Philosophy Books

Book SynopsisA posthumous collection of interviews and occasional papers given by Castoriadis between 1974 and 1997 which offers a direct introduction to the thinking of a writer who never abandoned his radically critical stance. It also provides a resume of his political ideas, in advance of their times and profoundly relevant to today's world.Trade Review"A gateway to Castoriadis' adventurous and open-ended way of thinking, his tireless attempts to envision the imperceptible future." -- -Stathis Gourgouris Columbia University "All the material in A Society Adrift, a posthumous collection of lectures and writings by Castoriadis, appeared well after that upheaval. The earliest of the texts gathered here, a long interview from 1974, is an extensive political and intellectual autobiography covering the SOUB years and just beyond. It is followed by the transcript of a 1982 radio discussion that provides an excellent introduction to Castoriadis's subsequent philosophical and psychoanalytic work." -Bookforum

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Book SynopsisDemonstrating how poor cultural translation of core terms has contributed to a distorted picture of Islam, this book provides an explication of some of the most important concepts and beliefs of the Muslim tradition, as well as interpretation of the symbolism underlying its important practices.Trade Review"This fairly dense work rewards careful, reflective reading by all who are interested in the subject of religious conflict ... Recommended." -Choice "An extraordinary voice on dual identities." -- -Kurt Anders Richardson McMaster University "An outstanding work offering a thoroughly original perspective onto a question of major significance in both religious studies and contemporary politics." -- -Gareth Jones Canterbury Christ Church University

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Book SynopsisWhat does it mean to 'fall' asleep? Might there exist something like a 'reason' of sleep, a reason at work in its own form or modality, a modality of being in oneself, of return to oneself, without the waking 'self' that distinguishes 'I' from 'you' and from the world? This book attempts to answer these questions.Trade Review"The Fall of Sleep is Nancy's most lyrical, most beautiful work. It is also acute in tracing the limits of a phenomenology of sleep: for sleep is the disappearance of the self. Yet that dark self is also the Kantian thing in itself. So proposes Nancy in his noumenology of sleep..." -- -Kevin Hart The University of Virginia "... [A] brief siesta of an inquiry into slumber." -The Times Literary Supplement "A truly original examination of the most universally overlooked human experience." -- -Sarah Clift University of King's College, Halifax "A quarter-century ago Jean-Luc Nancy remarked that "Sleep, perhaps, has never been philosophical." Philosophy, after all, ruins sleep. In The Fall of Sleep Nancy explores the singularities of sleep as (among other things) an experience of freedom and a sojourn for lovers. The book is exemplary of Nancy's practice of finite thinking-thinking without concepts, categories, and other philosophical machinery. And in the bargain we have another superb translation by Charlotte Mandell." -- -Gerald L. Bruns University of Notre Dame "What happens to the subject when sleep descends? If philosophy has always supposed consciousness, what happens in the "fall of sleep," when intention, will, deliberation and its correlates are suspended? Nancy traces, not an absence of subjectivity, but another formation of the "I" in this meditative text -- part thesis and part reverie, as much a nocturne as a treatise -- and guides us toward the province of Morpheus." -- -Charles Shepherdson University at Abany, State University of New York "A beguiling set of reflections on a topic that has to be among those most resistant to philosophy and philosophizing: sleep. After reading Nancy, one will think differently about this enigmatic fact of life and how we talk about it." -- -Ian Balfour York University

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Book SynopsisAnalyzes the implications of Adorno's demand that the task of critical thinking be to imagine a mode of being in the world that occurs in and through a language that has liberated itself from the spell of an alleged historical and political inevitability, what he once tellingly called a 'language without soil'.Trade Review"This is a magical volume. These beautiful essays transform the most canonical works of Adorno from monuments we thought we knew into opportunities for future thought. The Adorno of this volume is neither a matter of the past nor a straightforward thought machine, but rather an intricate, challenging, searching plurality of voices that are, at times, at odds with each other. In other words, this is a new Adorno, an Adorno not yet known to us, not yet explored, and an Adorno not yet complete. This new Adorno is a matter of the future, of reading, and discovery." -- -Fritz Breithaupt Indiana University "A very thoughtfully comprised and well executed collection with a number of insightful contributions that individually and as a whole open up new perspectives in Adorno scholarship." -- -Eva Geulen University of Bonn

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Book SynopsisBrings into conversation modes of thought traditionally held apart: Whitehead's philosophy of the event, Deleuze's philosophy of multiplicity, and Judith Butler's philosophy of gender difference. This volume finds that bridge in an emphasis on becoming that secretly defines the philosophies of Whitehead, Deleuze, and Butler.Trade ReviewOffers a lucid and nuanced introduction to some of the key concepts developed by Whitehead, Deleuze, and Butler.---—Mayra Rivera, Pacific School of ReligionThis collection of essays brings together three very different thinkers around their shared immanentism and anti-substantialism, attending to the differing ways that events, bodies, and gods become in the absence of a transcendent order of being. Operating without a form, essence, or original according to which becoming comes to be, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Butler share an attentiveness to that which has never been before. This volume promises a kind of newness at all levels: it stages an unprecedented conversation among thinkers committed to the unprecedented.---—Mary Jane Rubenstein, Wesleyan University

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Book SynopsisMemory has never been closer to us, yet never more difficult to understand. In the more than thirty specially commissioned essays that make up this book, leading scholars survey the histories, the theories, and the faultlines that compose the field of memory research.Trade Review"Amidst the burgeoning profusion of contemporary writings about memory, this imposing collection now deserves pride of place. From multiple perspectives and diverse disciplines, it offers the very best of access to the complicated ground from which the problems of "history" and "memory" may now be engaged. There is no better guide to be found." -- -Geoff Eley University of Michigan "An outstanding collection. The topics, themes, and theorists discussed have been selected with a good eye for the current state of play in memory studies, providing an excellent introduction to the discipline." -- -Ross Poole The New School "A remarkably comprehensive and interdisciplinary compilation of recent thought and scholarship on memory. Provocative, incisive, accessible, and sometimes superb, these essays lead us, like memory itself, from the past to the future of the subject." -- -Michael Lambek editor of Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory and author of The Weight of the Past: Living with History in Madagascar

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"This is the first collection of essays to self-consciously address itself retrospectively to Paul Ricoeur's philosophical oeuvre." -- -W. David Hall Centre College "Many scholars from a variety of disciplines will find this an interesting and enlightening text. It not only broadens our understanding of Ricoeur's work but also builds on it, following his exemplary model on how to do philosophy." -- -Christina Gschwandtner University of Scranton

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"This volume fills an important gap in the bibliography of Mediterranean Studies, whose importance is increasing continuously, by providing convenient access, to an English-speaking audience, the work of one of this field's pioneers, the Italian Franco Cassano. At least partially to Cassano's credit, the prominence and relevance of the Mediterranean -etymologically the "center of the earth" or at least of classic European civilization and, through the centuries the crossroads of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian civilizations - recently has become the object of serious interdisciplinary inquiry. The relevance of this area of study, necessary in a time characterized by the blurred boundaries, geographic and disciplinary, of a period perhaps best described as one of political, sociological, and economic "globalization," cannot be overstated. This book responds to the the need, perceived by senior scholars and undergraduates alike, to transcend specializations and begin to look at the cross-fertilizations of cultures that have existed for centuries." -- -Joseph Francese Michigan State University "This remarkable translation of Franco Cassano's Southern Thought,supplemented by other essays on the Mediterranean, offers to the English speaking world the long awaited and much needed access to one of the most original and provocative minds of our times. Written with verve, intelligence and passion against all fundamentalisms, religious and economic alike, Cassano's pages are as invaluable to scholars in the growing field of Mediterranean Studies as they will be stimulating to the general reader." -- -Robert Dainotto Duke University "Cassano's book furnishes a theoretical and sociohistorical map whereby marginality, silence, difference, and other forms of cultural suppression can finally articulate a discourse aimed not solely at deconstructing Northern European modernity, but at shaping a new understanding of the complex relation between peoples, cultures and the environment. These perspectives have long been locked up in the Souths of the world, and in the Mediterranean in particular." -- -Peter Carravetta SUNY, Stony Brook "Franco Cassano Il pensiero meridiano was a pioneer work of today's talks and debates on the Global South. His insightful thoughts and clear prose remind us that the Southern Question includes Europe and the US and not only the ex-Third World. From Gramsci's Southern Question to Cassano's Il pensiero meridiano and to Roberto Dainotto Europe (In Theory), a powerful genealogy of geopolitics of knowledge is a trade mark of Italian de-colonial thinking. This translation is a welcome and needed contribution to enlarge the spectrum of European critical thoughts." -- -Walter Mignolo Duke University "This exemplar edition of Cassano's Southern Thought and other Essays on the Mediterrenean prepared by Norma Bouchard and Valerio Ferme is a fundamental point of reference to generate a philosophy and culture of resistance to the superstitious myths of economic development based on science and technology introduced by the pervasive forces of globalization. " -- -Massimo Lollini University of Oregon

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"This volume fills an important gap in the bibliography of Mediterranean Studies, whose importance is increasing continuously, by providing convenient access, to an English-speaking audience, the work of one of this field's pioneers, the Italian Franco Cassano. At least partially to Cassano's credit, the prominence and relevance of the Mediterranean -etymologically the "center of the earth" or at least of classic European civilization and, through the centuries the crossroads of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian civilizations - recently has become the object of serious interdisciplinary inquiry. The relevance of this area of study, necessary in a time characterized by the blurred boundaries, geographic and disciplinary, of a period perhaps best described as one of political, sociological, and economic "globalization," cannot be overstated. This book responds to the the need, perceived by senior scholars and undergraduates alike, to transcend specializations and begin to look at the cross-fertilizations of cultures that have existed for centuries." -- -Joseph Francese Michigan State University "This remarkable translation of Franco Cassano's Southern Thought,supplemented by other essays on the Mediterranean, offers to the English speaking world the long awaited and much needed access to one of the most original and provocative minds of our times. Written with verve, intelligence and passion against all fundamentalisms, religious and economic alike, Cassano's pages are as invaluable to scholars in the growing field of Mediterranean Studies as they will be stimulating to the general reader." -- -Robert Dainotto Duke University "Cassano's book furnishes a theoretical and sociohistorical map whereby marginality, silence, difference, and other forms of cultural suppression can finally articulate a discourse aimed not solely at deconstructing Northern European modernity, but at shaping a new understanding of the complex relation between peoples, cultures and the environment. These perspectives have long been locked up in the Souths of the world, and in the Mediterranean in particular." -- -Peter Carravetta SUNY, Stony Brook "Franco Cassano Il pensiero meridiano was a pioneer work of today's talks and debates on the Global South. His insightful thoughts and clear prose remind us that the Southern Question includes Europe and the US and not only the ex-Third World. From Gramsci's Southern Question to Cassano's Il pensiero meridiano and to Roberto Dainotto Europe (In Theory), a powerful genealogy of geopolitics of knowledge is a trade mark of Italian de-colonial thinking. This translation is a welcome and needed contribution to enlarge the spectrum of European critical thoughts." -- -Walter Mignolo Duke University "This exemplar edition of Cassano's Southern Thought and other Essays on the Mediterrenean prepared by Norma Bouchard and Valerio Ferme is a fundamental point of reference to generate a philosophy and culture of resistance to the superstitious myths of economic development based on science and technology introduced by the pervasive forces of globalization. " -- -Massimo Lollini University of Oregon

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewLecia Rosenthal’s intricate argument traces the engagement with catastrophe in the work of three exemplary figures, Woolf, Benjamin, and Sebald. She also offers a compelling diagnosis of modernism’s stubborn insistence that catastrophe must offer some form of gain. Rosenthal’s brilliance lies in her refusal to console us. This is a demanding, provocative, and deeply rewarding book.---—Martin Harries, New York UniversityBoldly written and well researched. Rosenthal brings together unexpected materials, drawing convincing lines of connection between seemingly disparate authors and texts. In style, argument, and method, Rosenthal produces knowledge unavailable within convential scholarship. Juxtaposing Benjamin and Sebald with Virginia Woolf produces explosive results.---—Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Columbia University“One cannot read Mourning Modernism without concluding that Rosenthal is on to something, specifically at those moments when she makes catastrophe the object not only of aversion, but of desire.... Mourning Modernism does a good job of demonstrating how a certain apocalyptic imaginary in twentieth-century thought dovetails with more familiarly modernist concerns. In this way, it presents a vision of twentieth-century culture at its absolute limits. The challenge to think beyond these limits is still with us.” * —Modern Cultures *

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Book SynopsisFirst book to address directly the importance of education in Cavell's workTrade Review"Questions about education -- about what it means to learn, as well as to teach -- lie at the very heart of Cavell's revolutionary conception of philosophy, yet until the publication of this superb collection of essays, no book on Cavell has focused squarely on the importance of the theme of education in his work. Anyone interested in Cavell, and not only those who work in the philosophy of education, will want to read, and will have much to learn from, this thought-provoking and illuminating collection." -- -Bernie Rhie Williams College "...I do believe that this book will inspire many educational researchers to investigate further the relationship between their disciplines and their 'parent' disciplines, thereby adding a new set of voices to those 'parent' disciplines and expanding the possibilities of educational studies as well as of the concept of education itself." -Koichiro Misawa, Educational Studies in Japan International Yearbook

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Questions about education -- about what it means to learn, as well as to teach -- lie at the very heart of Cavell's revolutionary conception of philosophy, yet until the publication of this superb collection of essays, no book on Cavell has focused squarely on the importance of the theme of education in his work. Anyone interested in Cavell, and not only those who work in the philosophy of education, will want to read, and will have much to learn from, this thought-provoking and illuminating collection." -- -Bernie Rhie Williams College "...I do believe that this book will inspire many educational researchers to investigate further the relationship between their disciplines and their 'parent' disciplines, thereby adding a new set of voices to those 'parent' disciplines and expanding the possibilities of educational studies as well as of the concept of education itself." -Koichiro Misawa, Educational Studies in Japan International Yearbook

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Book SynopsisExplains Thoreau's philosophical significance and argues that we can still learn from his polemical conception of philosophyTrade Review"For all the rich diversity of these essays about Thoreau, they are bound together by their consistent, and penetrating, attention to the specifically philosophical dimension of his thought. Thoreau is to be taken seriously as a philosopher, as Stanley Cavell, interviewed in the collection, made eloquently clear many years ago. A book with this emphasis is long overdue, and readers will find Thoreau's Importance for Philosophy challenging and illuminating." -- -H. Daniel Peck author of Thoreau's Morning Work "A sustained encounter between Thoreau's sense of philosophy as urgent cultural work--at once ethical, metaphysical, political, aesthetic, epistemological, and religious--and the current dispensations of academic philosophy is long overdue. The learned, genial, and intense guides who here stage this encounter produce a reckoning with Thoreau and with philosophy that is not to be missed." -- -Richard Eldridge Swarthmore College "This book should be of particular interest to those working at the intersection of American philosophy and American literature and, more importantly, to anyone seriously interested in reflecting on philosophy in new ways." -Choice

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Book SynopsisSituating itself within the context of current debates in continental philosophy, and through a series of readings of Aristotle, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derrida to recent developments in life sciences, this book offers a critical enquiry concerning the traditional way of understanding life in the history of metaphysics.Trade Review"A new and compelling voice in philosophy. Garrido develops a profoundly interesting and compelling investigation of the senses of being and temporality. In doing so, he moves beyond philosophies that emphasize traditional ontology and their correlative concept of time." -- -Alejandro Vallega University of Oregon "Garrido makes a real, and highly significant intervention in the ways we commonly think about the phenomenon of life." -- -Rodolphe Gasche University at Buffalo, The State University of New York "Juan Manuel Garrido renews in an impressive way the question concerning 'life.' By the term 'life' we usually mean a sort of immediacy, a self-presence through auto-affection and transmission through self-perpetuation. Garrido, however, opens life -- simply, if I may say so -- to the infinity of a 'being-towards' and a 'hunger': this infinity is not the indefinition of a life that simply 'continues,' but the elevation of life - or its hollowing out, which is the same thing - to being-out-of-itself. This is, in one word, a philosophical revolution." -- -Jean-Luc Nancy

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Book SynopsisThis book addresses the issue of trauma and psychic wounds to stage a confrontation between psychoanalysis and contemporary neurobiology. In so doing, it reevaluates the brain as an organ that is not separated from psychic life but rather appears as its very locus. A philosophical approach of the “new wounded” (brain lesion patients) forms the matter of the confrontation.Trade Review"The first of the 'old wounded,' hysterics suffering from reminiscences, were Freud's co-conspirators in the invention of psychoanalysis. Not only were they its earliest patients and critics; their malady formed the very stuff of psychoanalysis. Malabou identifies a more recent class of 'new wounded'-Alzheimer's patient, autistic children, concentration camp survivors, victims of rape, bombing, natural disasters and brain tumors-who, radically severed from their own past, are devoid not only of reminiscences but of meaning itself. Their maladies, she claims, evacuate the core concepts of psychoanalysis, its original stuff. Friends and foes of Freud's science will be riveted by Malabou's intelligent argument whose destructive thrust produces not merely rubble and dust, more a foam of fascinating new concepts-including cerebrality and destructive plasticity-and strong readings of Freudian texts." -- -Joan Copjec University at Buffalo, SUNY "Malabou draws upon the most current neurological research and contemporary psychoanalytic works, and applies them to a careful, penetrating and convincing reading of Freud's primary texts, in order to fashion her original interpretation." -- -Clayton Crockett University of Central Arkansas What has happened when subjectivity is utterly changed by brain damage? What are the links of war, trauma, and loss of affect? In The New Wounded Catherine Malabou brilliantly shows how 'destructive plasticity' is the key concept for understanding our 'new economy of pain.' Highly recommended for everyone in the fields she so deftly examines: philosophy, psychoanalysis, and neurology." -- -John Protevi Louisiana State UniversityTable of ContentsPreamble Introduction Part One: The Neurological Subordination of Sexuality Introduction: The "New Maps" of Causality 1. Cerebral Auto-Affection 2. Brain Wounds: From the Neurological Novel to the Theater of Absence 3. Identity Without Precedent 4. Psychoanalytic Objection: Can There Be Destruction Without a Drive of Destruction? Part Two: The Neutralization of Cerebrality Introduction: Freud and Preexisting Fault Lines 5. What Is a Psychic Event? 6. The "Libido Theory" and the Otherness of the Sexual to Itself: Traumatic Neurosis and War Neurosis in Question 7. Separation, Death, the Thing, Freud, Lacan, and the Missed Encounter 8. Neurological Objection: Rehabilitating the Event Part Three: On the Beyond of the Pleasure Principle--That it Exists Introduction: Remission at the Risk of Forgetting the Worst 9. The Equivocity of Reparation: From Elasticity to Resilience 10. Toward a Plasticity of the Compulsion to Repeat 11. The Subject of the Accident Conclusion Notes Bibliography

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Book SynopsisThis book addresses the issue of trauma and psychic wounds to stage a confrontation between psychoanalysis and contemporary neurobiology. In so doing, it reevaluates the brain as an organ that is not separated from psychic life but rather appears as its very locus. A philosophical approach of the “new wounded” (brain lesion patients) forms the matter of the confrontation.Trade Review"The first of the 'old wounded,' hysterics suffering from reminiscences, were Freud's co-conspirators in the invention of psychoanalysis. Not only were they its earliest patients and critics; their malady formed the very stuff of psychoanalysis. Malabou identifies a more recent class of 'new wounded'-Alzheimer's patient, autistic children, concentration camp survivors, victims of rape, bombing, natural disasters and brain tumors-who, radically severed from their own past, are devoid not only of reminiscences but of meaning itself. Their maladies, she claims, evacuate the core concepts of psychoanalysis, its original stuff. Friends and foes of Freud's science will be riveted by Malabou's intelligent argument whose destructive thrust produces not merely rubble and dust, more a foam of fascinating new concepts-including cerebrality and destructive plasticity-and strong readings of Freudian texts." -- -Joan Copjec University at Buffalo, SUNY "Malabou draws upon the most current neurological research and contemporary psychoanalytic works, and applies them to a careful, penetrating and convincing reading of Freud's primary texts, in order to fashion her original interpretation." -- -Clayton Crockett University of Central Arkansas What has happened when subjectivity is utterly changed by brain damage? What are the links of war, trauma, and loss of affect? In The New Wounded Catherine Malabou brilliantly shows how 'destructive plasticity' is the key concept for understanding our 'new economy of pain.' Highly recommended for everyone in the fields she so deftly examines: philosophy, psychoanalysis, and neurology." -- -John Protevi Louisiana State UniversityTable of ContentsPreamble Introduction Part One: The Neurological Subordination of Sexuality Introduction: The "New Maps" of Causality 1. Cerebral Auto-Affection 2. Brain Wounds: From the Neurological Novel to the Theater of Absence 3. Identity Without Precedent 4. Psychoanalytic Objection: Can There Be Destruction Without a Drive of Destruction? Part Two: The Neutralization of Cerebrality Introduction: Freud and Preexisting Fault Lines 5. What Is a Psychic Event? 6. The "Libido Theory" and the Otherness of the Sexual to Itself: Traumatic Neurosis and War Neurosis in Question 7. Separation, Death, the Thing, Freud, Lacan, and the Missed Encounter 8. Neurological Objection: Rehabilitating the Event Part Three: On the Beyond of the Pleasure Principle--That it Exists Introduction: Remission at the Risk of Forgetting the Worst 9. The Equivocity of Reparation: From Elasticity to Resilience 10. Toward a Plasticity of the Compulsion to Repeat 11. The Subject of the Accident Conclusion Notes Bibliography

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Book SynopsisThis book examines how the romantic and post-romantic concept of irony provides the means for an uneasy articulation between philosophical thought and literary language. It considers the role played by ironic disruptions in writings by Friedrich Schlegel, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, Jean Paulhan, Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man, and J.M. Coetzee.Trade Review"Timely, provocative, carefully reasoned and argued, and unique in its scope." -- -Elizabeth Rottenberg DePaul University "Irony on Occasion is perhaps the best book on irony written since Kierkegaard's The Concept of Irony in the early nineteenth century." -- -J. Hillis Miller University of California, Irvine

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Book SynopsisThinking about Thinking examines philosophy from a variety of perspectives as a the practice realized by persons who communicate with one another while reflecting about the meaning of human life and thought.Trade ReviewRather than elaborate types, values, classics, or even a phenomenology of conversation, Peperzak draws the reader into an engaging dialogue to rediscover how thought and life can enrich each other. By reconfiguring an array of premodern, modern, and postmodern stances, he presents a mature evaluation of Levinas, human affectivity as an original dative of manifestation that cannot be mastered or exhausted by any conversation, and abundant untimely but eminently applicable wisdom on philosophy’s mediating role in the university and in our culture. In the process we awake from dogmatic and anti-dogmatic slumbers to engage with equal fervor thought and one another. Both his wide circle of grateful readers and newcomers to Peperzak’s oeuvre have much to learn from this stimulating collection.---—Peter Casarella, DePaul University"Thinking about Thinking comprises a set of meditations about the dialogical nature of philosophy and the philosophical life. The fruit of twenty-five years of teaching by a gifted and spirit-filled philosopher, these ten meditations gather around the themes of trust and faith in its several forms, including religious faith and Hegel’s “faith in reason.” As dialogical, philosophizing entails the receiver who is also a responder. Its focus is on the dative case, each participant bringing along the “tradition” that has helped fashion the person he or she is. In effect, it requires the risk that the honest conversation entered into by trusting interlocutors will leave neither party unchanged by the experience. Reading this thoughtful account is itself transformative. It is reminiscent of Foucault’s famous “parrhesiastic contract.”---—Thomas R. Flynn, Emory University

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Book SynopsisThinking about Thinking examines philosophy from a variety of perspectives as a the practice realized by persons who communicate with one another while reflecting about the meaning of human life and thought.Trade ReviewRather than elaborate types, values, classics, or even a phenomenology of conversation, Peperzak draws the reader into an engaging dialogue to rediscover how thought and life can enrich each other. By reconfiguring an array of premodern, modern, and postmodern stances, he presents a mature evaluation of Levinas, human affectivity as an original dative of manifestation that cannot be mastered or exhausted by any conversation, and abundant untimely but eminently applicable wisdom on philosophy’s mediating role in the university and in our culture. In the process we awake from dogmatic and anti-dogmatic slumbers to engage with equal fervor thought and one another. Both his wide circle of grateful readers and newcomers to Peperzak’s oeuvre have much to learn from this stimulating collection.---—Peter Casarella, DePaul University"Thinking about Thinking comprises a set of meditations about the dialogical nature of philosophy and the philosophical life. The fruit of twenty-five years of teaching by a gifted and spirit-filled philosopher, these ten meditations gather around the themes of trust and faith in its several forms, including religious faith and Hegel’s “faith in reason.” As dialogical, philosophizing entails the receiver who is also a responder. Its focus is on the dative case, each participant bringing along the “tradition” that has helped fashion the person he or she is. In effect, it requires the risk that the honest conversation entered into by trusting interlocutors will leave neither party unchanged by the experience. Reading this thoughtful account is itself transformative. It is reminiscent of Foucault’s famous “parrhesiastic contract.”---—Thomas R. Flynn, Emory University

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Book SynopsisThis books offers a philosophical exploration and assessment of the various ways in which human societies have confronted the question of death and mortality. In a very accessible style, the author considers religion’s attempt to make sense of death, science’s attempt to evade death, and philosophy’s attempt to embrace death as a fundamental and defining moment of what it means to be human.Trade Review"There is no question that Francoise Dastur is one of the most important interpreters of the phenomenological tradition. She is, however, a real philosopher in her own right. This fact is nowhere more evident than in her little book on death. Dastur's How are we to Confront Death reminds us of what modern, technological life has made us forget: that the feeling of anxiety in the confrontation with death is deeply connected to the laughter that liberates us from our everyday worries. All of us need this reminder that Francoise Dastur has given us." -- -Leonard Lawlor Pennsylvania State University "An extraordinary little book on a subject of interest quite literally to us all." -- -Michael Naas DePaul University

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Book SynopsisDeath’s Following refuses the call of twentieth-century philosophy to face death heroically, advocating instead the mediocrity of Heidegger’s “they-self” and its inauthentic, distanced relation to death. Through literary criticism and autobiography, the book considers mediocrity the privileged site for imagining eternal absence: mediocrity as practice for being forgotten.Trade Review"My pleasure in reading Death's Following, my pleasure also in the painful truths it kept recalling, is the pleasure of reading something genuinely great. I can't remember the last time a book haunted and changed my thinking so much." -- -William Flesch Brandeis University "...unimpeachably brilliant, a marvelous addition to the discourse about contemporary literature..." -- -Jonathan Freedman University of Michigan

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Book SynopsisThe Singularity of Being offers a Lacanian interpretation on what makes each of us a unique and irreplaceable creature. Focusing on the Lacanian real, it builds a theory of individual distinctiveness while also intervening in critical debates about subjectivity, agency, resistance, the self-other relationship, and effective political and ethical action.Trade Review"... The Singularity of Being never surrenders its distinctly humanist commitment to real lives. In doing so, Ruti reminds us that the opacity of the other, just like the potential opacity of philosophical and psychoanalytic ideas, cannot--and should not--entirely be conjured away." -Los Angeles Review of Books "In a work of truly impressive post-Lacanian scholarship, Mari Ruti has made The Singularity of Being into a unique reading event. Verve and passion mark every page and instantiate in action the contents on the page. One learns, almost experientially, about key Lacanian concepts such as Das Ding, the sublime-in-sublimation, and jouissance. Most importantly, in her brilliant chapter on Love, we learn that we are always in an ethical position relative to the complexities of our desire. There are many books on Lacan. Few offer as rich an experience as The Singularity of Being." -- -Mitchell Wilson Training and Supervising Analyst, The San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis "In this passionate, innovative book, Mari Ruti brings Lacanian psychoanalysis into the twenty-first century. She argues brilliantly for the creativity and fragility of singular beings who are in constant transformation while also changing the social orders in which they are embedded from the inside. Erudite and enjoyable, this book is a must read for all those interested in the future of psychoanalysis as well as in cultural and critical theory." -- -Verena Andermatt Conley Harvard University "In this intense meditation on the possibilities for an ethical life as a creative subject, Mari Ruti extends her previous explorations into the paradoxes of post-Lacanian theory and philosophy. What does it mean to live one's life as a singular human being limited by a finite set of events and cultural imperatives that everywhere create victimhood and injustice? Is the wound of singularity founded on an unassimilable corporeal real trauma enough to serve as foundation for an ethical principle based on desire? Ruti restlessly probes the responses of numerous thinkers- notably Badiou, Santner, and Zizek- to these questions and shows us their limitations as moral philosophers. At the same, she highlights the relevance of their at times uncompromising or extreme positions. Ruti's stubborn resistance to settled notions about trauma, subjectivity, and multiculturalist realities, her discomfort with apocalyptic or utopian solutions, and her personal honesty in struggling with moral imperatives make this work an impressive contribution to moral philosophy and to post-Freudian psychoanalytic critical thought." -- -Lewis Kirshner Harvard University "In her breathtaking new work, Mari Ruti completely transforms our understanding of ambivalence, revealing the role that art plays in the expression of singularity and the role that commodities play in its destruction." -- -Todd McGowan The University of Vermont

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Book SynopsisWithout trust (in other persons, social connections, a host of natural phenomena and events, cultural symbols and structures, historical traditions, and religious or quasi-religious interpretation) no human life is possible. What is trust and how does it unfold in the various dimensions that compose human existence in a world of exhilarating splendor and incomprehensible horror?Trade ReviewThere are relatively few philosophers capable of producing a book like this one. Trust represents the work of a seasoned philosopher who has spent a lot of time thinking through the perennial and fundamental questions that persons interested in the pursuit of genuine wisdom must ask. It is a book that shows remarkable coherence, brevity, and depth. -- Norman Wirzba, Duke Divinity SchoolBy these particular studies of trust as related to society, nature and self, the author leads the reader to a conclusive and original study of trust in philosophy (existential wisdom) as distinct from Cartesian doubt to undergird scientia and to retrieve the traditional philosophical understanding of the centrality of trust for producing philosophy as sapientia (existential wisdom). -- David Tracy, University of Chicago

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Book SynopsisWithout trust (in other persons, social connections, a host of natural phenomena and events, cultural symbols and structures, historical traditions, and religious or quasi-religious interpretation) no human life is possible. What is trust and how does it unfold in the various dimensions that compose human existence in a world of exhilarating splendor and incomprehensible horror?Trade ReviewThere are relatively few philosophers capable of producing a book like this one. Trust represents the work of a seasoned philosopher who has spent a lot of time thinking through the perennial and fundamental questions that persons interested in the pursuit of genuine wisdom must ask. It is a book that shows remarkable coherence, brevity, and depth. -- Norman Wirzba, Duke Divinity SchoolBy these particular studies of trust as related to society, nature and self, the author leads the reader to a conclusive and original study of trust in philosophy (existential wisdom) as distinct from Cartesian doubt to undergird scientia and to retrieve the traditional philosophical understanding of the centrality of trust for producing philosophy as sapientia (existential wisdom). -- David Tracy, University of Chicago

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Book SynopsisMarginal Modernity traces the emergence and dissemination of a new aesthetic paradigm from the periphery to the core of European culture. This “aesthetics of dependency” is distinct from the aesthetics of autonomy and fragmentation usually relied on and provides a different structure, philosophical foundation and historical condition for modernist works.Trade Review"Leonardo Lisi's study is exemplary in that it demonstrates a rare mastery of the diverse areas of research his study intervenes in. He situates his readings in relation to what he sketches as major tendencies of recent scholarship and all of his individual readings are innovative, stringent and of exceptionally high quality." -- -Johnannes Turk Indiana University, Bloomington "...a superb work, extraordinarily learned, original, well-written, and of great importance." -- -J. Hillis Miller University of California, Irvine

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Book SynopsisElaborates the relationship between the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and the cultural critic Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) through close readings of their respective texts as an example of the precariousness of cultural transmission in the present.Trade Review"Not only does McFarland evince himself as an original and compelling interpreter of Nietzsche and Benjamin. He strings key passages together in such a way that his exegetical performance fans out toward both authors, configuring them in an inexorable interface of shared interpretation and critique." -- -Henry Sussman Yale UniversityTable of ContentsPreface vii Abbreviations xiii A Note on Citations xvii Introduction: Walter Benjamin, Friedrich Nietzsche 1 The Forster House 1-Affinity 4-Excelsior! 9 1. Mortal Youth 16 A Youthful Facies 16-The Friend 33-Conversation 43- Heinle 49-Abstand 59 2. Presentation 67 Philology 67-Tragedy 74-Hamlet 83-Socrates 89- Silence 93 3. Inscription 103 Pseudomenon 103-Untimeliness 113-Muri 130- "We Philologists" 143-Asyndeton 155 4. Collaboration 167 Shadow 167-Wanderer 174-Correspondence 180- Demon 190-Caesura 198 5. Mad Maturity 208 "Born posthumously" 208-Conspiracy 219- Eternal Return 227-Gluck 237-Now-Time 241 Conclusion: Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin 249 Transcendental Medicine 249-The Pawnshop 255- The End of All Things 258 Notes 263 Bibliography 301 Index 311

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Book SynopsisTime Travel: The Popular Philosophy of Narrative argues that time travel fiction is a narrative "laboratory," in which essential theoretical questions about storytelling, and by extension about the philosophy of temporality, history, and subjectivity, are represented in the form of literal devices and plots.Trade Review"Time Travel is extremely well research and has a lively style, which is a pleasure to read. Academically, this book is a vital source for anyone researching or studying time-travel literature; for those with a general interest in the theme will enjoy learning about how time travel literature has evolved and how, most importantly, it has engaged us as readers." -Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction "...[a] stimulating contribution to literary theory." -London Review of Books "A fruitful cross-pollination of theory and popular fiction, this is at once a careful genre study and a wide-ranging disquisition on narratology." -- -Rob Latham University of California, Riverside "An ambitious, synthetic book. Wittenberg's brilliance lies in the comprehensive clarity with which he maps different discursive territories, and grasps how he can use time travel fiction to invent and practice, simultaneously, 'a popular philosophy of narrative.'" -- -Paul A. Harris Loyola Marymount University

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Book SynopsisTime Travel: The Popular Philosophy of Narrative argues that time travel fiction is a narrative "laboratory," in which essential theoretical questions about storytelling, and by extension about the philosophy of temporality, history, and subjectivity, are represented in the form of literal devices and plots.Trade Review"Time Travel is extremely well research and has a lively style, which is a pleasure to read. Academically, this book is a vital source for anyone researching or studying time-travel literature; for those with a general interest in the theme will enjoy learning about how time travel literature has evolved and how, most importantly, it has engaged us as readers." -Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction "...[a] stimulating contribution to literary theory." -London Review of Books "A fruitful cross-pollination of theory and popular fiction, this is at once a careful genre study and a wide-ranging disquisition on narratology." -- -Rob Latham University of California, Riverside "An ambitious, synthetic book. Wittenberg's brilliance lies in the comprehensive clarity with which he maps different discursive territories, and grasps how he can use time travel fiction to invent and practice, simultaneously, 'a popular philosophy of narrative.'" -- -Paul A. Harris Loyola Marymount University

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Book SynopsisProvides a unique perspective on cultural life during the German Occupation, & offers crucial insights into the mind and art of one of the most original writers in the second half of the twentieth centuryTrade Review"Everyone seriously interested in the history of French literature and of French intellectual life in general during the 20th century will find a great deal to think about in these book reviews, regularly composed by Maurice Blanchot at the major turning point in his own life, when his defeated country lost its bearings altogether and no one could feel confident about the value of cultural traditions or the purpose of thinking and writing. How to survive this disaster, interpret it, use it? Michael Holland's instructive introduction to this collection, and his excellent translations provide not only additional material on which to base an appraisal of Blanchot's political and literary itinerary, but also a remarkable contribution to the picture still coming into focus of the French disaster in the 1940s --of the various reconnoiterings, compromises, conversions, commitments that would color French letters well into the second half of the twentieth century." -- -Ann Smock University of California, Berkeley "...an extraordinarily diverse and colourful series of critical essays, in which works of lasting quality and significance sit alongside others which have been justifiably forgotten, and where friendship and loyalty toward those who share Blanchot's ideals play a decisive role in shaping his attention and his choices. Though given piquancy by the sometimes haughty verve always present in them to some degree, the articles also celebrate in sometimes ecstatic tones the pure joy and consolation that literature can bring." -- -Michael Holland from the Introduction "What did Blanchot do, as a writer, during World War II? If this was a time of 'withdrawal,' as is often said, it was not a time of silence. The critical reflections and book reviews collected here reveal a writer in crisis who found it imperative to call on the public to read, and to think. In doing so, he continued to write in one of the only ways he knew how: by traversing a contemporary literary landscape shaped by war, conflict and defeat. This position is marked by compromise, to be sure. At the same time, Into Disaster resounds with a critical voice caught up in the urgency of literature experienced as the urgency of an unfolding history, and as one response to a moment in which no easy or adequate response was possible. These brief essays are tensed by the forces that wrought them." -- -Jeff Fort University of California, Davis "Michael Holland has brought a most valuable set of essays into English, masterfully providing new resources for approaching the emergence of what will become one of the most important literary voices of the post-war period. Into Disaster presents a thought obscurely defined by circumstances and separating from them in ways that are, in varying measure, problematic, enigmatic, and decisive. These efforts to uphold the exigencies of literature in uncertain hours provide a gripping reading experience." -- -Christopher Fynsk University of Aberdeen "Maurice Blanchot has remained our essential contemporary, and the best literary educator ever, because he is always thinking 'absolutely' while addressing the most burning issues of war-time France like terror, fascism and the degradation of humanity." -- -Jean-Michel Rabate University of Pennsylvania

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Book SynopsisProvides a unique perspective on cultural life during the German Occupation, & offers crucial insights into the mind and art of one of the most original writers in the second half of the twentieth centuryTrade Review“Maurice Blanchot became the greatest literary critic in Europe in the second half of the twentieth century. Here, though, in these early pieces, we find him as a reviewer. And what a reviewer he is! Things emerge in what is always a strange light,’ he writes. This is the light that literature casts, he comes to think. We read these reviews with admiration: their like could never appear in today’s papers. And, when we look at them with political lenses, we learn a great deal about mid-century French political culture. Michael Holland has translated them beautifully, and his Introduction is superb.”---—Kevin Hart, The University of VirginiaThis invaluable collection of articles and reviews, translated into English for the first time, provides a fascinating portrait of a critic operating under duress: working at speed for a once prestigious newspaper now in the pay of the Vichy state, at a time when Nazism’s grip on French intellectual life was growing ever tighter, and with the enduring sense, shared by others, that in circumstances such as these the better part of honour might be silence. And yet, throughout this bleak year of 1942, with imperious insight, subtle eloquence, and coded indirection, Blanchot continued to write, responding to the madness of the day, but searching too beyond the horizon of the day. For in each of these essays this is the discreet, barely audible question Blanchot’s criticism strives to answer: under what conditions might literature, in its resistance to political appropriation, thereby become a more radical form of resistance? And if so, what alternative politics does it announce, and what demands does it make on readers, writers, and critics alike?---—Leslie Hill, University of Warwick

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Book SynopsisOffers a sustained reading of Blanchot's The Step Not Beyond that is prepared by interpretive presentations of a number of his important writings of the post-war periodTrade Review"The itinerary of Last Steps is unique and initially surprising: the ethico-political import of Blanchot's postwar writings, and particularly The Step Not Beyond. But in the course of this brilliant and compelling reading, Christopher Fynsk demonstrates that Blanchot's political engagement is central not just to his thinking about resistance or community or the events of 1968 but to everything from his views on freedom, justice, and messianic hope, to his practices of reading, critical vigilance, and fragmentary writing. No one is more capable than Fynsk of taking on these difficult subjects, and no one writes on Blanchot with this degree of erudition, rigor, patience, and sensitivity to the complexity and nuances of Blanchot's writing as well as to everything that resists interpretation and must remain unspoken within it. This is a remarkable work of criticism about one of the twentieth century's most remarkable writers." -- -Michael Naas, DePaul Univesity DePaul University "Christopher Fynsk in Last Steps offers a strikingly original and subtly captivating account of some of Maurice Blanchot's most challenging work and demonstrates with acute sympathy and incisive intelligence its far-reaching significance for philosophy and literature today." -- -Leslie Hill University of Warwick

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Book SynopsisStudies in the philosophy of John Dewey, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Santayana and Native American philosophy that argue for an ecological, aesthetic form of philosophy.Trade Review"This book represents a significant contribution to knowledge in its treatment of familiar figures and in its own tapestry-type approach. It is wide both in scope and in scholarship and will be a welcome addition to any philosopher, especially in the American tradition." -- -William T. Myers Birmingham-Southern College "This is a masterful piece of writing. The author's wide range of knowledge is matched by a dexterity in writing-both of which are enviable." -- -John Kaag University of Massachusetts-Lowell

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Book SynopsisPrivate Lives, Public Deaths draws on classical studies, Hegel, and modern philosophical analyses to describe how Sophocle’s tragedy Antigone expresses a key concern of ancient Greek culture: the value of a living individual.Trade Review“Strauss’s monograph stands as a unique contribution that will be impossible to ignore for many years to come. The reason is that Strauss does not simply do an analysis of Sophocles’ play, nor does he merely review the literature—although his readings of both the play and the literature are exemplary. In addition, Strauss constructs Antigone as a figure or a concept that is essential today in order to comprehend our individuality as well as the political.” ---—Dimitris Vardoulakis, University of Western SidneyTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Note on Transliterations Introduction: Tragedy, the City, and Its Dead 1. Two Orders of Individuality 2. The Citizen 3. Loss Embodied 4. States of Exclusion 5. Inventing Life 6. Mourning, Longing, Loving 7. Exit Tragedy appendixes Appendix A: Summary of Sophocles's Labdacid Cycle Appendix B: Timeline of Relevant Events in Ancient Greece Notes Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisPrivate Lives, Public Deaths draws on classical studies, Hegel, and modern philosophical analyses to describe how Sophocle’s tragedy Antigone expresses a key concern of ancient Greek culture: the value of a living individual.Trade Review“Strauss’s monograph stands as a unique contribution that will be impossible to ignore for many years to come. The reason is that Strauss does not simply do an analysis of Sophocles’ play, nor does he merely review the literature—although his readings of both the play and the literature are exemplary. In addition, Strauss constructs Antigone as a figure or a concept that is essential today in order to comprehend our individuality as well as the political.” ---—Dimitris Vardoulakis, University of Western SidneyTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Note on Transliterations Introduction: Tragedy, the City, and Its Dead 1. Two Orders of Individuality 2. The Citizen 3. Loss Embodied 4. States of Exclusion 5. Inventing Life 6. Mourning, Longing, Loving 7. Exit Tragedy appendixes Appendix A: Summary of Sophocles's Labdacid Cycle Appendix B: Timeline of Relevant Events in Ancient Greece Notes Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisA collection of essays devoted to the concept of hospitality from different disciplinary perspectives such as philosophy, politics, anthropology, aesthetics, ethics, and translation studies.Trade Review"The book proves to be valuable to researchers, students and teachers in the field of Hospitality Studies and is a substantial contribution to our understanding of the extent to which 'conditions' of hospitality emerged as a new academic field in the twenty-first century." -- -Arleen Ionescu Word and Text "A timely constellation of trenchant statements on one of the most ancient and most sacred human conventions. In an increasingly inhospitable world, this is an opportune and eloquent volume on hospitality as institution, as political act, and as ethical practice. An invaluable touchstone for interdisciplinary study of the subject." -- -Djelal Kadir Pennsylvania State University "This volume does something new with hospitality, reanimating and redeploying it in ethical, political, and aesthetic directions. Its effect is prismatic: It brings together and then reflects, refracts, and redistributes hospitality across the intellectual spectrum of philosophy, political theory, and cultural studies." -- -William Robert Syracuse University "Globalization has brought us instant forms of communication and diverse networks of connectivity. But has it made us better neighbours to each other? Have we evolved new ethical and political forms of hospitality to accompany the crossing of borders, the subduing of national and regional sovereignties, as we take our first, faltering steps towards an international civil society? These essays raise questions fundamental to our political condition. But they do more than that. They make a compelling case for an aesthetic and ethical enhancement of our sense of political rights and responsibilities." -- -Homi K. Bhabha Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University

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Book SynopsisA collection of essays devoted to the concept of hospitality from different disciplinary perspectives such as philosophy, politics, anthropology, aesthetics, ethics, and translation studies.Trade Review"The book proves to be valuable to researchers, students and teachers in the field of Hospitality Studies and is a substantial contribution to our understanding of the extent to which 'conditions' of hospitality emerged as a new academic field in the twenty-first century." -- -Arleen Ionescu Word and Text "A timely constellation of trenchant statements on one of the most ancient and most sacred human conventions. In an increasingly inhospitable world, this is an opportune and eloquent volume on hospitality as institution, as political act, and as ethical practice. An invaluable touchstone for interdisciplinary study of the subject." -- -Djelal Kadir Pennsylvania State University "This volume does something new with hospitality, reanimating and redeploying it in ethical, political, and aesthetic directions. Its effect is prismatic: It brings together and then reflects, refracts, and redistributes hospitality across the intellectual spectrum of philosophy, political theory, and cultural studies." -- -William Robert Syracuse University "Globalization has brought us instant forms of communication and diverse networks of connectivity. But has it made us better neighbours to each other? Have we evolved new ethical and political forms of hospitality to accompany the crossing of borders, the subduing of national and regional sovereignties, as we take our first, faltering steps towards an international civil society? These essays raise questions fundamental to our political condition. But they do more than that. They make a compelling case for an aesthetic and ethical enhancement of our sense of political rights and responsibilities." -- -Homi K. Bhabha Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University

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Book SynopsisA detailed analysis of nihilism in Nietzsche's works

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Book SynopsisAsks how history can be related to the future and to that end, it examines the issue of how determination works.Trade Review"This is a thoughtful and absorbing reflection on the subtle modalities of memory-cultural, psychological, political -in the modern period. At a time when we are all experiencing a surfeit of memory, Sarah Clift injects a new rigor and lucidity into the discussion." -- -Rebecca Comay University of Toronto "Through the originality of her questions, her deft combination of close reading and conceptual generalization, the patience and lucidity of her analyses, and the remarkable surefootedness of her argumentation, Sarah Clift has succeeded in reinvigorating the interpretation of important works by Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, John Locke, G. W. F. Hegel, and Maurice Blanchot. Her book will be of vital interest to political theorists, philosophers, literary critics, and intellectual historians, and may help to transform the discussion of fundamental issues they confront, most notably the relation between history and memory." -- -Thomas Trezise Princeton UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction 1 Narrative life span, in the wake: Benjamin and Arendt 2 Memory in Theory: The Childhood Memories of John Locke (Persons, Parrots) 3 Mourning Memory: The "End" of Art or, Reading (in) the Spirit of Hegel 4 Speculating on the past, the impact of the present: Hegel and his time(s) 5 In Lieu of a Last Word: Maurice Blanchot and the Future of Memory (today) Endnotes Bibliography

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Book SynopsisThrough an engagement with the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Julia Kristeva, and Jacques Derrida, this book argues for a rethinking of the concept of narcissism and aims to wrest it from its common and pejorative meanings, egoism and vanity, revealing the complexity and importance of this notion.Trade Review"A fascinating book... highly recommend." -Choice "Deftly working at the intersection of philosophy, psychoanalysis, and literature, DeArmitt makes a fascinating case for self-love, or narcissism. With subtle and incisive readings of Rousseau, Kristeva and Derrida, DeArmitt shows the necessity for rethinking narcissism as an ethics of otherness." -- -Kelly Oliver Vanderbilt University "Pleshette DeArmitt's gem of a book, The Right to Narcissism, makes a cogent, timely, and well-crafted case in support of reclaiming the concept of narcissism from the pejorative meanings with which it has most commonly been associated for much of the modern era." -- -Elissa Marder Emory UniversityTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: The Right to Narcissism? Part I. Rousseau: The Passions of Narcissus Introduction: Another Morality Tale? 1. Man's Double Birth 2. Regarding Self-Love Anew Part II. Kristeva: The Rebirth of Narcissus Introduction: Self-Love-Beyond Sin, Symptoms, and Sublime Values 3. Reconceiving Freud's Narcissus 4. Transference, or Amorous Dynamics Part III. Derrida: The Mourning of Narcissus Introduction: The Very Concept of Narcissism 5. The Eye of Narcissus 6. The Ear of Echo Afterword: By What Right? Notes Bibliography

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Book Synopsisthe essential reference for those seeking to understand the most profound registers of this major American thinker.Trade Review"Generations of scholars have given attention to various writings by W.E.B. Du Bois. Few of us, however, have had the courage, determination, and fortitude to inhabit the whole of his historically-situated oeuvre in order to think with Du Bois as he thought. Nahum Chandler, an exemplary critical hermeneuticist, continues to live an inhabitation of Du Bois' thought. And through his critical commentary on Du Bois' "essential early essays" that he has assembled in The Problem of the Color Line at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, Chandler calls us to the responsibility to forge enhanced, even new, appreciations of Du Bois' articulated thought, and to "grappling in thought and critical reflection with the implacable matters of existence in our time." In reading these essays via an inhabitation, one cannot but experience the profound ethical and intellectual forcefulness of Chandler's inhabitation and calling." -- -Lucius T. Outlaw Vanderbilt University "This definitive collection of W. E. B. Du Bois's early essays, some having never appeared in print before, is not just another anthology among the hundreds. It is a seminal contribution to the history of modern thought. Compiled and edited by the world's preeminent scholar of early Du Boisian thought, these texts represent his most generative period, when Du Bois engaged every discipline, helped construct modern social science, employed critical inquiry as a weapon of antiracism and political liberation, and always set his sites on the entire world. We know this not by the essays alone, but by Nahum Dimitri Chandler's brilliant, original, and quite riveting introduction. If you are coming to Du Bois for the first time of the 500th time, this book is a must-read." -- -Robin D. G. Kelley author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination "Chandler's collection makes available, for the first time, a systematic, chronological tour of Du Bois's evolving vision of the global color line, as that vision was developed in the crucial opening years of his publishing life. Students ... can follow here the trajectory of this influential intellectual project, step by step. This volume provides a revelatory point of entry into the early thought of Du Bois and a valuable resource for all those interested in African American intellectual history and the sociology of race." -- -Seth Moglen Lehigh UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction by Nahum Dimitri Chandler i-xliv 1894 1. The Afro-American (circa 1894) 1897 2. The Conservation of Races (1897) 3. Strivings of the Negro People (1897) 1898 4. The Study of the Negro Problems (1898) 1900 5. The Present Outlook for the Dark Races of Mankind (1900) 6. The Spirit of Modern Europe (1900) 1901 7. The Freedmen's Bureau (1901) 8. The Relation of the Negroes to the Whites in the South (1901) 1903 9. The Talented Tenth (1903) 1904 10. The Development of a People (1904) 1905 11. Sociology Hesitant (circa 1905) 1906 12. Die Negerfrage in den Vereinigten Staaten (The Negro Question in the United States) (1906) References Acknowledgements

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Book Synopsisthe essential reference for those seeking to understand the most profound registers of this major American thinker.Trade Review"Generations of scholars have given attention to various writings by W.E.B. Du Bois. Few of us, however, have had the courage, determination, and fortitude to inhabit the whole of his historically-situated oeuvre in order to think with Du Bois as he thought. Nahum Chandler, an exemplary critical hermeneuticist, continues to live an inhabitation of Du Bois' thought. And through his critical commentary on Du Bois' "essential early essays" that he has assembled in The Problem of the Color Line at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, Chandler calls us to the responsibility to forge enhanced, even new, appreciations of Du Bois' articulated thought, and to "grappling in thought and critical reflection with the implacable matters of existence in our time." In reading these essays via an inhabitation, one cannot but experience the profound ethical and intellectual forcefulness of Chandler's inhabitation and calling." -- -Lucius T. Outlaw Vanderbilt University "This definitive collection of W. E. B. Du Bois's early essays, some having never appeared in print before, is not just another anthology among the hundreds. It is a seminal contribution to the history of modern thought. Compiled and edited by the world's preeminent scholar of early Du Boisian thought, these texts represent his most generative period, when Du Bois engaged every discipline, helped construct modern social science, employed critical inquiry as a weapon of antiracism and political liberation, and always set his sites on the entire world. We know this not by the essays alone, but by Nahum Dimitri Chandler's brilliant, original, and quite riveting introduction. If you are coming to Du Bois for the first time of the 500th time, this book is a must-read." -- -Robin D. G. Kelley author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination "Chandler's collection makes available, for the first time, a systematic, chronological tour of Du Bois's evolving vision of the global color line, as that vision was developed in the crucial opening years of his publishing life. Students ... can follow here the trajectory of this influential intellectual project, step by step. This volume provides a revelatory point of entry into the early thought of Du Bois and a valuable resource for all those interested in African American intellectual history and the sociology of race." -- -Seth Moglen Lehigh UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction by Nahum Dimitri Chandler i-xliv 1894 1. The Afro-American (circa 1894) 1897 2. The Conservation of Races (1897) 3. Strivings of the Negro People (1897) 1898 4. The Study of the Negro Problems (1898) 1900 5. The Present Outlook for the Dark Races of Mankind (1900) 6. The Spirit of Modern Europe (1900) 1901 7. The Freedmen's Bureau (1901) 8. The Relation of the Negroes to the Whites in the South (1901) 1903 9. The Talented Tenth (1903) 1904 10. The Development of a People (1904) 1905 11. Sociology Hesitant (circa 1905) 1906 12. Die Negerfrage in den Vereinigten Staaten (The Negro Question in the United States) (1906) References Acknowledgements

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Book SynopsisThe notion of a weak Messianic power serves as the focal point for this study of theological, materialist, poetic, and post-Freudian psychoanalytic approaches to time and the historical unconscious in the work of Benjamin, Celan and Derrida.Trade Review"The readings in A Weak Messianic Power are subtle and full of unexpected turns, and many are tours de force acts of deconstruction. Levine reads over, almost over the shoulder of, great critical readers, Derrida, Celan, Benjamin, exposing in their writing a wealth of images not apparent to the naked eye. The method is almost astronomical: it brings near the distant contours of a strange temporal figure-a non-homogenous, surprising time. The book offers a strong notion of messianism outside theology, the messianism of the small alteration." -- -Paul North Yale UniversityTable of ContentsList of Figures Acknowledgments 1. A Time to Come: Hunchbacked Theology, Post-Freudian Psychoanalysis, and Historical Materialism 2. The Day the Sun Stood Still: Benjamin's Theses, Celan's Realignments, Trauma, and the Eichmann Trial 3. Pendant: Celan, Buchner, and the Terrible Voice of the Meridian 4. On the Stroke of Circumcision I: Derrida, Celan, and the Covenant of the Word 5. On the Stroke of Circumcision II: Celan, Kafka, and the Wound in the Name 6. Poetry's Demands and Abrahamic Sacrifice: Celan's Poems for Eric Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisExplores the relation between religion, philosophy and literature.Trade Review"Material Spirit will be a stimulating read for anyone who takes immanence seriously in, and especially across, philosophical, religious, literary, and cultural registers. Rather than rehearsing well-worn arguments or rehashing old debates, the contributors innovatively interpret the titular phrase, combining disciplines, methods, texts, and topics as seemingly unlikely, but as ultimately provocative, as the phrase 'material spirit.'" -- -William Robert Syracuse University "The contributions to Material Spirit are original, compelling, and beautifully interwoven. Together, they carve out a space that is neither religious nor not-religious, avoiding the dangers of unreconstructed immanence on the one hand and escapist transcendence on the other." -- -Mary-Jane Rubenstein Wesleyan UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction Gregory Stallings, Manuel Asensi, and Carl Good Eucharistic Imaginings in Proust and Woolf Richard Kearney Impossible Confessions Karmen MacKendrick The Third Life of Saint Teresa of Jesus Manuel Asensi Renunciation and Absorption: On the Dimensionality of Baroque Asceticism Burcht Pranger "For the Life Was Manifested" Kevin Hart Augustine, Rosenzweig, and the Possibility of Experiencing Miracle Virginia Burrus "Come forth into the light of things": Material Spirit as Negative Ecopoetics Kate Rigby The Angel and the Storm: "Material Spirit" in the Era of Climate Change Tom Cohen The Material Working of Spirit J. Hillis Miller Notes Bibliography List of Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisKant has taken seriously, as no one else in the history of philosophy did, the existence of extraterrestrials. Their central role in his thought allows for a new approach of cosmopolitanism, in a tight dialogue with Carl Schmitt. At stake is a geopolitics of the sensible.Trade Review"Among the vast body of scholarship that explores the Kantian theory of space, none does so with greater urgency, concision, and wit than Kant in the Land of Extraterrestrials. It is especially innovative not only in its examination of the theme of extraterritoriality but also in its staging of the confrontation between Kant and Schmitt over the origin and fate of so-called outer space." -- -Peter Fenves Northwestern University "Kant in the Land of Extraterrestrials charts an original and compelling path from Schmitt to Kant, science fiction and Derrida, bringing to light the fantastical yet persistently unsettling role played by fictions of extraterritoriality in the philosophical elaboration of modern cosmopolitanism." -- -Daniel Heller-Roazen Princeton University "Regardless of whether Kant really believed in little green men, Kant in the Land of Extraterrestrials is a timely contribution to a bourgeoning field of inquiry." -Journal of the Fantastic in the ArtsTable of ContentsContents 1. A Little Bit of Tourism 2. Star Wars 3. Kant in the Land of Extraterrestrials 4. Cosmetics and Cosmopolitics 5. Weightlessness (The Archimedean Point of the Sensible) 6. Postface: What's Left of Cosmopolitanism? Notes

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Book SynopsisAn analysis of the history and social role of mobile phones today (with an enhancement of their primary writing function) is followed by a proposal of a philosophical theory of objects, which is meant to be complementary to Searle’s ‘collective intentionality’, that places writing at the basis of social reality.Trade Review"Where Are You? An Ontology of the Cell Phone offers an ontology and phenomenology of the cell phone that draws as easily on popular culture and our daily experience of the cell phone, as it does on Ferrari's considerable philosophical culture. In one moment, Ferraris speculates how differently the ending of Dr. Zhivago might have played out in the age of the cell phone, and in the next, argues that the cell phone is the absolute emblem of the age not of the triumph of the image, as has so often been claimed, but of 'the explosion of writing.'" -- -Barbara Spackman University of California, Berkeley "Ferraris' book does what good philosophy always did: it interprets the world where we live making the mundane critically visible. When most people still assumed that mobile phones would mark the triumph of oral communication, Ferraris took the chance to put his philosophy to test and predict the triumph of writing, over speaking, in the new technological world. Contracts, weddings, and all the other Social Objects-- material products of our ability to write and record-- take the central stage in a philosophical move that gives back to the virtual its reality. For the initiated, Ferraris reopens the debate between Searl and Derrida without the animosity of the original participants, proving that under the discussion there was true substance and that both authors are as relevant today as they were in the early seventies. The book should be an elective reading for iOS and Android fans alike and a required text for philosophers, literary critics and telecommunication engineers." -- -Emanuel Rota University of IllinoisTable of ContentsForeword by Umberto Eco Where Are You? The Pharaoh's Mobile Phone Writing Recording Constructing Realism and Textualism Weak Textualism Notes Index

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Book SynopsisFor Strasbourg consists of a series of essays and interviews by French philosopher and literary theorist Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) about the city of Strasbourg and the philosophical friendships he developed there over a forty year period. It is a profound interrogation of the relationship between philosophy and place, philosophy and language, and philosophy and friendship.Trade Review"Derrida did not plan to publish For Strasbourg, but it is an illuminating addition to his legacy," -Times Literary Supplement "This volume gathers some of Derrida's last texts, from 2002 to 2004, as he was engaged in fascinating discussions with Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe about questions of sovereignty, event, responsibility, friendship, hospitality, singularity, community, the people, the human and animality, and his own relation to Heidegger and to the "Strasbourg school." More poignantly, Derrida develops extraordinary meditations on death, on his own death, on dying alone or together, on survival and disappearance, on eternity, immortality and finitude, returning to the notions of trace, spectrality, and mourning. This is a moving and extraordinarily rich volume, which reveals Derrida's final philosophical reflections." -- -Francois Raffoul Louisiana State UniversityTable of ContentsTranslators' Preface 1. The place name(s): Strasbourg 2. Discussion between Jacques Derrida, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, and Jean-Luc Nancy 3. Opening 4. Responsibility-Of the Sense to Come

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Book SynopsisBenjamin’s Passages: Dreaming, Awakening is focused on central issues of Benjamin’s later work: the interplay of aesthetics and politics; the conception of language; the fading of aura and its relation to image; citation in The Arcades Project; the status of messianism; the motifs of memory, the crowd, and awakening.Trade Review"Alex Gelley's interpretation of the Passagenwerk is the work of a lifetime concentrated as a gem. While commentaries were multiplying at exponential rate, he kept meditating and researching. The result is a unique resurrection of Benjamin's practice of "puzzling the world together", around the antithetic themes of liberating the powers of dream and anticipating the day of awakening. Whoever thought to have understood Benjamin should pause and read Gelley first." -- -Etienne Balibar author of Equaliberty "Alexander Gelley's book offers an extremely subtle and persuasive reading of Benjamin's later work, fully attentive to its fragmentary nature but also deftly linking it to all of the writer's continuing philosophical preoccupations. The study does not situate Benjamin narrowly within his own historical time, but neither does it fold him into a single later view. What Gelley traces for us are the work's own invitations to its afterlife, and in this context he writes strikingly of Benjamin's dream of 'situating phenomena in the light of their historical lapse'. Benjamin speaks of 'the whole contradictory foundation' of his convictions, and this book allows us to begin to grasp that foundation without betraying any of its contradictions." -- -Michael Wood Princeton University "A major achievement, 'Benjamin's Passages' is an invaluable contribution to Benjamin studies and all the fields connected with it. " -- -Michael G. Levine Rutgers UniversityTable of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Contexts of the Aesthetic 2. Epigones in the House of Language: Benjamin on Kraus 3. Benjamin on Atget: Empty Streets and the Fading of Aura 4. Entering the Passagen 5. Citation as Incitation: The Political Agenda of the Passagenarbeit 6. Messianism, "Weak" and Otherwise 7. Forgetting, Dreaming, Awakening Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisBenjamin’s Passages: Dreaming, Awakening is focused on central issues of Benjamin’s later work: the interplay of aesthetics and politics; the conception of language; the fading of aura and its relation to image; citation in The Arcades Project; the status of messianism; the motifs of memory, the crowd, and awakening.Trade Review"Alex Gelley's interpretation of the Passagenwerk is the work of a lifetime concentrated as a gem. While commentaries were multiplying at exponential rate, he kept meditating and researching. The result is a unique resurrection of Benjamin's practice of "puzzling the world together", around the antithetic themes of liberating the powers of dream and anticipating the day of awakening. Whoever thought to have understood Benjamin should pause and read Gelley first." -- -Etienne Balibar author of Equaliberty "Alexander Gelley's book offers an extremely subtle and persuasive reading of Benjamin's later work, fully attentive to its fragmentary nature but also deftly linking it to all of the writer's continuing philosophical preoccupations. The study does not situate Benjamin narrowly within his own historical time, but neither does it fold him into a single later view. What Gelley traces for us are the work's own invitations to its afterlife, and in this context he writes strikingly of Benjamin's dream of 'situating phenomena in the light of their historical lapse'. Benjamin speaks of 'the whole contradictory foundation' of his convictions, and this book allows us to begin to grasp that foundation without betraying any of its contradictions." -- -Michael Wood Princeton University "A major achievement, 'Benjamin's Passages' is an invaluable contribution to Benjamin studies and all the fields connected with it. " -- -Michael G. Levine Rutgers UniversityTable of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Contexts of the Aesthetic 2. Epigones in the House of Language: Benjamin on Kraus 3. Benjamin on Atget: Empty Streets and the Fading of Aura 4. Entering the Passagen 5. Citation as Incitation: The Political Agenda of the Passagenarbeit 6. Messianism, "Weak" and Otherwise 7. Forgetting, Dreaming, Awakening Works Cited Index

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