitates Descartes from the role of 'the archvillain responsible for all of modernity’s worst impulses.' Cartesian Poetics sits neatly alongside other reevaluations of Cartesian philosophy that take seriously his work on the passions and virtue." * Cleveland Review of Books *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Resultless Enterprises Chapter One: Common-Sense Envy Chapter Two: Lyric Disposition Chapter Three: Bitter Satisfactions Chapter Four: After Thoughts Epilogue: “A Painful Feeling of Strangeness” Acknowledgments Notes Index

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Book SynopsisWhat is thinking? What does it feel like? What is it good for? Andrea Gadberry looks for answers to these questions in the philosophy of René Descartes and finds them in the philosopher's implicit poetics. Gadberry argues that Descartes's thought was crucially enabled by poetry and shows how markers of poetic genres from love lyric and elegy to the puzzling forms of the riddle and the anagram betray an impassioned negotiation with the difficulties of thought and its limits. Where others have seen Cartesian philosophy as a triumph of reason, Gadberry reveals that the philosopher accused of having slashed poetry's throat instead enlisted poetic form to contain thought's frustrations. Gadberry's approach to seventeenth-century writings poses questions urgent for the twenty-first. Bringing literature and philosophy into rich dialogue, Gadberry centers close reading as a method uniquely equipped to manage skepticism, tolerate critical ambivalence, and detect feeling in philosophy. HelpinTrade Review“An intricate, gripping new book. . . There is a strangeness—an uncanniness, even—to the Descartes emerging from Gadberry’s treatment. It is a reading that is at once convincing and utterly unexpected: Descartes as upside-down, inside-out love poet. . . Cartesian Poetics is a coup all its own. It ought to change the way we read Descartes.” -- Ross Wilson * Los Angeles Review of Books *"Gadberry offers a dazzling reinterpretation of Descartes’s relation to poetry. Written in beautiful and witty prose, this book argues that Cartesian philosophy is underpinned, shaped, and, in important ways, determined by the pressures and forces of literary genre: poetry is a vital form of thinking that is in no way confined to literary texts.. . . . [An] excellent and evocative book." -- Timothy M. Harrison * Critical Inquiry *“Gadberry’s engaging book defends Descartes against the charge of being the evil genius of modernism. . . . What makes reading Gadberry’s book a rewarding experience is not, as one might expect, a literary deconstruction of Descartes’s text. . . It is rather the way in which, by bringing Descartes’s carefully coded feelings to light, it humanizes both the philosopher and the twists and turns of thinking as such.” -- Christopher Braider * French Studies *"In this brilliant book, Gadberry thinks about the poetic forms that shape Descartes’s thinking. Her close attention to form has perhaps led her to give similar consideration to the forms of academic writing, and the result is exemplary within that genre: the book is a pleasure to read. Throughout, Gadberry conducts a conversation with many of the thinkers and scholars who have thought with and against Descartes. . . . Cartesian Poetics offers a compelling new way of understanding an author whose claims—and style—remain provocative today." -- Emma Claussen * H-France Review *“Cartesian Poetics is an original, hard-nosed, gorgeously written, and compelling book. For a book on the aesthetics of thinking, it is suitably beautiful and intelligent. . . . Gadberry’s artful reconstruction and probing of Descartes’s sentences reveal the poetry flowing beneath and within his philosophy.” * Jonathan Kramnick, Yale University *“Cartesian Poetics brilliantly integrates historical sensitivity and speculative boldness. Tracing a ‘literary life of concepts’ through the riddle, the love lyric, the elegy, and the anagram, Gadberry gives us a new history of Descartes’s philosophical coming of age. Her nuanced close readings, which make dazzling use of wit as an engine of literary-critical investigation, awaken us to a conception of poetic form that lives in and between thoughts—that makes ‘thinking,’ in the largest sense, possible.” * Gerard Passannante, University of Maryland, College Park *"Gadberry joins the chorus of recent scholars whose work rehabilitates Descartes from the role of 'the archvillain responsible for all of modernity’s worst impulses.' Cartesian Poetics sits neatly alongside other reevaluations of Cartesian philosophy that take seriously his work on the passions and virtue." * Cleveland Review of Books *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Resultless Enterprises Chapter One: Common-Sense Envy Chapter Two: Lyric Disposition Chapter Three: Bitter Satisfactions Chapter Four: After Thoughts Epilogue: “A Painful Feeling of Strangeness” Acknowledgments Notes Index

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Book SynopsisJoel Schwartz presents the first systematic treatment of Rousseau's understanding of the political importance of women, sexuality, and the family. Using both Rousseau's lesser-known literary works and such major writings as Emile, Julie, and The Second Discourse, he offers an original and provocative presentation of Rousseau's argument. To read Rousseau, Schwartz believes, is to enter into a profound discourse about the meaning of sexual equality and the opportunities, pitfalls, costs, and benefits that sexual relationships bestow and impose on us all. His own thoughtful reading of Rousseau opens up fresh perspectives on political philosophy and the history of sexual, masculine, and feminine psychology.

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Book SynopsisThis work effectively reunites two major social and philosophical movements, arguing that pragmatism, because of its focus on the emancipatory potential of everyday experiences, offers feminism its most viable and powerful philosophical foundation.

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Book SynopsisWe live in an era defined by a sense of separation, even in the midst of networked connectivity. As cultural climates sour and divisive political structures spread, we are left wondering about our ties to each other. Consequently, there is no better time than now to reconsider ideas of unity. In The Ethics of Oneness, Jeremy David Engels reads the Bhagavad Gita alongside the works of American thinkers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman. Drawing on this rich combination of traditions, Engels presents the notion that individuals are fundamentally interconnected in their shared divinity. In other words, everything is one. If the lessons of oneness are taken to heart, particularly as they were expressed and celebrated by Whitman, and the ethical challenges of oneness considered seriously, Engels thinks it is possible to counter the pervasive and problematic American ideals of hierarchy, exclusion, violence, and domination. Trade Review“I learned something new and exciting on virtually every page of The Ethics of Oneness. Engels doesn’t just reveal and analyze the India-Emerson-Whitman connections, he situates them where they matter the most: in everyday life at a time when the revelation of Oneness is desperately needed. At a time when diversity is celebrated by some and weaponized by others, apprehending the Unity within and beyond that diversity is an essential task for humanity. By demonstrating that Oneness is as American as it is Eastern—and profoundly democratic at that—this book makes a contribution more valuable than the currency on which E pluribus unum is engraved.” -- Philip Goldberg, author of American Veda and Spiritual Practice for Crazy Times"The appeal to ‘oneness’ is regularly and dangerously mistaken for an appeal to absolute order, to strict unity, to lockstep cohesion. The Ethics of Oneness disabuses us of this confusion. Engels shows his readers how nineteenth-century-American thinkers responded to the fracturing of their political world and the tearing of the country’s social fabric by developing a philosophy of oneness—fluid, transcendent, and spiritual—that stood against the forces of exclusion and domination which jeopardized modern life. This is a philosophy that is all but forgotten today, which is to say that Engels has written an essential book for our time. We stand in need of his reminder." -- John Kaag, author of Hiking with Nietzsche and Sick Souls, Healthy Minds: How William James Can Save Your Life"There is much to love about this book, particularly the fact that it has a lot to offer a number of audiences, both academic and non-academic.Its greatest contribution to academic and public discourse is its account of communication as yoga, a uniquely U.S. American form of yoga. It enriches our understanding of yoga and its history in the U.S., it enriches our understanding of Emerson’s and Whitman’s philosophies by offering a new mode of approach to them, and it develops two ethical worldviews that have remained somewhat underdeveloped.This, of course, merely scratches the surface. Overall, I think Engels's book is a masterclass in public-facing academic philosophy." * Philosophy East and West *"Engels does a masterful job of showing us how these two great nineteenth-century philosophers—one a mystical poet, the other a prolific essayist—created new ways of looking at early American life from the point of view of Eastern spiritual traditions." * Quest *"The Ethics of Oneness is a fascinating book about the early reception of yoga in the United states and its significance for contemporary democratic practice. Written by a scholar of rhetoric, the book is an extended analysis of the place of the Bhagavad Gita in the ethical thought of nineteenth-century US authors Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman. . . . I welcome Engels’s invitation to pay deeper attention to the cross-national influences coursing through the social practice of democracy in all its contexts." * American Religion *

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Book SynopsisWe live in an era defined by a sense of separation, even in the midst of networked connectivity. As cultural climates sour and divisive political structures spread, we are left wondering about our ties to each other. Consequently, there is no better time than now to reconsider ideas of unity. In The Ethics of Oneness, Jeremy David Engels reads the Bhagavad Gita alongside the works of American thinkers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman. Drawing on this rich combination of traditions, Engels presents the notion that individuals are fundamentally interconnected in their shared divinity. In other words, everything is one. If the lessons of oneness are taken to heart, particularly as they were expressed and celebrated by Whitman, and the ethical challenges of oneness considered seriously, Engels thinks it is possible to counter the pervasive and problematic American ideals of hierarchy, exclusion, violence, and domination. Trade Review“I learned something new and exciting on virtually every page of The Ethics of Oneness. Engels doesn’t just reveal and analyze the India-Emerson-Whitman connections, he situates them where they matter the most: in everyday life at a time when the revelation of Oneness is desperately needed. At a time when diversity is celebrated by some and weaponized by others, apprehending the Unity within and beyond that diversity is an essential task for humanity. By demonstrating that Oneness is as American as it is Eastern—and profoundly democratic at that—this book makes a contribution more valuable than the currency on which E pluribus unum is engraved.” -- Philip Goldberg, author of American Veda and Spiritual Practice for Crazy Times"The appeal to ‘oneness’ is regularly and dangerously mistaken for an appeal to absolute order, to strict unity, to lockstep cohesion. The Ethics of Oneness disabuses us of this confusion. Engels shows his readers how nineteenth-century-American thinkers responded to the fracturing of their political world and the tearing of the country’s social fabric by developing a philosophy of oneness—fluid, transcendent, and spiritual—that stood against the forces of exclusion and domination which jeopardized modern life. This is a philosophy that is all but forgotten today, which is to say that Engels has written an essential book for our time. We stand in need of his reminder." -- John Kaag, author of Hiking with Nietzsche and Sick Souls, Healthy Minds: How William James Can Save Your Life"There is much to love about this book, particularly the fact that it has a lot to offer a number of audiences, both academic and non-academic.Its greatest contribution to academic and public discourse is its account of communication as yoga, a uniquely U.S. American form of yoga. It enriches our understanding of yoga and its history in the U.S., it enriches our understanding of Emerson’s and Whitman’s philosophies by offering a new mode of approach to them, and it develops two ethical worldviews that have remained somewhat underdeveloped.This, of course, merely scratches the surface. Overall, I think Engels's book is a masterclass in public-facing academic philosophy." * Philosophy East and West *"Engels does a masterful job of showing us how these two great nineteenth-century philosophers—one a mystical poet, the other a prolific essayist—created new ways of looking at early American life from the point of view of Eastern spiritual traditions." * Quest *"The Ethics of Oneness is a fascinating book about the early reception of yoga in the United states and its significance for contemporary democratic practice. Written by a scholar of rhetoric, the book is an extended analysis of the place of the Bhagavad Gita in the ethical thought of nineteenth-century US authors Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman. . . . I welcome Engels’s invitation to pay deeper attention to the cross-national influences coursing through the social practice of democracy in all its contexts." * American Religion *

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Book SynopsisIn these previously uncollected essays, Smith argues that American philosophers like Peirce, James, Royce, and Dewey have forged a unique philosophical traditionone that is rich and complex enough to represent a genuine alternative to the analytic, phenomenological, and hermeneutical traditions which have originated in Britain or Europe. In my judgment, John Smith has no equal today in combining two scholarly qualities: the analysis of philosophical texts with penetration and rigor, and the discernment of what it is in these texts that matters. These qualities are in evidence throughout the essays in America's Philosophical Vision. Whether he is evaluating Rorty's view of Dewey; the pragmatic theory of experience and truth; theories of freedom, creativity, and the self; Royce's conception of community; or synoptic philosophic visions, Smith always succeeds in uniting a comprehensive understanding of philosophic writings with a sure grasp of their import for human culture and aspiration. It is a great benefit to students of American thought that these papers have now been collected into one volume.James Gouinlock, Emory University

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Book SynopsisModern thought and modes of living have been immeasurably influenced by the philosophers of the Enlightenment-men such as Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Newton, Leibniz, and Locke. Gathered together in this book and preceded by valuable biographical sketches are selections from the basic and most significant writings of each of these men.

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Book SynopsisThe philosophic search for truth has been evident in all ages and among all peoples. The developments of each generation require new philosophies and the recasting of old ones. The eighteenth century was no exception, and the scientific advances of the times brought about many innovations in philosophic thought. At a time when scientists were reducing certain phenomena of the natural world to expressions of a few simple mathematical laws, men such as Berkeley, Hume, and Kant were trying to discover how far and on what basis human reason could be applied with similar success in other fields. The selections in this book, preceded by short biographical sketches, document this philosophic search. The selections are liberal and well chosen, indeed only an examination of the table of contents will give an adequate idea of the value of this volume. . . . How better can one become a modern thinker than by reading and studying at first hand the writings that have made modern thought possible?Ro

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Book SynopsisPresents a philosophical and historical account of the engagement of the major protagonists of Victorian British philosophy. This title considers the controversies between William Whewell and John Stuart Mill on the topics of science, morality, politics, and economics. It is suitable for philosophers and historians of science.

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Book SynopsisTravelling from high culture to pop culture and back again, this book approaches cyberspace and Las Vegas through Hegel and Kant and reads Melville's The Confidence-Man through the film Wall Street.

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Book SynopsisRousseau and Nietzsche presented two of the most influential critiques of modern life and much can still be learned from their respective analyses of problems we still face.Trade Review“Franco has written a judicious new study of Rousseau and Nietzsche, presenting them for our instruction as two vitally important figures whose writings provide a dialectical critique of the ethical and cultural deficit of modern Enlightenment liberalism and that has lost none of its pertinence. The author sheds valuable light on key themes common to both writers, including their differing appeals to nature, their thinking about sexual difference, their conceptions of politics, and their innovative and far-reaching genealogies of modernity. This is a rich and wise study that will be of interest to scholars and students working across the humanities and social sciences.” -- Keith Ansell-Pearson, University of Warwick“Franco shows that Rousseau and Nietzsche, often considered as polar opposites, have far more in common than is often believed. Each offers a powerful diagnosis of the Enlightenment and its characteristic human type: the bourgeois. Each formulates his own distinctive answer to this problem coming up with new ideas about freedom, independence, and authenticity. By putting these two modernist giants into dialogue with each other, Franco brilliantly exposes just how much more we still have to learn from each.” -- Steven B. Smith, Yale University"Outstanding. . . . Franco’s engagement with and retrieval of the political and moral thought of Rousseau and Nietzsche provides resources that allow one to conceive of oneself, perhaps anew, in terms of the psychological depths, spiritual height, and human possibilities that, though not completely closed off by the late modern world, are more and more difficult to achieve." * Choice *Table of ContentsList of Abbreviations 1 Introduction 2 Genealogies of Modernity 3 The Self 4 Woman and Family 5 Politics 6 Conclusion Notes Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisIn this philosophically sophisticated and historically significant work, John H. Zammito reconstructs Kant's composition of The Critique of Judgment and reveals that it underwent three major transformations before publication. He shows that Kant not only made his cognitive turn, expanding the project from a Critique of Taste to a Critique of Judgment but he also made an ethical turn. This ethical turn was provoked by controversies in German philosophical and religious culture, in particular the writings of Johann Herder and the Sturm und Drang movement in art and science, as well as the related pantheism controversy. Such topicality made the Third Critique pivotal in creating a Kantian movement in the 1790s, leading directly to German Idealism and Romanticism. The austerity and grandeur of Kant's philosophical writings sometimes make it hard to recognize them as the products of a historical individual situated in the particular constellation of his time and society. Here Kant emerges a

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Book SynopsisIf Kant had never made the "critical turn" of 1773, would he be worth more than a paragraph in the history of philosophy? Most scholars think not. But this text challenges that view by revealing a precritical Kant who was immensely more influential than the one philosophers think they know.

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Book SynopsisWritten by a former student of Heidegger, this book examines the relationship between the philosophy and the politics of a celebrated teacher and the allure that Nazism held out for scholars committed to revolutionary nihilism.Trade ReviewA flurry of books has appeared on Heidegger's seduction by Nazism... [b]ut Lowith's work has a very special claim, and its publication in English is an event of major significance... [T]he present volume is unique as an indispensable, insightful, philosophical account of why Heidegger decided for National Socialism. As a devoted student and intimate friend of Heidegger in Freiburg... Lowith understands Heidegger minutely and sympathetically, and his interpretations of Heidegger's works are wide-ranging and unerring. Choice

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Book SynopsisPresents a chronological account of the development of Western philosophical traditions. From Plato to Wittgenstein and from Aquinas to Heidegger, this volume provides historical analysis of the key figures, schools, and movements of Western philosophy. Each chapter also includes an introductory essay.Trade ReviewUndoubtedly slated to be a standard on any literate shelf for generations to come... It is eminently readable and enjoyable. 15 Minutes Magazine The volume is a fitting testimonial to Popkin's life's work. -- Douglas Moggach The European LegacyTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction List of Contributors 1. Origins of Western Philosophic Thinking 2. Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy 3. Medieval Christian Philosophy 4. The Renaissance 5. Seventeenth-Century Philosophy 6. Eighteenth-Century Philosophy 7. Nineteenth-Century Philosophy 8. Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy 9. Twentieth-Century Continental Philosophy Epilogue Epilogue on the History of Philosophy History of Philosophy and Reconstructing Philosophy Women in the History of Philosophy Philosophy and the History of Philosophy Index of Names Index of Subjects

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Book SynopsisFew philosophers are as widely read or as widely misunderstood as Friedrich Nietzsche. This book includes five essays which not only enhances our understanding of Nietzsche's philosophy but also it responds to the misunderstandings that continue to muddy his intellectual reputation.Trade ReviewWith skill and discernment Danto reveals the important strands of Nietzsche's wildly tangled skein and weaves them into a pattern. New York Times Book ReviewTable of ContentsPreface to the Expanded Edition Preface to the Morningside Edition Original Preface Nietzsche as Philosopher 1. Philosophical Nihilism 2. Art and Irrationality 3. Perspectivism 4. Philosophical Psychology 5. Moralities 6. Religious Psychology 7. Ubermensch and Eternal Recurrence 8. The Will-to-Power 9. Nachwort Afterwords 1. The Tongues of Angels and Men: Nietzsche as Semantical Nihilist 2. A Comment on Nietzsche's "Artistic Metaphysics" 3. Beginning to be Nietzsche: On Human, All Too Human 4. Nietzsche's Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality 5. Some Remarks on The Genealogy of Morals

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Book SynopsisFollowing Martin Heidegger's interpretation of the history of philosophy, this book outlines the ontological conditions of aesthetics, paying particular attention to the works of W Kandinsky, which reaffirm the ontological implications of art.Trade ReviewArt's Claim to Truth offers much to work with with in the field of contemporary aesthetics. -- Daniel Guentchev KinesisTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: The Hermeneutic Consequence of Art's Ontological Bearing, by Santiago Zabala Part I. Aesthetics 1. Beauty and Being in Ancient Aesthetics 2. Toward an Ontological Aesthetics 3. The Ontological Vocation of Twentieth-Century Poetics 4. Art, Feeling, and Originality in Heidegger's Aesthetics Part II. Hermeneutics 5. Pareyson: From Aesthetics to Ontology 6. From Phenomenological Aesthetics to Ontology of Art 7. Critical Methods and Hermeneutic Philosophy Part III. Truth 8. Aesthetics and Hermeneutics 9. Aesthetics and Hermeneutics in Hans-Georg Gadamer 10. The Work of Art as the Setting to Work of Truth 11. The Truth That Hurts Notes Index

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Book SynopsisRevisits the origins of American pragmatism and finds a nascent "posthumanist" critique shaping early modern thought.Trade ReviewThe Hidden God is an uncommonly original, clearly written, and brilliant study, providing readers with a critically astute and persuasive revision of pragmatism and its historical legacy. The book compels readers and scholars to reconsider a foundational moment in American cultural history and its relevance for current critical theory. -- Cristina Iuli, Universita del Piemonte Orientale Using Niklas Luhmann as his Virgil, Ryan White charts an alternate pragmatist trajectory from Jonathan Edwards through Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Sanders Peirce to successive waves of twentieth-century cybernetics. It turns out, or so White's work suggests, that Luhmann serves not only as a guide but also emerges as the true heir of this distinctly American tradition. -- William Rasch, Indiana University The Hidden God is an ambitious and astute synthesis of American pragmatism with second-order systems theory. As the concerns of theology emerge under the sign of observation and its contingencies, the book shows how a well-wrought cybernetic imaginary can illuminate discourses ranging from Nicholas of Cusa to Charles Sanders Peirce, from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Niklas Luhmann. White's study offers an apt occasion to rethink the relations between philosophical and literary modernity and our posthumanist moment. -- Bruce Clarke, Texas Tech University The Hidden God completely transforms our understanding of pragmatism, its place in the genealogy of posthumanist thought, and its relationship to precursors such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jonathan Edwards, and the Puritans. We will never think about pragmatism-what it means, where it came from, and where it leads-in the same way again. The fact that we also find here a remarkable rereading of the work of Charles Sanders Peirce-and Peirce's relationship to William James-makes an already illuminating work of scholarship even more invaluable. -- Cary Wolfe, Rice University Those willing to enter these waters will find the journey stimulating. ChoiceTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Observing Modernity in America 1. The Double Consciousness: American Thought and the Theory of Theory 2. Inside-Out: Pragmatism and the Meaning of America 3. On True Virtue: Jonathan Edwards and the Ethics of Self-Reference 4. Neither Here nor There: Grief and Absence in Emerson's "Experience" 5. Every Language Is Foreign: Self and Cybernetics in the Event-Machine 6. The Cybernetic Imaginary: Musement and the Unsaying of Theory Notes Index

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Book SynopsisPassions of Our Time showcases recent essays of Julia Kristeva’s that demonstrate her capacious intellect, her gifts as a stylist, and the profound contribution of her thought to the challenges of the present. Kristeva considers literature, translation, psychoanalysis, disability, gender, humanism, and universalism, among other topics.Trade ReviewRanging from literature and the visual arts to psychoanalysis, religion, the question of women, and politics, the essays gathered in this volume deal with the experience of time in birth and rebirth, with the time of events and emergencies and, no less, with the existential dimension of time as opposed to what technologies of sensation are programmed to make of it. In her inimitable and provocative signature style, Kristeva graces her readers with brilliant readings of texts, paintings, sculptures, artists, and political events. Passions of Our Time is an excellent book. -- Verena Conley, Harvard UniversityThe essays and interviews in Passions of Our Time not only thoughtfully extend and develop some of Kristeva's seminal ideas but also brilliantly address pressing contemporary issues, such as changing notions of motherhood, fatherhood, disability, and sexuality, and powerfully demonstrate that psychoanalysis is still relevant today. This volume makes it clear why Julia Kristeva is one of the most important cultural critics of our time. -- Kelly Oliver, author of Reading Kristeva: Unraveling the Double-BindKristeva's scope is both international and cross-cultural, reaching as far as China, and as close to Western experiences as suburbia's socioeconomic decline. * Library Journal *Amazingly multifaceted. . . . Kristeva marks a new baseline for understanding in the humanities. * The European Legacy *Table of ContentsForeword, by Lawrence D. KritzmanAcknowledgmentsI. Singular Liberties1. My Alphabet; or, How I Am a Letter2. Reliance: What Is Loving for a Mother?3. How to Speak to Literature with Roland Barthes4. Emile Benveniste, a Linguist Who Neither Says nor Hides, but SignifiesII. Psychoanalysis5. Freud, the Heart of the Matter6. The Contemporary Contribution of Psychoanalysis7. A Father Is Being Beaten to Death8. Maternal Eroticism9. Speaking in Psychoanalysis: From Symbols to Flesh and Back Again10. Affect, That “Intense Depth of Words”11. The Lacan EventIII. Women12. Antigone, Limit and Horizon13. The Passion According to Teresa of Avila14. Beauvoir DreamsIV. Humanism15. A Felicity Named Rousseau16. Speech, That Experience17. Disability Revised: The Tragic and Chance18. From “Critical Modernity” to “Analytical Modernity”19. In Jerusalem: Monotheisms and Secularization and the Need to Believe20. Dare Humanism21. Ten Principles for Twenty-First-Century Humanism22. On the Sanctity of Human LifeV. France, Europe, China23. Moses, Freud, and China24. Diversity Is My Motto25. The French Cultural MessageVI. Positions26. The Universal in the Singular27. Can One Be a Muslim Woman and a Shrink?28. One Is Born Woman, but I Become OneNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisAlain Badiou offers a tour de force encounter with a lesser-known seventeenth-century philosopher and theologian, Nicolas Malebranche, a contemporary and peer of Spinoza and Leibniz. The seminar is at once a record of Badiou’s thought at a key moment and a lively interrogation of Malebranche’s key text, the Treatise on Nature and Grace.Trade ReviewI devoured this magnificent work in an evening. It blends Badiou’s usual systematic approach with a nuanced account of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century philosophy that draws skillful contrasts between Malebranche’s system and those of Arnauld, Bossuet, Leibniz, Pascal, and the Jesuits. Hovering over the scene is the unlikely but finally compelling specter of Jacques Lacan. -- Graham Harman, author of Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of EverythingMalebranche emerges from this seminar as an author divided between an asphyxiating theological doctrine and an exhilarating theory of the subject, which anticipates many ideas about desire, fantasy, finitude, and grace that will appear much later, from Hegel to Lacan. Even though Badiou claims that nothing productive came from his effort, we can appreciate in this new installment of his seminar a crucial stepping stone between Theory of the Subject and Being and Event. -- Bruno Bosteels, author of Badiou and PoliticsThis book tackles Malebranche through Alain Badiou’s unique perspective. Badiou nicely translates questions of theology into questions of politics, bringing Malebranche a contemporary resonance that he doesn’t have in any other account. -- Todd McGowan, author of Emancipation After Hegel: Achieving a Contradictory RevolutionThe book reads very well, and the translation is as excellent as one would expect from this team. . . . Anyone curious about Malebranche, or wishing to recall things they used to know about him, should enjoy Badiou's presentation; and anyone who appreciates solid philosophical exegeses and a bit of intellectual flair should be very entertained and provoked by this seminar as well. -- Ed Pluth * Notre Dame Philosophical Review *Malebranche is a must-read for Marxists, Philosophers, Theologians, and anyone interested in the Philosophy of Alain Badiou. -- Dalton Winfree * Marx and Philosophy Review of Books *A fascinating interrogation of a thinker much ignored in the English-speaking world by a leading contemporary philosopher. * Choice *Malebranche is Badiou’s most richly theological work . . . Like nearly all of Badiou’s writing, it is conceptually difficult and challenging, but immensely rewarding. * Modern Theology *Table of ContentsEditors’ Introduction to the English Edition of the Seminars of Alain BadiouAuthor’s General Preface to the English Edition of the Seminars of Alain BadiouIntroduction to the Seminar on Malebranche: Malebranche’s “Political Ontology”(Jason E. Smith)About the 1986 Seminar on MalebrancheSession 1Session 2Session 3Session 4Session 5Session 6Session 7NotesIndex

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Book SynopsisErnst Bloch gives a striking account of materialism that traces emancipatory elements of modern thought to medieval Islamic philosophers’ encounter with Aristotle. He argues that the great medieval Islamic philosopher Avicenna (Ibn Sina) planted the seeds of a radical materialism still relevant for critical theory today.Trade ReviewAgainst the background of today's Islamophobia, Bloch's study is an extraordinary achievement. It demonstrates how one of the hidden origins of European modernity is Avicenna's interpretation of Aristotle. Islamic thought at the roots of our notions of freedom and emancipation? If you are shocked, read Bloch's book! It is only now, almost a century after its first publication, that the time for this book has arrived. -- Slavoj Žižek, author of Less Than Nothing and Absolute RecoilIn this beautiful and exciting essay, Ernst Bloch enables us to think differently, more alive, more openly and creatively, about matter and form by reading the history of metaphysics against the grain and across cultural divides. We get a taste of what real philosophy once was and what it might be again as the contours of world philosophy are beginning to emerge. Bloch’s irreducibly personal voice comes alive in this excellent translation. -- Johan Siebers, Director, Ernst Bloch Centre for German Thought, School of Advanced Study, University of LondonOver the years, Ernst Bloch has enjoyed a reputation as the most intransigently utopian of the Western Marxists, a prophetic figure with great erudition and a capacious imagination. This accessible and graceful translation makes his important book on the medieval roots of vitalist materialism available to English speakers for the first time. -- Martin Jay, author of Reason after Its Eclipse: On Late Critical TheoryAvicenna and the Aristotelian Left is seminal for understanding the utopian theory and cosmological interpretation of nature provided by one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century: Ernst Bloch. Its linkage of two philosophical worlds is unique and it should refashion conventional views on materialism and the 'canon.' The translators deserve our gratitude for making available a difficult work whose boldness and cosmopolitan character will surely inspire the intellectuals of our own time. -- Stephen Eric Bronner, author of Modernism at the Barricades: Aesthetics, Politics, UtopiaAvicenna and the Aristotelian Left, by Ernst Bloch, one of the most significant German philosophers of the twentieth-century, traces an alternative genealogy of materialism based on the identification of an important line of counter-interpretation of Aristotle’s ideas on form and matter. While the history of modern thought has been conventionally interpreted as a deliberate rejection of the Aristotelian tradition in science and philosophy, in this book Bloch introduces the surprising thesis of a connection between Aristotle and the Enlightenment. -- Humberto Beck, Kilachand Honors College, Boston UniversityBloch’s essay is engaging and erudite, bringing to light the philosophical heritage of twenty-first century new materialism... -- Steph Marston * Marx & Philosophy Society *Sheds light on the Muslim philosopher doctor’s contribution to a unified discipline of philosophy and science. * Arab Studies Quarterly *Table of ContentsA Note on the Text and TranslationAcknowledgmentsIntroduction, by Loren GoldmanAvicenna and the Aristotelian LeftNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewIn The End of the West and Other Cautionary Tales, Sean Meighoo raises a provocative challenge not merely to the conceits of continental philosophy's recent deconstruction of the ethnocentrism of Western metaphysics, but also to the assumptions of the postcolonial theory that has eagerly appropriated that counterdiscourse. In doing so, he urges us to recognize the ways in which the critique of the idea of a singular West has often been misconceived. This is a timely intervention with deep-reaching implications for rethinking the project of contemporary criticism. -- David Scott, author of Omens of Adversity: Tragedy, Time, Memory, JusticeThis groundbreaking book makes an important and crucial intervention into the literatures and debates on postcolonial theory, politics, and cultural studies. Meighoo skillfully and thoughtfully brings together Western and Eastern philosophies, pointing not only to their various differences and similarities but also, importantly, to their influences. The End of the West and Other Cautionary Tales moves across a wide philosophical terrain to provide readers with a profound sense of what might be at stake in terms of how Western philosophy and postcolonial theory speak to each other. -- Rinaldo Walcott, author of Black Like Who? Writing Black CanadaTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart I: The End of the West1. The Black Athena DebatePart II: From Teleology to Negative Teleology2. The Phenomenological Turn3. The Ethical TurnPart III: From Continental Philosophy to Postcolonial Theory4. The Critique of Representation5. The Defense of DifferencePart IV: The Limits of Antiethnocentrism6. The Beatles in IndiaConclusionNotesBibliography

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Book Synopsis In recent years, both analytic thinkers and postmodern theorists have looked at Friedrich Nietzsche''s epistemology from the perspectives of their philosophical traditions. Michael Steven Green''s penetrating study tries instead to do justice to Nietzsche''s views on truth and knowledge by looking at them from the perspective of his contemporaries, particularly the Neo-Kantian philosopher Afrikan Spir, whose ideas exerted a tremendous influence on Nietzsche''s thought. Despite his generally naturalist outlook, Nietzsche was committed to an antinaturalist theory of cognition inherited from Kant and Spir. Green shows how this fundamental tension in Nietzsche''s thought led him to present not only the antirealism that has commonly been attributed to him in the past, but two other epistemological positions. These are a denial of the possibility of human thought entirely, and an error theory–-the argument that all of our judgments are false–-that has strong parallelsTrade Review"A very powerful and philosophically sophisticated presentation of a position in the interpretation that has never to my knowledge had such an able advocate. . . . [Green] shows that there is more than one might think to the version of Nietzsche that has been popularized by the post-structuralists." –- Richard Schacht, author of Nietzsche and Making Sense of Nietzsche"Green's book makes an important contribution to Nietzsche scholarship by offering the first account in English of Afrikan Spir's philosophy and demonstrating its influence on Nietzsche's thinking about truth." –- Maudemarie Clark, author of Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy

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Book SynopsisFrom the early 1870s through the 1880s, language, consciousness, and the body stood as cornerstones of the philosophical project that culminated in Nietzsche's anthropology of knowledge. This title argues that they were shaped by his interest in the theory of knowledge, philological scholarship, and contemporary life sciences.Trade Review"An intriguing and engaging read."--Journal of Japanese Studies "Skillfully unravels Japan's intricate domestic politics of emigration to Latin America before and after WW II."--Enterprise & SocietyTable of ContentsContents Acknowledgments Abbreviations and Translations Introduction 1. The Irreducibility of Language: The History of Rhetoric in the Age of Typewriters 2. The Failures of Empiricism: Language, Science, and the Philosophical Tradition 3. What Is a Trope? The Discourse of Metaphor and the Language of the Body 4. The Nervous Systems of Modern Consciousness: Metaphor, Physiology, and Mind 5. Interpretation and Life: Outlines of an Anthropology of Knowledge Notes Select Bibliography 6 Index

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Book SynopsisFriedrich Nietzsche was immensely influential and, counter to most expectations, also very well read. An essential new reference tool for those interested in his thinking, Nietzsche’s Philosophical Context identifies the chronology and huge range of philosophical books that engaged him. Rigorously examining the scope of this reading, Thomas H. Brobjer consulted over two thousand volumes in Nietzsche’s personal library, as well as his book bills, library records, journals, letters, and publications. This meticulous investigation also considers many of the annotations in his books. In arguing that Nietzsche’s reading often constituted the starting point for, or counterpoint to, much of his own thinking and writing, Brobjer’s study provides scholars with fresh insight into how Nietzsche worked and thought; to which questions and thinkers he responded; and by which of them he was influenced. The result is a new and much more contextual understanding oTrade Review"This tremendously useful resource will be consulted by every scholar concerned with Nietzche's philosophical context for years to come."--British Journal for the History of Philosophy

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Book SynopsisThis is the first translation into English of a milestone in Nietzsche interpretation. Wolfgang Müller-Lauter examines Nietzsche''s doctrines of the will to power and the overman in light of Nietzsche''s philosophy of real contradictions. He shows that Nietzsche''s vision of inherently contradictory 'wills to power' is the source of irresolvable contradictions in his philosophy. Müller-Lauter has remained at the forefront of German Nietzsche studies throughout the quarter century since this book first appeared. This long-awaited translation, containing two substantial subsequent essays, is a major addition to the English-language Nietzsche literature Trade Review"The most lucid and stimulating study of Nietzsche's philosophy to appear in recent years. Its thesis should intrigue the expert; its clear presentation of basic ideas, the novice."-Herbert Reicher, University of North Carolina "The first comprehensive discussion of Nietzsche's philosophy in the light of his later systematic ideas."-Gerd-Gnther Grau, Ideologie und Wille zur Macht "In his important book Muller-Lauter introduces a thesis to Nietzsche studies that deserves close consideration: that contradiction is the most this thinker is able to achieve in his inquiry into reality."-Wilhelm Weisschedel, Zeitschrift fr philosophische Forschung

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Book SynopsisKafka's Monkey and Other Phantoms of Africa offers unique insights into how issues of migration, religious and ethnic identity, and postcolonial history affect contemporary France and beyond.Trade Review"Seloua Luste Boulbina's analyses are seething with insight, brilliant in their tone, and way way beyond what "postcolonial studies" imagines it needs to do. She assaults the reader with a series of pricks to the skin and conscience that are too obvious and evident and unseen and unnoticed until she shows them to us."—Laura Ann Stoler, author of Duress: Imperial Durabilities in Our Times"Through a series of complex and sophisticated philosophical interventions, Seloua Luste Boulbina reevaluates the history of colonialism, subjectivities in Africa, gender issues, and race relations in Africa."—Frieda Ekotto, author of Race and Sex across the French AtlanticTable of ContentsPrefaceTranslator's IntroductionPrologue: Thinking the ColonyPart I: Kafka's Monkey and Other Reflections on the Colony1. With Respect to Kafka's Monkey2. Challenging Historical Culture3. The Colony, Mirage, and Historical RealityPart II: Africa and its Phantoms: Writing the AfterwardIntroduction1. Saving One's Skin2. History, an Interior Architecture 3. Language, an Internal Politics4. Sexed Space and Gender Unveiled 5. Having a Good EarConclusionPart III: Epilogue: From Floating Territories to DisorientationBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisKafka's Monkey and Other Phantoms of Africa offers unique insights into how issues of migration, religious and ethnic identity, and postcolonial history affect contemporary France and beyond.Trade Review"Seloua Luste Boulbina's analyses are seething with insight, brilliant in their tone, and way way beyond what "postcolonial studies" imagines it needs to do. She assaults the reader with a series of pricks to the skin and conscience that are too obvious and evident and unseen and unnoticed until she shows them to us."—Laura Ann Stoler, author of Duress: Imperial Durabilities in Our Times"Through a series of complex and sophisticated philosophical interventions, Seloua Luste Boulbina reevaluates the history of colonialism, subjectivities in Africa, gender issues, and race relations in Africa."—Frieda Ekotto, author of Race and Sex across the French AtlanticTable of ContentsPrefaceTranslator's IntroductionPrologue: Thinking the ColonyPart I: Kafka's Monkey and Other Reflections on the Colony1. With Respect to Kafka's Monkey2. Challenging Historical Culture3. The Colony, Mirage, and Historical RealityPart II: Africa and its Phantoms: Writing the AfterwardIntroduction1. Saving One's Skin2. History, an Interior Architecture 3. Language, an Internal Politics4. Sexed Space and Gender Unveiled 5. Having a Good EarConclusionPart III: Epilogue: From Floating Territories to DisorientationBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsKey to the citations of Nietzsche's works1. Introduction2. Nietzsche's life3. The Greeks4. Truth5. History6. Morality7. The death of God8. Thus Spoke ZarathustraEditor's AfterwordIndex

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Book SynopsisMartin Heidegger's reflection on Greek thought is recognized as a decisive feature of his philosophical development. This work sheds light on the issues raised by his encounter and engagement with the Greeks. It also sheds light on how core philosophical concepts such as phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, and ethics are understood.Table of ContentsContentsPreface Drew A. HylandIntroduction: The Sojourn in the Light John Panteleimon Manoussakis1. First of All Came Chaos Drew A. Hyland2. Contributions to the Coming-to-Be of Greek Beginnings: Heidegger's Inceptive Thinking Claudia Baracchi3. The Intractable Interrelationship of Physis and Techne Walter A. Brogan4. Translating Innigkeit: The Belonging Together of the Strange Peter Warnek5. Heidegger's Philosophy of Language in an Aristotelian Context: Dynamis Meta Logou Günter Figal6. Toward the Future of Truth William J. Richardson7. What We Owe the Dead Dennis J. Schmidt8. Beyond or Beneath Good and Evil: Heidegger's Purification of Aristotle's Ethics Francisco J. Gonzalez9. Back to the Cave: A Platonic Rejoinder to Heideggerian Postmodernism Gregory Fried10. Plato's Other Beginning John SallisList of ContributorsIndex

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Book SynopsisAction was once a prominent theme in philosophical reflection. It figured prominently in Aristotelian philosophy, and the medieval Scholastics built some of their key adages around it. But by the time Maurice Blondel came to focus on it for his own philosophical reflection, it had all but disappeared from the philosophical vocabulary. It is no longer possible or legitimate to ignore action in philosophy as it was in France when Blondel appeared on the scene in 1882, when at the age of 21 he first began to focus on action as a dissertation subject, and in 1893, when he defended and published the dissertation now presented here for the English reader.

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Book SynopsisContending that Marxism achieved its unique position in part by adopting the content and functions of Christianity, MacIntyre details the religious attitudes and modes of belief that appear in Marxist doctrine as it developed historically from the philosophies of Hegel and Feuerbach, and as it has been carried on by latter-day interpreters from Rosa Luxemburg and Trotsky to Kautsky and Lukacs. The result is a lucid exposition of Marxism and an incisive account of its persistence and continuing importance.Trade Review"...a discerning, solid book...a significant contribution to both the emerging Marxist-Christian dialogue and the task of building the future that awaits us all." —The New Republic“. . . a very fine work on the intersection of Marxist and Christian teaching. . . . MacIntyre provides a very useful summary of Marx’s philosophical forebears, and his development from them. His summary of Marx’s teaching on history and the changes from his earlier to his later writing is quite fair, and a good introduction to the thought of Marx. . . . It really does bring together Marxism and Christianity in such a way that they may both contribute to and criticize each other.” —Catholic Library World

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"[Dunne] calls on us to ponder the depths of our lives where our souls cry out to us for recognition and where we wrestle with God for the precious grace of meaning. Dunne is a masterful guide to the inner life, which is the heart of all life-and death." —The Christian Century

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"MacIntyre's project, here as elsewhere, is to put up a fight against philosophical relativism. . . . The current form is the 'incommensurability,' so-called, of differing standpoints or conceptual schemes. Mr. MacIntyre claims that different schools of philosophy must differ fundamentally about what counts as a rational way to settle intellectual differences. Reading between the lines, one can see that he has in mind nationalities as well as thinkers, and literary criticism as well as academic philosophy. More explicitly, he labels and discusses three significantly different standpoints: the encyclopedic, the genealogical and the traditional. . . . [T]he chapters on the development of Christian philosophy between Augustine and Duns Scotus are very interesting indeed. . . . [T]hese chapters surely show that he must be the past, present, future and all-time philosophical historians' historian of philosophy. —The New York Times Book Review"This book deepens and defends MacIntyre's claim that genuinely rational enquiry requires membership in a particular type of moral community. He offers the most persuasive recent restatement of the Thomist position on the relation of metaphysics to morality." —Richard Rorty"Highly recommended." —Library Journal

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Book SynopsisThis collection analyses Gerald McCool's ""From Unity to Pluralism: The Internal Evolution of Thomism"", which stands opposed to the motivating ideals found in ""One Hundred Years of Thomism: Aeterni Patris and Afterwards"", a symposium published in 1981.Table of ContentsMaritain and Gilson on the Question of a Living Thomism, Victor B. Brezik; Neo-Thomism and Christian Philosophy, Joseph Owens; Thomistic Philosophy Is Not Pluralistic, Vernon J. Bourke; The Unity of Thomistic Experience - A Gilsonian Rejoinder to Gerald McCool, Peter A. Redpath; Gilson and Aeterni Patris, Armand A. Maurer; Maritain's Realistic Defence of the Importance of the Philosophy of Nature to Metaphysics, Raymond Dennehy; Apropos of ""From Unity to Pluralism"" by Gerald McCool, Marc F. Griesbach, Robert J. Henle; Truth, Realism and Philosophical Pluralism, Marc F. Griesbach; Must Thomism Become Kantian to Survive? A Negative Response, Leo Sweeney; Philosophical Pluralism and the Internal Evolution of Thomism - Some Realist Animadversions, Dennis J.M. Bradley; Transcendental Thomism and ""De Veritate 1, 9"", John F.X. Knasos; Thomistic Personalism and Today's Families, Mary Rousseau.

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Book SynopsisCaught in the whirlwind of the postindustrial revolution, many members of today's labor force look upon the changing job landscape and feel displaced and devalued. Robert Sessions and Jack Wortman have compiled this selection of humanities readings to explore the many ways that work shapes and defines us, and to anticipate the ever-changing demands of the contemporary workplace. Although the humanities approach to studying work offers no predictions, statistics, or prognostications, it provides images and visions that aid in understanding the multiple meanings, values, and effects of work.Working in America is organized into three sections. Section I examines in detail the personal dimensions that underlie our experiences of work. Its purpose is to help the reader imagine, conceptualize, and deal with issues concerning work. Here the focus is on immediate experiences of work. Section II is concerned with broader social and historical questions and offers a brief lookTrade Review"Working in America will help all of us to realize more fully how our fundamental humanity is shaped by our work and how our work reflects our human values, meanings, aspirations, and perspectives." —John Walsh, Pueblo Community College"Presents a collection of poems, essays, and excerpts from literary works in order to explore the ways that work shapes and defines workers and to anticipate the changing demands of the contemporary workplace." —Journal of Economic Literature

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Book SynopsisExplains Cynicism's rise in popularity in the ancient world by exploring the set of attitudes that collectively formed the Greek praise of poverty. The author argues that economic, military, and philosophical thought contains explicit criticisms of wealth and praise of poverty. This is a work of ancient Cynicism and its classical environment.Trade Review“In his thought-provoking The Greek Praise of Poverty: Origins of Ancient Cynicism, William D. Desmond proposes that the chief reason for this widespread appeal and longevity is that, for all its flamboyance, Cynicism in fact had deep roots in traditional Greek culture, and in particular in Greek suspicions of wealth, and praise of frugality and the simple life . . . erudite, scholarly and mostly well-written.” —Times Literary Supplement“Desmond's book shows impressively how the cynics were not, contrary to what one might think, marginalized in Greek society. They represent a strand of thought that appears (if Desmond is right) very influential, and raises intriguing questions about the degree of influence their thought may have had on some of the early church fathers, as well as Christian anchorites and monks.” —Milltown Studies"Through a comprehensive analysis of wealth and poverty in classical Greek thought, Desmond recounts two concurrent themes. The first illuminates the Greek understanding of the virtue of poverty, running mainly from Hesiod to Aristotle, through concentrating on the late fifth and early fourth centuries' historical, comedic, and philosophical writings; the second illuminates this understanding's continuation in Diogenes and Cynical thought in general." —First Things"In this investigation of the early stages of Cynicism in the classical period (450-323 B.C.), Desmond argues that figures such as Antisthenes and Diogenes were not cultural outcasts or marginal figures, and that the Cynic movement had deep and significant roots in the 'Greek praise of poverty' and the virtues that it could inspire." —New Testament Abstracts"The ancient Cynics have long been seen as exceptional and outside the margins of Greek culture. William Desmond makes a powerful argument against this perception, by searching for the origins of Cynic ideas and attitudes within mainstream Greek culture and society. He examines a wide number of different texts, ranging from Homer to Hesiod to the tragic poets, Thucydides, Herodotus, Xenophon and of course Plato and Aristotle. . . This is a very successful and interesting book that deserves to be read by a wide audience." —Bryn Mawr Classical Review"According to Desmond, democratic populism, Greek heroism, and a philosophic yearning for absolute truth--forerunners of Cynic asceticism--all derive from the virtue of frugality. . . . Philological and philosophical, Desmond draws widely from the original Greek sources and argues persuasively for his provocative conclusions." —Choice“Sets the thoughts of such Cynic philosophers as Antisthenes and Diogenes in the context of a Greek tradition of ambivalence toward wealth.”—The Chronicle of Higher Education

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