Philosophy Books

Book SynopsisTranslation of a posthumous work by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe on Maurice Blanchot. Discusses such topics as literature, myth, the experience of death, autobiography, metaphysics, psychoanalysis, and deconstruction, as well as the political and ethical implications thereof.Trade Review"Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's vigilant engagement with Blanchot's late 'autobiographical' texts is a piercing testimony to the originality and power of a writer whose significance should be beyond dispute. For those who prize close reading, Ending and Unending Agony will be both an inspiration and a delight." -- -Kevin Hart University of Virginia "As it makes its way, in a manner that is painstakingly attentive and demanding, through two texts by Maurice Blanchot (The Instant of My Death and "(A Primal Scene?)"), Ending and Unending Agony explores the relationship between "dying" and "writing": Does not each hold the truth of the other as they relate to the immemorial? That which never took place and of which there is neither memory nor forgetting is also that which binds us to the extremity of sense, where sense renders itself absent. What is at stake as this limit is reached? Can one speak of "myth"-something Blanchot had ruled out long ago-or rather of an experience which no one can experience but which nevertheless leaves a trace? Such are some of the questions to which English-speaking audiences may now direct their attention thanks to this translation of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's book on Blanchot." -- -Jean-Luc Nancy University Marc Bloch, Strasbourg "Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, writer, thinker, translator and interpreter of Holderlin, Heidegger, and Benjamin, was also one of Maurice Blanchot's most constant, scrupulous, and uncompromising readers. In this book on death's interruptions, itself interrupted by death, he provides an incisive, rigorous, and illuminating account of the work of one of the twentieth-century's most incisive, rigorous, and illuminating thinkers. It is powerful testimony to the enduring contemporaneity of an unending dialogue exploring with remarkable originality the possibilities and impossibilities of writing and its critical relationship with literature, philosophy, and politics." -- -Leslie Hill University of WarwickTable of ContentsTranslator's Note Acknowledgements Introduction Leonid Kharlamov and Aristide Bianchi Ending and Unending Agony (on Maurice Blanchot) Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe Foreword I. "The Secret Miracle" (20 July?) Fidelities The Contestation of Death Annexes 1. Birth is Death 2. The Agony of Religion II. Ending and Unending Agony (22 September?) Ending and Unending Agony Appendix [In 1976, Malraux...] Interview with Pascal Possoz Dismay Bibliographical Note Index of Names

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book brings together a group of Judith Butler's philosophical essays written over two decades that elaborate her reflections on the roles of the passions in subject-formation through an engagement with Hegel, Kierkegaard, Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche, Merleau-Ponty, Freud, Irigaray and Fanon.Trade Review"Judith Butler's reading of major works on the construction of the subject, ranging from Descartes and Spinoza to Irigaray and Fanon, intertwines three projects, which prove intimately related: a symptomatic reading of texts, where the materiality of their writing reveals a permanent uncertainty about the "sovereignty" or "autonomy" that they claim; a phenomenology of the affective "third substance" which, being neither mind nor body, must also encroach on both; and a critique of normative ontological binarisms which, in particular, confuse sexual otherness with a difference of given places. In this account of the latent "sensible" mover of metaphysics, she also gives an account of herself as incarnated thinker, beautifully complex and inventive. Her book will generate admiration and continuous reflection." -- -Etienne Balibar author of Equaliberty "With this inspiring book--simultaneously a philosophical dispossession of philosophy, a paean to sensation and an affirmation of the 'radically impossible venture' of ethics and politics--[Butler] edges towards a palpable, outward-looking alternative to philosophical chest beating." -Times Higher Education "In this exceptional collection, Judith Butler displays the unusually vivid, even startling insight that makes her indisputably the world's most interesting contemporary philosopher. These lucid essays climb in and out of the me, the her, the you, dream and reality, subject, object, nature and the preternatural, meaning and its deadly discontents. Butler wrestles the narratives of embodiment into language that lives." -- -Patricia J. Williams Columbia Law School "Butler concludes the Introduction to this book thus: 'Acted on, I act still, but it is hardly this "I" that acts alone, and even though, and precisely because, it never gets done with being undone.' In these eloquent, passionately dialectical, and vertiginous essays, Butler relentlessly tracks our being undone by others, by language, by things, by institutions, and by the normative formations that hold us upright beyond our standing upright in the writings of, among others, Descartes, Spinoza, Hegel, Merleau Ponty, Irigaray, and Fanon. This is echt Butler: a necessity for those who already know her work, and a generous point of entry for those philosophers who have yet to find their way to her thought." -- -J. M. Bernstein The New School for Social ResearchTable of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments "How Can I Deny That These Hands and This Body Are Mine?" Merleau-Ponty and the Touch of Malebranche The Desire to Live: Spinoza's Ethics under Pressure To Sense What Is Living in the Other: Hegel's Early Love Kierkegaard's Speculative Despair Sexual Difference as a Question of Ethics: Alterities of the Flesh in Irigary and Merleau-Ponty Violence, Non-Violence: Sartre on Fanon Notes Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisA book of interviews with contemporary French phenomenologists; introduces the reader to the present state of contemporary French phenomenology in all its dimensions through the voices of its most significant figures living today.Trade Review"Eureka! Here's a book that we - teachers, students and readers - have all been waiting for: hearing the 'new phenomenologists' in conversation. There is no better way to begin a study of the recent irruptions in phenomenology than to read this book." -- -Kevin Hart University of VirginiaTable of ContentsContents: Foreword by Richard Kearney Acknowledgments References and Citations Contributors Introduction Jean-Francois Courtine French Phenomenology in Historical Context Jean-Luc Marion The Phenomenology of Givenness Claude Romano The Fundamental Concepts of Phenomenology Jocelyn Benoist Contextualism, Realism, and the the Limits of Husserlian Intentionality Michel Henry Material Phenomenology Renaud Barbaras The Phenomenology of Life Francoise Dastur Phenomenology and Finitude Jean-Yves Lacoste Phenomenology and the Frontier Emmanuel Falque The Collision of Phenomenology and Theology Jean-Louis Chretien Attempting to Thing Beyond Subjectivity Author Bibliographies Books Introductory Annotated Bibliographies English, German, and French Introductions to Phenomenology Key Terms and References List of Contributors Index

Read more less