Western philosophy from c 1800 Books
Taylor & Francis Mysticism and Logic
Book SynopsisâœTo abandon the struggle for private happiness, to expel all eagerness of temporary desire, to burn with passion for eternal things â this is emancipation, and this is the free man's worship.â âBertrand RussellMysticism and Logic is one of Russell's most celebrated collection of essays. They not only set the tone for analytical philosophy in the English-speaking world but are Russell's first proper foray into the role of public philosopher, one he would occupy for years to come. Both scientific and romantic, Russell explores and unpacks, in his inimitable pellucid prose, some of the thorniest problems and puzzles in philosophy. These include different ways of knowing something, the foundations of mathematics, the ultimate nature of matter and whether, in Russell's view, we should seek a philosophical theory of causation.Taken together, they show the considerable changes that occurred in Russell's thinking during the years he was
£16.99
Taylor & Francis Ltd The Bounds of Sense
Book SynopsisPeter Strawson (19192006) was one of the leading British philosophers of his generation and an influential figure in a golden age for British philosophy between 1950 and 1970. The Bounds of Sense is one of the most influential books ever written about Kant's philosophy, and is one of the key philosophical works of the late twentieth century. Whilst probably best known for its criticism of Kant's transcendental idealism, it is also famous for the highly original manner in which Strawson defended and developed some of Kant's fundamental insights into the nature of subjectivity, experience and knowledge at a time when few philosphers were engaging with Kant's ideas. The book had a profound effect on the interpretation of Kant's philosophy when it was first published in 1966 and continues to influence discussion of Kant, the soundness of transcendental arguments, and debates in epistemology and metaphysics generally.This Routledge Classics edition incluTrade Review'Strawson offers something which is to be found in very few books on this great philosopher: a discussion which is, on the one side, sympathetic, appreciative and well informed, without ever ceasing to be critical and independent on the other.' Philosophical Books‘ … his reconstruction of Kant's central argument was not only exciting in its own day, but remains a paradigm and a challenge for anyone else attempting a reconstruction of Kant's impressive but enigmatic argument that is to be both philologically and philosophically persuasive.’ Paul Guyer, Journal of the History of Philosophy‘What is most impressive of all … is Strawson’s ability to hold small points within the setting of the overall picture, moving from one scale to the other and back again without breathlessness. He has made himself at home in the Kantian intellectual world, and has learned to move easily and naturally in it, yet familiarity has not dulled the sharpness of his perception of what has to be rejected.’ Philosophical Review‘The title itself is a roguish stroke of genius.’ MindTable of ContentsForeword to the Routledge Classics Edition – Lucy AllaisPrefacePart One: General ReviewPart Two: The Metaphysics of Experience Space and Time Objectivity and Unity Permanence and Causality Part Three: Transcendent Metaphysics The Logic of Illusion Soul Cosmos God Part Four: The Metaphysics of Transcendental IdealismPart Five: Kant’s Theory of GeometryIndex
£16.99
Cornell University Press Toward a Concrete Philosophy Heidegger and the
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThe variety of responses to Heidegger may be said to be the theme of a new history of the Frankfurt school of critical theory, Toward a Concrete Philosophy: Heidegger and the Emergence of the Frankfurt School This impressive account by Mikko Immanen leads us into a vanished world of high culture, learning, and urbane civility—and its ruins, as these great European minds fled to the New World when the Nazis seized power in Germany. * The Review of Politics *There are many more biographical, culture-historical, and thematic connections between Heidegger and the Frankfurt School than the quasi-official story of mutual hostility recognizes. In Toward a Concrete Philosophy, Mikko Immanen takes significant steps to set the record straight. * Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Making Good on Heidegger's Promise Part I: Who Owns the Copyright to the Problematic of "Being and Time"? Marcuse, Heidegger, and the Legacy of Hegel 1. The Un-Heideggerian Core of Marcuse's Most Heideggerian Text: The Lukács Question 2. The Hegel Debate: The Pinnacle of Marcuse's Freiburg Years 3. Stakes of the Hegel Debate: Davos, Marxism, and the Black Notebooks Part II: The Frankfurt Discussion: Adorno, Heidegger, and the Frankfurt Heideggerians 4. The Frankfurt Discussion: A Sequel to the Epochal Davos Disputation 5. "What Is the Human Being?" Thrown Dasein or Cura Posterior? 6. Demythologizing Heidegger's Thrownness: Toward Dialectic of Enlightenment Part III: The Young Horkheimer on Heidegger: From Guarded Enthusiasm to Determined Opposition 7. Being and Time: The Primacy of Practical Reason Misunderstood 8. Critical Theory as a Reply to Heidegger, Scheler, and the Frankfurt Heideggerians Conclusion
£19.19
Reaktion Books Friedrich Nietzsche
Book SynopsisIn this concise yet comprehensive critical biography, Ritchie Robertson examines the work of Friedrich Nietzsche within the context of his life. The book traces Nietzsche’s development from outstanding classical scholar to cultural critic, who measured Imperial Germany by the standards of ancient Greece. It follows him thence to prophet (in the persona of Zarathustra) and savage polemicist against modern liberal values, offering a ‘philosophy of the future’. Robertson argues that Nietzsche’s middle-period writings offer a subtle and searching analysis of his culture, more rewarding than the strident and often-controversial later works. The book also assesses Nietzsche’s claim to be continuing the Enlightenment, and shows that he valued reason, evidence and fact, without which his historical case against Christianity would make no sense.
£12.34
Verso Books Writers and Missionaries: Essays on the Radical
Book SynopsisThrough a close reading of the lives and works of some of the greatest intellectuals of recent times, Adam Shatz asks: do writers have an ethical imperative to question injustice? How can one remain a dispassionate thinker when involved in the cut and thrust of politics? And, in an age of horror and crisis, what does it mean to be a committed writer?Shatz interrogates the major figures of twentieth and twenty-first century thought and finds within their lives and work the roots of our present intellectual and geopolitical situation. Charting the role of the committed intellectual through the work of Jean-Paul Sartre on the Algerian War and Edward Said's lifelong solidarity with the Palestinian people, to Fouad Ajami's role as the "native informant" for pro-intervention cause in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, alongside philosophers and critics Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida and Claude Lévi-Strauss and the novelists Michel Houllebecq and Richard Wright, each struggled to reconcile their writing and their politics, their thought and their commitments. Writers and Missionaries is an erudite and incisive work of intellectual elucidation and biographical enquiry that demands that we interrogate anew the relation of thought and action in the struggle for a more just world.Trade ReviewWhat strikes the reader immediately is Adam Shatz's range, that of his subjects and that of his learning. It tells us that these essays come from a very free and strong mind. His independence of spirit is part of the intellectual tradition of the wonderfully written work that beguiles us into contemplation, further thought. We follow his questions into the past and return with better understandings of the present. A gifted soul for our times. -- Darryl PinckneyAstounding. The range, strength and intricate connectedness of these essays by Adam Shatz offers great intellectual nourishment for the reader, and his patient engagement with the work and life of the authors he follows to illustrate his ideas is staggering. What pleasure it was to read his thoughtful essays when they were first published, and what a great boost and singular satisfaction to read them altogether in this superb book. -- Raja Shehadeh, author of We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian MemoirFor over two decades, Adam Shatz has re-animated the old Anglo-American model of the man of letters, bringing a cosmopolitan flair and moral urgency to de-politicised realms of literary criticism and intellectual journalism. His refusal of conventional pieties is consistently bracing; these selected essays brilliantly showcase his broad and extraordinarily cohesive sensibility. -- Pankaj MishraThis carefully-orchestrated compendium of Adam Shatz's essays makes a gem of a book. A keen ear and attentive eye have infused his eloquent writing with humane insight and a refined political sensibility. -- Paul GilroyThe art of literary criticism lies in combining, in a condensed form, the beauty of style and the sharpness of thought. The essays gathered in Writers and Missionaries are a model of the genre. They accomplish the difficult task of balancing political commitment with critical distance, a passion for texts with an analytical gaze. They sketch an intellectual landscape made of literary, philosophical, and filmic productions through the prism of colonialism and race, war and antisemitism, emigration and exile, and humanism and structuralism. Adam Shatz's approach to French culture as a crossroads is unconventional and refreshing. This is the art of essay at its best, and a true pleasure for readers. -- Enzo Traverso, Author of Revolution: An Intellectual HistoryReminiscent of an interview, Shatz sets up his opening question, sits back, and simply lets his subjects talk. At its heart [Writers and Missionaries] is an extended exercise in listening. -- George Adams * Oxford Review of Books *The book is infused with life-to read it is almost an antidote to the cynicism that indeed does develop from too many book reviews obviously written as favors, or strategic plays on the part of the reviewer. -- Ann Manov * Los Angeles Review of Books *Indispensable for anyone trying to think seriously about the ethical demands of writing and journalism against the backdrop of dark and even catastrophic times. -- Joshua Leifer * Jewish Currents *These probing essays on writers and artists-such as Richard Wright, Edward Said, Jacques Derrida, and Kamel Daoud-reflect Adam Shatz's abiding interests: the intellectual life of the Francophone and the Arab worlds, leftist politics, and the nature of political art. * New Yorker *A sustained and unflinching exploration of the role and formation of the intellectual in our society. -- Isabel Stevens * Sight & Sound *Lucid and stimulating. -- Thomas Lordan * Irish Times *A brilliant collection of political essays by one of our sharpest literary journalists. -- Nathan Thrall * Observer *
£22.50
Vintage Publishing The Crooked Timber Of Humanity
Book Synopsis'Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.' Immanuel KantIsaiah Berlin was one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century - an activist of the intellect who marshalled vast erudition and eloquence in defence of the endangered values of individual liberty and moral and political plurality. In The Crooked Timber of Humanity he exposes the links between the ideas of the past and the social and political cataclysms of our own time: between the Platonic belief in absolute truth and the lure of authoritarianism; between the eighteenth-century reactionary ideologue Joseph de Maistre and twentieth-century Fascism; between the romanticism of Schiller and Byron and the militant - and sometimes genocidal - nationalism that convulses the modern world. This new edition features a revised text, a new foreword in which award-winning novelist John Banville discusses Berlin's life and ideas, particularly his defence of pluralism, and a substantial new appendix that provides rich context, including letters and previously uncollected writings by Berlin, notably his virtuoso review of Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy.Trade ReviewBerlin restored the history of ideas to its true place as a key to unlock the past and explain the present. It was a notable achievement. This book sustains it. -- Raymond Carr * Spectator *To read Isaiah Berlin is above all to listen to a voice, effervescent, quizzical, often self-mocking, but always full of gaiety and amusement. -- John Dunn * Times Literary Supplement *To read Berlin is to sit at an unlit window and see the landscape of European thought illuminated by a spectacular display of fireworks. -- Ian McIntyre * Independent *A history of ideas that possesses all the drama of a novel, all the immediacy of headline news. -- Michiko Kakutani * New York Times *
£17.00
Icon Books Introducing Critical Theory: A Graphic Guide
Book SynopsisWhat might a 'theory of everything' look like? Is science an ideology? Who were Adorno, Horkheimer or the Frankfurt School? The decades since the 1960s have seen an explosion in the production of critical theories. Deconstructionists, poststructuralists, postmodernists, second-wave feminists, new historicists, cultural materialists, postcolonialists, black critics and queer theorists, among a host of others, all vie for our attention. Stuart Sim and Borin Van Loon's incisive graphic guide provides a route through the tangled jungle of competing ideas and provides an essential historical context, situating these theories within tradition of critical analysis going back to the rise of Marxism. They present the essential methods and objectives of each theoretical school in an incisive and accessible manner, and pay special attention to recurrent themes and concerns that have preoccupied a century of critical theoretical activity.
£999.99
Icon Books Introducing Walter Benjamin: A Graphic Guide
Walter Benjamin is often considered the key modern philosopher and critic of modern art.Tracing his influence on modern aesthetics and cultural history, Introducing Walter Benjamin highlights his commitment to political transformation of the arts as a means to bring about social change.Benjamin witnessed first-hand many of the cataclysmic events of modern European history. He took a critical stance on the dominant ideologies of Marxism, Zionism and Technocracy, and his attempt to flee Nazi Europe ultimately led to his suicide in 1940.With its brilliant combination of words and images, this is an ideal introduction to one of the most elusive philosophers.
£8.54
Double 9 Booksllp Auguste Comte And Positivism
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£8.99
Oxford University Press The View from Nowhere
Book SynopsisMuch philosophical debate has attempted to reconcile the human capacity to view the world both objectively and subjectively. Thomas Nagel''s ambitious and lively book tackles this fundamental issue, arguing that our divided nature is the root of a whole range of philosophical problems, touching, as it does, every aspect of human life. He deals with its manifestations in such fields of philosophy as the mind-body problem, personal identity, knowledge and scepticism, thought and reality, free will, and ethics.From reviews of the hardback:`Remarkable ... all of his discussions are clear and insightful, but some reach a level of originality and illumination that opens genuinely new avenues of philosophical thought ... a rare combination of profundity and clarity, along with simplicity of expression. It should be recommended to all those who are bored with or despair about philosophy.''Times Literary SupplementTrade Review`This is a book rich in insight and argument, written with elegant simplicity, and ... refreshingly modest in tone.' InquiryTable of ContentsI: Introduction II: Mind III: Mind and Body IV: The Objective Self V: Knowledge VI: Thought and Reality VII: Freedom VIII: Value IX: Ethics X: Living Right and Living Well XI: Birth, Death, and the Meaning of Life
£35.14
Stanford University Press Husserls Phenomenology
Book SynopsisDrawing upon both Husserl's published works and posthumous material, Husserl's Phenomenology incorporates the results of the most recent Husserl research. It can consequently serve as a concise and updated introduction to his thinking.Trade Review"Zahavi expresses the wish that this book will turn the reader towards Husserl's own writings, and one could not imagine a more authoritative and helpful introduction to them than this." -- Robert Pepperell * Wales College *"This book is a splendid introduction to Husserl's writings. Indeed, more than an introduction, it is a remarkably comprehensive overview not only of Husserl's major published works but also of his unpublished research manuscripts....The book was a pleasure to read the first time, and it repays successive readings with new and ever deeper insights into Husserl's philosophical achievement." * Husserl Studies *
£17.99
University of Minnesota Press Imagination and Invention
Book SynopsisA radical rethinking of the theory and the experience of mental images Here, in English translation for the first time, is Gilbert Simondon’s fundamental reconception of the mental image and the theory of imagination and invention. Drawing on a vast range of mid-twentieth-century theoretical resources—from experimental psychology, cybernetics, and ethology to the phenomenological reflections of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty—Imagination and Invention provides a comprehensive account of the mental image and adds a vital new dimension to the theory of psychical individuation in Simondon’s earlier, highly influential work.Simondon traces the development of the mental image through four phases: first a bundle of motor anticipations, the image becomes a cognitive system that mediates the organism’s relation to its milieu, then a symbolic and abstract integration of motor and affective experience to, finally, invention, a solution to a problem of life that requires the externalization of the mental image and the creation of a technical object. An image cannot be understood from the perspective of one phase alone, he argues, but only within the trajectory of its progressive metamorphosis.
£21.59
Hackett Publishing Co, Inc Rousseau: The Basic Political Writings: Discourse
Book SynopsisThis substantially revised new edition of Rousseau: The Basic Political Writings features a brilliant new Introduction by David Wootton, a revision by Donald A. Cress of his own 1987 translation of Rousseau's most important political writings, and the addition of Cress' new translation of Rousseau's State of ?War. New footnotes, headnotes, and a chronology by David Wootton provide expert guidance to first-time readers of the texts.
£14.99
John Wiley and Sons Ltd On the Plurality of Worlds
Book SynopsisThis book is a defense of modal realism; the thesis that our world is but one of a plurality of worlds, and that the individuals that inhabit our world are only a few out of all the inhabitants of all the worlds.Table of ContentsPreface. 1. A Philosopher's Paradise. The Thesis of Pluraliry of Worlds. Modal Realism at Work: Modality. Modal Realism at Work: Closeness. Modal Realism at Work: Content. Modal Realism at Work: Properties. Isolation. Concreteness. Plenitude. Actuality. 2. Paradox in Paradise?. Everything is Actual?. All Worlds in One?. More Worlds Than There Are?. How Can We Know?. A Road to Scepticism?. A Road to Indifference?. Arbitrariness Lost?. The Incredulous Stare. 3. Paradise on the Cheap?. The Ersatzist Program. Linguistic Ersatzism. Pictorial Ersatzism. Magical Ersatzism. 4. Counterparts or Double Lives?. Good Questions and Bad. Against Overlap. Against Trans-World Individuals. Against Haecceitism. Against Constancy. Works Cited. Index.
£28.45
Harvard University Press Pragmatism as AntiAuthoritarianism
Book SynopsisIn his final work, Richard Rorty provides the definitive statement of his political thought. Rorty equates pragmatism with anti-authoritarianism, arguing that because there is no authority we can rely on to ascertain truth, we can only do so intersubjectively. It follows that we must learn to think and care about what others think and care about.Trade ReviewToday, there are few philosophers left whose thoughts are inspired by a unifying vision; there are even fewer who can articulate such a view in terms of a ravishing flow of provocative, but sharp and differentiated, arguments. But rarely anyone can compete with Richard Rorty in summarizing the whole of it in a series of brilliant literary lectures like these. -- Jürgen HabermasRichard Rorty was the most iconoclastic and dramatic philosopher of the last half-century. In this final book, his unique literary style, singular intellectual zest, and demythologizing defiance of official philosophy are on full display. -- Cornel WestA sharp and comprehensive statement of Richard Rorty’s distinctive version of pragmatism, presented with all the wit and vitality typical of his writings. Carefully edited by Eduardo Mendieta, with an illuminating foreword by Robert B. Brandom, this book is invaluable reading for anyone interested in Rorty’s philosophical vision. -- Richard J. Bernstein, Vera List Professor of Philosophy, The New School for Social ResearchWe have perhaps the clearest account of how he understood pragmatist thinking as a political undertaking…Provocative and engaging…The array of urgent questions and crises facing our democracy makes one miss Richard Rorty’s voice: insistent, relentlessly questioning, and dedicated to the proposition that we can’t afford to let our democracy fail. -- Chris Lehmann * New Republic *The verve with which [the arguments] are made and their relevance to our current context make for a bracing read…The message of Rorty’s body of work, so well summarized in these newly published lectures, is that aiming at ‘increased responsiveness to the needs of a larger and larger variety of people and things’ will reduce the sources of suffering, and by so doing multiply our opportunities to thrive. -- Michael S. Roth * Los Angeles Review of Books *Show[s] an impressive command of both analytic and continental philosophy. -- George Scialabba * Commonweal *It is coherent, often brilliant, and it presents a clear and timely case for political pragmatism. -- Jonathan Rée * Prospect *A useful compendium of the philosopher’s mature views. -- Robert Chodat * American Literary History *A very finely edited collection of essays in which Rorty’s undeniable polemical brilliance and philosophical knowledge are in full display. -- Richard Shusterman * Society *
£21.56
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Being and Event
Book SynopsisSince the book's first publication in 1988, Alain Badiou's Being and Event has established itself of one of the most important and controversial works in contemporary philosophy and its author as one of the most influential thinkers of our time. Being and Event is a comprehensive statement of Badiou's philosophical project and sees him recast the European philosophical tradition from Plato onwards, via a series of analyses of such key figures as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hegel, Rousseau, and Lacan. He thus develops the basis for a history of philosophy rivalling those of Heidegger and Deleuze in its depth.Now publishing in the Bloomsbury Revelations series to mark 25 years since the book's first publication in French, Being and Event is an essential read for anyone interested in contemporary thought.Trade Review"Badiou's approach is unique, rigorous, and interesting..." - Jill Stauffer, Theory & Event"[Badiou] develops, in the central passages of the book, his central notions of situations and events, and devotes many, often arresting pages to elucidating the mechanism by which the latter productively disrupt the former. The structure of experience is not merely open to change, pregnant with contingent revolution. This is a nice model and Badiou deploys it across a broad front." - Hugh Lawson-Tancred for The Liberal"A variety of scholars, including philosophers, mathematicians, and intellectual historians, would do well to examine this volume and seek in it threads that warrant continued examination in an era of nanotechnology and political terrorism."- Francisca Goldsmith, Library Journal, April 1, 2006 * Library Journal *"Two things are new in this much-anticipated translationof Badiou: the language and the preface. Both are instructive. TranslatorOliver Feltham stayed 'as close as possible to Badiou's syntax' but 'at theprice of losing fluidity.' Thankfully, Badiou addresses such dissonance and hislarger philosophical goals in an indispensable new preface—without which the 37weighty meditations might be lost to the layperson. Recommended..." - Publishers Weekly * Publishers Weekly *Table of ContentsNew Author's Preface Translator's Preface Introduction Book I Being: Multiple and Void. Plato/Cantor 1. The One and the Multiple: a priori conditions of any possible ontology 2. Plato 3. Theory of the Pure Multiple: paradoxes and critical decision Technical Note: the conventions of writing 4. The Void: Proper name of being 5. The Mark Æ 6. Aristotle Book II Being: Excess, State of the Situation, One/Multiple, Whole/Parts, or Î/Ì? 7. The Point of Excess 8. The State, or Metastructure, and the Typology of Being (normality, singularity, excrescence) 9. The State of the Historico-social Situation 10. Spinoza Book III Being: Nature and Infinity. Heidegger/Galileo 11. Nature: Poem or matheme? 12. The Ontological schema of Natural Multiples and the Non-existence of Nature 13. Infinity: the other, the rule and the Other 14. The Ontological Decision: 'There is some infinity in natural multiples' 15. Hegel Book IV The Event: History and Ultra-one 16. Evental Sites and Historical Situations 17. The Matheme of the Event 18. Being's Prohibition of the Event 19. MallarméBook V The Event: Intervention and Fidelity. Pascal/Choice; Hölderlin/Deduction 20. The Intervention: Illegal choice of a name for the event, logic of the two, temporal foundation 21. Pascal 22. The Form-multiple of Intervention: is there a being of choice? 23. Fidelity, Connection 24. Deduction as operator of ontological fidelity 25. HölderlinBook VI Quantity and Knowledge. The discernable (or constructible): Leibniz/Gödel 26. The concept of quantity and the impasse of ontology 27. Ontological destiny of orientation within thought 28. Constructivist thought and the knowledge of being 29. The folding of being and the sovereignty of language 30. LeibnizBook VII The Generic: indiscernible and truth. The event - P.J.Cohen 31. The Thought of the Generic and Being in Truth 32. Rousseau 33. The Matheme of the Indiscernible: P.J.Cohen's strategy 34. The existence of the indiscernible: the power of the namesBook VIII Forcing: Truth and the Subject. Beyond Lacan 35. Theory of the subject 36. Forcing: from the indiscernible to the undecidable 37. Descartes / LacanAnnexes Appendixes Notes Dictionary
£21.84
Verso Books An Event, Perhaps: A Biography of Jacques Derrida
Book SynopsisWho was Jacques Derrida? For some, he is responsible, at least in part, for the contemporary crisis of truth. For the far right, he is one of the architects of Cultural Marxism. To his academic critics, he reduced French philosophy to 'little more than an object of ridicule'. For his fans, he is an intellectual rock star who ranged across literature, politics, and linguistics. In An Event Perhaps, Peter Salmon presents this misunderstood and misappropriated figure as a deeply humane and urgent thinker for our times. Accessible, provocative and beautifully written, this biography will introduce to a new readership to the life and work of a philosopher whose influence over the way we think will continue long into the twenty-first century.Trade ReviewThis is a compulsively readable intellectual biography of Derrida that teases out his endlessly fascinating thought, even when it is at its knottiest, with admirable patience and lucidity. Salmon's book, in vividly transmitting the intellectual excitement of Derrida's times, reminds the reader that, especially in his thinking about ethics, he remains a philosopher who is urgently, politically relevant to our times too. -- Matthew Beaumont, Professor at English at University College, LondonThe life of Jacques Derrida has never been told as elegantly or engagingly as it is in Peter Salmon's new book. In delightfully readable, often laconic prose, Salmon helped me to understand Derrida as never before and demonstrated why he is not, as some detractors called him, the Devil but much more cherishable. A wonderful book. -- Stuart Jeffries, author of Grand Hotel AbyssA precise intellectual biography ... Salmon's ability to render the man and the mind behind Derrida's "notoriously difficult" style accessible make this volume a rich resource for both newcomers to, and fans of, "one of the great philosophers of this or any age. * Publishers Weekly *Peter Salmon's clear-sighted, engaging guide to Derrida's life and ideas is an excellent way to learn about how one of the twentieth century's most complex thinkers continues to influence our world -- Daniel Trilling, author of Lights in the DistanceA scintillating new biography . . . Derrida's life story provides a frame and background for an intellectual biography of his ideas and their development. In the process it also serves as one of the clearest introductions to 20th-century continental philosophy available. -- Julian Baggini * Prospect Magazine *[An Event, Perhaps] comes as manna from heaven ... It's dizzyingly good. * Expressen *
£9.49
Orion Publishing Co The Age of Nothing How We Have Sought To Live
Book SynopsisA dazzling investigation into psychology, art and religion; the demise of capitalism; and the beginning of a new era from the author of IDEAS.Trade ReviewI would not wish to have missed The Age of Nothing by Peter Watson, a brisk 565 pages on the displacement of God from Western Culture. -- TOM STOPPARD * TLS - BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014 *his erudition is formidable -- THEODORE DALRYMPLE * THE TIMES *In a vividly engaging conspectus of the formative ideas of the past century, The Age of Nothing shows how Nietzsche's diagnosis evoked responses in may areas of cultural life, including some surprising parts of the political spectrum. -- John Gray * NEW STATESMAN *I recommend this book to anyone who needs to know what the loss of religious faith has meant to the high culture of our civilsation and what, if anything, we might do about it.... (it) covers a whole century of intellectual endeavour as lightly as it can. -- ROGER SCRUTON * THE INDEPENDENT *The beauty of this book is Watson's ability to impose order on a riot of ideas. * PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY *This book will appeal to anyone with intellectual curiosity about the human condition and the development of ideas. It will especially appeal to the non-religious reader. This isn't a book about, or even particularly in defence of atheism as a worldview, but it sets out objectively a history of non-religious thought that covers everything from science to poetry, incorporating philosophy, the rise of new age 'spiritualism' and therapy. -- GREG JAMESON * ENTERTAINMENT FOCUS *There is much in this book that I did not know, and I am grateful to have learnt it. -- Theodore Dalrymple * THE TIMES *his erudition is formidable -- Theodore Dalymple * THE TIMES *The beauty of this book is Watson's ability to impose order on a riot of ideas. * Publisher's Weekly *This book will appeal to anyone with intellectual curiosity about the human condition and the development of ideas. It will especially appeal to the non-religious reader. This isn't a book about, or even particularly in defence of atheism as a worldview, but it sets out objectively a history of non-religious thought that covers everything from science to poetry, incorporating philosophy, the rise of new age 'spiritualism' and therapy. -- Greg Jameson * Entertainment Focus *I recommend this book to anyone who needs to know what the loss of religious faith has meant to the high culture of our civilsation and what, if anything, we might do about it.... (it) covers a whole century of intellectual endeavour as lightly as it can. -- Roger Scruton * THE INDEPENDENT *In a vividly engaging conspectus of the formative ideas of the past century, The Age of Nothing shows how Nietzsche's diagnosis evoked responses in may areas of cultural life, including some surprising parts of the political spectrum. -- John Gray * NEW STATESMAN *
£14.24
Taylor & Francis Ltd (Sales) Autobiography
Book SynopsisBertrand Russell remains one of the greatest philosophers and most complex and controversial figures of the twentieth century. Here, in this frank, humorous and decidedly charming autobiography, Russell offers readers the story of his life introducing the people, events and influences that shaped the man he was to become. Originally published in three volumes in the late 1960s, Autobiography by Bertrand Russell is a revealing recollection of a truly extraordinary life written with the vivid freshness and clarity that has made Bertrand Russell's writings so distinctively his own.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction 1872-1914 Prologue: What I have Lived for 1. Childhood 2. Adolescence 3. Cambridge 4. Engagement 5. First Marriage 6. ‘Principia Mathematica’ 7. Cambridge again 1914-1944 8. The First World War 9. Russia 10. China 11. Second Marriage 12. Later Years of Telegraph House 13. In America 1944-1967 Preface 14. Return to England 15. At Home and Abroad 16. Trafalgar Square 17. The Foundation Postscript Index
£19.99
HarperCollins Publishers Inc On the way to Language
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£15.29
Taylor & Francis Ltd Exploring Videogames with Deleuze and Guattari
Book SynopsisVideogames are a unique artistic form, and to analyse and understand them an equally unique language is required. Cremin turns to Deleuze and Guattari's non-representational philosophy to develop a conceptual toolkit for thinking anew about videogames and our relationship to them. Rather than approach videogames through a language suited to other media forms, Cremin invites us to think in terms of a videogame plane and the compositions of developers and players who bring them to life. According to Cremin, we are not simply playing videogames, we are creating them. We exceed our own bodily limitations by assembling forces with the elements they are made up of. The book develops a critical methodology that can explain what every videogame, irrespective of genre or technology, has in common and proceeds on this basis to analyse their differences. Drawing from a wide range of examples spanning the history of the medium, Cremin discerns the qualities inherent to those regarded as classicTrade ReviewThis book makes the bold prophecy that the 21st century will be the century of videogames. It then offers a dynamic toolkit of concepts drawn from the work of Deleuze and Guattari to think in new ways about videogames. Importantly, Cremin debunks the idea that videogames are virtual, meaning confined to the depths of their digital origins. Instead he shows us that they consist of actual processes of becoming that reach out from the console into every corner of life. This is an exciting and necessary book. - Ian Buchanan, University of Wollongong, AustraliaTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Videogame Plane 2. The Smooth and Striated 3. Rhizome-Play 4. Ludo-Diagram 5. Artist and Apprentice 6. Molecular Mario 7. Major / Minor
£51.29
Taylor & Francis Wittgenstein and Democratic Politics
Book SynopsisThis volume demonstrates how Wittgensteinâs philosophy can illuminate our understanding of politics and open new ways of conceptualizing democratic theory and practice. Its focus is on language, reason and communication as central to identifying present confusions in our understanding of democracy.The book seeks to engage Wittgensteinâs philosophical insights, aiming to go beyond the dichotomous oppositions and conceptual entanglements pervading existing frameworks of social and political theories of democracy. Its key topic is the irreplaceable role of dialogue in civic democratic engagement as a condition for the understanding of self and others and, hence, for political life in which reason has a role. Indeed, it presents concrete examples of how Wittgenstein can be constructively applied to current political discourse. Part I of the volume focuses on the general idea of applying Wittgensteinâs philosophy to political and democratic theory and explains the deep and intrin
£128.25
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Culture and Value
Book SynopsisCompletely revised throughout, Culture and Value is a selection from Wittgensteina s notebooks ---- on the nature of art, religion, culture, and the nature of philosophical activity.Table of ContentsForeword to the Edition of 1977. Foreword to the 1994 Edition. Editorial Note. Note by Translator. Culture and Value. A Poem. Notes. Appendix:. List of Sources. List of Sources, Arranged Alphanumerically. Index of Beginnings of Remarks. Subject Index. Index of Names.
£25.60
Harvard University Press Walter Benjamin
Book SynopsisWalter Benjamin was perhaps the twentieth century's most elusive intellectual. His writings defy categorization, and his improvised existence has proven irresistible to mythologizers. In a major new biography, Howard Eiland and Michael Jennings present a comprehensive portrait of the man and his times, as well as extensive commentary on his work.Trade Review[An] outstanding and monumental biography of Walter Benjamin… In the thoroughness of their account and the acuity and delicacy of their philosophical analyses, Howard Eiland and Michael Jennings have provided an indispensable sighting of Benjamin’s achievement. -- Anthony Phelan * Times Literary Supplement *[This] is a careful synthesis of all the available sources for Benjamin’s life—letters, diaries, reminiscences of friends—with all of his major writings, to produce the comprehensive account that has been sorely lacking until now… Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life makes clear how intimately Benjamin’s biography was shaped by the history of Europe during his lifetime. -- Adam Kirsch * New York Review of Books *In their superb new biography, Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings have given us a portrait of this elusive but paradigmatic thinker that deserves to be ranked among the few truly indispensable intellectual biographies of the modern era. I am tempted to call it a masterpiece. Nearly seven hundred pages in length, this is not only a study of Benjamin’s life, it is also a guide to the bewildering mix of themes and preoccupations that populated this most prolific and unfamiliar of minds… To write the biography of an intellectual is difficult business, since so much of what passes for an event is taking place only in the mind or on the page—but those are the events that really matter. Eiland and Jennings move with deliberation through Benjamin’s major works, expounding and explaining with uncommon lucidity even when the text in question is one of notorious difficulty. The result is not a mere chronicle of a life but also a reliable map into Benjamin’s intellectual labyrinth. -- Peter E. Gordon * New Republic *The most comprehensive biography we are ever likely to have of Benjamin… Both authors have spent close to a lifetime on the subject. The devotion and care evident in their account are clearly based on sympathy and admiration. Their exposition of Benjamin’s thought is exemplary, their sleuthing about his personal life breathtaking. Definitive is an archaic and much abused term that Benjamin would have abhorred; suffice it to say that it is unlikely that anyone will ever be able to tell us more about this German-Jewish thinker or present that knowledge with greater stylistic aplomb. -- Modris Eksteins * Wall Street Journal *[Eiland and Jennings] argue compellingly that as a critic [Benjamin] not only reshaped our understanding of many important writers, but he recognized the potentials and hazards of technological media that revolutionized culture during his lifetime… An impressive work of exegesis… Indispensable. -- Stuart Jeffries * The Guardian *Serious and imposing, it seeks to gather up and bind the threads of Benjamin’s career, unite the unpublished and the half-finished essays and book projects, weaving together a comprehensive biography both of the man and his thought. A great strength of Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life is how it lays out Benjamin’s major works as part of an evolution of thought, providing not only invaluable context to each piece, but tracing each work’s central claims in a lucid and approachable manner. One need not be a PhD to approach this book, and it will intrigue anyone with a passing interest in the intellectual history of the 20th century. With key essays and books given substantive contextualization and explanation, Eiland and Jennings make Benjamin’s work accessible and networked into a larger set of themes and concerns… As omnipresent as [Benjamin’s] tragic fate is throughout the book, Eiland and Jennings also provide a host of surprising (and even delightful) details of Benjamin’s life, which round out the melancholic caricature of him in favor of a complex, conflicted individual. -- Colin Dickey * Los Angeles Review of Books *Impressive… [Eiland and Jennings] portray their subject as a kind of ragpicker in the neglected alleyways of a culture in transition—a specialist in the marginal and mundane, the fragmentary and forgotten… They succeed in offering not only the most comprehensive biography to date, but a tour de force introduction to an incomparably incandescent mind. -- Benjamin Balint * Books & Ideas *Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings have rightly sought and successfully produced the thread that gives a biography of Benjamin the kind of weight and significance his influence deserves… Their curiosity in searching out an expanded wealth of details now available about Benjamin, both personal and intellectual, historical and anecdotal, has produced an account that enlivens the already well-known turning points in Benjamin’s development… This biography far surpasses not just any preceding biographical history of Benjamin but in its searching out of what remains consistent in Benjamin it has found the thread that allows a narrative of life and work to unfold in a way that does not subordinate one to the other… This achievement will remain not only a standard and resource-full account of Benjamin but in its comprehensiveness as well as its acute accounts of Benjamin’s thought across the whole range of that thinking, it will continue to provide the foundation for the fuller understanding of his place and contribution to the critical, cultural, political and historical present we have inherited from the twentieth century. -- David Ferris * Critical Inquiry *Walter Benjamin deserves to be more celebrated, and Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life, by Howard Eiland and Michael Jennings, is a step in the right direction. It is an efficient introduction to his work and legacy while also offering a detailed account of Benjamin the man, his strengths and weaknesses and the world he lived in. It is also a deeply poignant story of his struggle to survive in a hostile Europe and his tragic suicide at the age of 48. -- Cyril Kavanaugh * The Guardian *Presented here in what looks like a definitive version, Benjamin’s life emerges as a tragedy of incompleteness. -- John Gray * Literary Review *[Benjamin] produced some of the most memorable and generative critical writing of the last century. There is no end in sight of the need to grapple with that writing and its legacies. This magisterial biography by Eiland and Jennings sets that writing in its place and time with profane illuminations on almost every one of its many pages. Benjamin had scorn for people who produced needlessly ‘fat’ books, but I think this fairly huge one hits the sweet spot of detail. Most biographical treatments to date tend to be half the length or less and content themselves with the highlights and the fairly well known, however well articulated. If one wants more, this ‘critical’ biography is the place to look. -- Ian Balfour * Los Angeles Review of Books *Despite its numerous predecessors, this biography is the first of its kind to succeed in uniting most of the previously published biographical material in one book, including translations of documents which were until now only available in German. With the still-growing interest in Benjamin’s thought, one can expect this book to become the standard English-language biography on Benjamin. In A Critical Life, the contours of Benjamin’s day-to-day life become graspable for the first time. It is fascinating to read about his whereabouts and travels, the people and places that formed the stages for his life and thought… This biography is also an intellectual biography, which puts the reader herself in a position to navigate the labyrinth-like edifice of Benjamin’s thought. For this alone, this biography proves to be a landmark achievement in the history of Benjamin scholarship. -- Sami Khatib * New Inquiry *Through this fair-minded and meticulously detailed biography we can, perhaps for the first time in the extensive literature on Benjamin, see clearly the way that the arc of his life and work, culminating in the overdose of morphine taken in the Hotel de Francia in Port Bou, is an expression of, and also an epic meditation on, the political and aesthetic conditions that provided the context of his coming into maturity as both a thinker and a man. -- Gregory Day * Sydney Morning Herald *[Eiland and Jennings] have produced this massive and gripping account of Benjamin’s life and troubles, testimonial both to their own efforts in bringing his elusive writings into view, and to the circumstances in which Benjamin arrived at such scope, depth and brilliance… This is Benjamin warts and all, but in place of an impressionistic biographical sketch of a life, marked by false starts and a final mischance, what emerges is an astonishing panorama of a life and of theorizing, of research and of publishing, on the crest of that wave of disaster that was the destruction of European Jewry and of German intellectual life. -- Joanna Hodge * Times Higher Education *I’ve been waiting for a book like this since first coming across Benjamin’s mesmerizing essays as a student. Like others who have fallen under his spell, I’ve had to make do with bits and pieces of biographical information over the years, not all of them reliable. Jennings and Eiland have spent almost two decades re-editing and retranslating all of Benjamin’s works and have also managed to create a map through the maze of his restless, exilic life. -- Eric Bulson * Times Literary Supplement *[Benjamin was] one of the most versatile men of letters the 20th century had known… [This is] an epic, 700-page-plus saga of his peripatetic life and his whirlwind of productivity. -- Eric Banks * Bookforum *In this ambitious biography, Benjamin scholars (and editors) Eiland and Jennings chart the protean, prolific—albeit short—life of the German-Jewish critic and philosopher with masterly aplomb. As a literary critic, a dodger of both World Wars, flâneur, and eventual victim of Hitler’s reign, Benjamin (1892–1940) lived with a funny gait, ‘an impenetrable façade’ of courtesy, and severe depression; fearing capture and deportation to Germany, he committed suicide in a Spanish hotel. Born to an affluent Berlin family, Benjamin advocated for the radical youth culture movement and education reform in Germany before he pursued a tenured professor of philosophy post in academia, which he never achieved. With intense wanderlust, Benjamin turned to an itinerant existence as he penned thousands of essays, reviews, and books. Shaping avant-garde realism and arguably inventing pop culture, he wrote that he hoped to be ‘the foremost critic of German literature.’ Leaving Germany for good in 1933, Benjamin spent his last dark decade in exile, where most of his writings contributed to his never completed masterpiece The Arcades Project—‘his cultural history of the emergence of urban commodity capitalism in mid-nineteenth-century France.’ The authors, in impressive and accessible fashion, reveal Benjamin as an eyewitness to Europe’s changing modernity. * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *Here, for the first time, is a thorough, reliable, non-tendentious, and fully developed account of Benjamin’s life and the sources of his work. Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life is by far the best biography of Benjamin that has yet appeared. A remarkable scholarly achievement, it will prove of enduring value and will doubtless become the standard reference work for those who become intrigued by the complicated contours of Benjamin’s life. -- Peter Fenves, Northwestern UniversityWalter Benjamin himself often grappled with the vexed and constantly shifting relations between self and work, life (bios) and writing (graphein). Whatever faint yet abiding hyphen may connect the two, that same line also forever holds them apart. The new biography by Howard Eiland and Michael Jennings, two Benjamin scholars of the first rank, offers a sober, meticulous, and often moving image of Benjamin’s brief life in the shadow of catastrophe. Brilliantly interweaving the conceptual threads of Benjamin’s enigmatic work with his no less enigmatic existence, this impeccably informed and eminently readable account of Benjamin’s life sets a new standard for his biographers and critics in any language. Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life is destined to stand the test of time. -- Gerhard Richter, Brown University
£20.66
James Currey The Invention of Africa
Book SynopsisJoint winner of the 1989 Herskovits AwardTrade ReviewThe Invention of Africa, joint winner of the 1989 Herskovits Award, has assumed a place as one of the important books of African studies. * JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORY *Mudimbe's historical anthropology...achieves the decolonisation of academic knowledge of Africa ... This highly sophisticated and provocative study should command the attention of every scholar. - -- Bogumil Jewsiewicki... an impressive demonstration of erudition with a balanced, frequently very perceptive, perspective on how intellectual constructs on Africa have developed and operate. - -- William Freund * JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN STUDIES *
£23.74
Penguin Books Ltd On the Aesthetic Education of Man
Book Synopsis
£10.44
John Wiley and Sons Ltd The Condition of Postmodernity
Book SynopsisIn this new book, David Harvey seeks to determine what is meant by the term in its different contexts and to identify how accurate and useful it is as a description of contemporary experience.Trade Review"Devastating. The most brilliant study of post-modernity to date. David Harvey cuts beneath the theoretical debates about postmodernist culture to reveal the social and economic basis of this apparently free-floating phenomenon. After reading this book, those who fashionably scorn the idea of a 'total' critique had better think again." Terry Eagleton "Few people have penetrated the heartland of contemporary cultural theory and critique as explosively or insightfully as David Harvey." Edward Soja "David Harvey's book is probably the best yet written on the link between ... economic and cultural transformations." Financial Times "David Harvey's engrossing book is probably the most readable, ambitious, and intelligent work on postmodernism yet published." Voice Literary Supplement "In Harvey's skilful hands various strands of contemporary life, normally held far apart by specialized scholarly interests, come together again and are shown to fit with each other ... a marvellous, enjoyable and mind-opening book." Times Literary SupplementTable of ContentsThe argument. Preface. Acknowledgements. Part I: The Passage from Modernity to Postmodernity in Contemporary Culture: . 1. Introduction. 2. Modernity and Modernism. 3. Postmodernism. 4. Postmodernism in the City: Architecture and Urban Design. 5. Modernization. 6. POSTmodernISM or postMODERNism?. Part II: The Political-Economic Transformation of late Twentieth-Century Capitalism: . 7. Introduction. 8. Fordism. 9. From Fordism to Flexible Accumulation. 10. Theorizing the Transition. 11. Flexible Accumulation - Solid Transformation or Temporary Fix?. Part III: The Experience of Space and Time: . 12. Introduction. 13. Individual Spaces and Times in Social Life. 14. Time and Space as Sources of Social Power. 15. The Time and Space of the Enlightenment Project. 16. Time-space Compression and the Rise of Modernism as a Cultural Force. 17. Time-Space Compression and the Postmodern Condition. 18. Time and Space in the Postmodern Cinema. Part IV: The Condition of Postmodernity:. 19. Postmodernity as a Historical Condition. 20. Economics with Mirrors. 21. Postmodernism as the Mirror of Mirrors. 22. Fordist Modernism versus Flexible Postmodernism, or the Interpenetration of Opposed Tendencies in Capitalism as a Whole. 23. The Transformative and Speculative Logic of Capital. 24. The Work of Art in an Age of Electronic Reproduction and Image Banks. 25. Responses to Time-Space Compression. 26. The Crisis of Historical Materialism. 27. Cracks in the Mirrors, Fusions at the Edges. References. Index.
£27.50
Harvard University Press 19351938
Book SynopsisRadical critic of a European civilization plunging into darkness, yet commemorator of the humane traditions of the old bourgeoisie--such was Walter Benjamin in the later 1930s. This volume, the third in a four-volume set, offers twenty-seven brilliant pieces, nineteen of which have never before been translated.Trade ReviewThis latest volume of Harvard's majestic annotated edition of the essays and fragments includes reflections on Brecht, Kafka and the collector Eduard Fuchs, an early version of the famous analysis of art in the age of mechanical reproduction (here more accurately translated as "technological reproducibility") and the equally exhilarating inquiry into the nature of narrative, "The Storyteller." You feel smarter just holding this book in your hand. -- Michael Dirda * Washington Post *Over the past few years, Harvard's systematic presentation of the work of German cultural critic Benjamin has proved a revelation...This third of four planned volumes...offers two major texts that are new to English...as well as a fascinating re-translation of one of the cornerstones of Benjamin's reputation, here rendered as the essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility"...This is another splendid volume that will leave aficionados on campus and off awaiting the final installment. * Publishers Weekly *While the Harvard Series does include Benjamin's epochal contributions to Marxist theory and literary criticism, it also does English-language readers a great service by emphasizing his more accessible writings: fanciful personal essays, journalistic articles, and book reviews. These pieces are, at times, giddily delightful; at other moments, they offer lightning-quick, piercing insights. * Publishers Weekly *Benjamin attracts such metaphorical fancies, symbols of a life's work at once supernaturally precise and rigorously mysterious. His own favoured symbol for the scattered unity of his writing was that of the constellation: a stellar array of apparently unrelated points rendered into magical coherence by the powers of thought and intuition. This third volume in Harvard's essential selection from his huge corpus offers something like a deep-space photograph of Benjamin's enigmatic universe: a book as fascinating for scholars as it is enrapturing for any reader as yet unseduced by this most sensitive and audacious of writers...Benjamin's autobiographical masterpiece ['A Berlin Childhood Around 1900'] might alone justify this sedulously edited and beautifully translated volume. But here, too, alongside an outline of The Arcades Project and an early version of the 'Work of Art [in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction]' essay, are his thoughts on a wondrous variety of subjects--Kafka, Brecht, painting and photography, carnivals, the problem of translation--as well as a host of supposedly 'minor' writings (fragments, letters, diary entries) which often turn out to be among his most beautiful or thought-provoking...It is no exaggeration to say that Benjamin's writing changes lives, lights up unknown landscapes of art and politics, even at this historical remove. If his thought lives on...it does so in the sense that Baudelaire's 19th century survived for Benjamin in the 20th: less a reminder of the past than a signpost to the future. There is no more incisive or elegant guide to that territory. -- Brian Dillon * Irish Times *The quintessential Benjamin gesture of Volume 3 is the 1936 selection of letters by a wide assortment of figures from the German Romantic era, together with his brief, meticulously sympathetic commentaries, contained in German Men and Women...It is the story primarily of friendships amidst the passages and misfortunes of time, and of ideas as the substance of friendship: Their exchange becomes the fabric that connects one individual to another, and binds each to their precarious, uncertain lives. -- Howard Hampton * Village Voice *Howard Eiland's translation [of "Berlin Childhood around 1900"] in Harvard University Press's Selected Writings, Volume 3 is incomparable. -- Charles Mudede * The Stranger *Table of ContentsParis Old and New, 1935 Brecht's Threepenny Novel Johann Jakob Bachofen Conversation above the Corso: Recollections of Carnival-Time in Nice Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century Exchange with Theodor W. Adorno on the Essay "Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century" Problems in the Sociology of Language: An Overview The Formula in Which the Dialectical Structure of Film Finds Expression Rastelli's Story Art In a Technological Age, 1936 The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility: Second Version A Different Utopian Will The Significance of Beautiful Semblance The Signatures of the Age Theory of Distraction The Storyteller: Observations on the Works of Nikolai Leskov German Men and Women: A Sequence of Letters Letter from Paris (2): Painting and Photography Translation-For and Against The Knowledge That the First Material on Which the Mimetic Faculty Tested Itself Dialectics and History, 1937 Addendum to the Brecht Commentary: The Threepenny Opera Eduard Fuchs, Collector and Historian Fruits of Exile, 1938 (Part 1) Theological-Political Fragment A German Institute for Independent Research Review of Brod's Franz Kafka Letter to Gershom Scholem on Franz Kafka The Land Where the Proletariat May Not Be Mentioned: The Premiere of Eight One-Act Plays by Brecht Diary Entries, 1938 Berlin Childhood around 1900 A Note on the Texts Chronology, 1935-1938 Index Illustrations The Galerie Vivienne, Paris, 1907 Walter Benjamin at the Bibliotheque Nationale, 1937 Honore Daumier, La Crinoline en temps de neige The Kaiser Wilhelm Bridge, Berlin, early twentieth century The Victory Column on Konigsplatz, Berlin, early twentieth century The goldfish pond in the Tiergarten, Berlin, early twentieth century Berlin's Tiergarten in winter, early twentieth century Market hall on Magdeburger Platz, 1899 Interior of a typical middle-class German home, late nineteenth century Courtyard on Fischerstrasse in Old Berlin, early twentieth century Walter Benjamin and his brother Georg, ca. 1902
£26.06
Columbia University Press Critique and Praxis
Book SynopsisBernard E. Harcourt calls for moving beyond the complacency of decades of philosophical detours and to harness critical thought to the need for action. Critique and Praxis advocates for a new path forward that constantly challenges each one of us to ask what more we can do to realize a society based on equality and justice.Trade ReviewCritique and Praxis is the work of a visionary revolutionary intellectual. -- Biodun Jeyifo * British Journal of Sociology *With his typical combination of erudition, eloquent argument, and theoretical clarity, Bernard Harcourt now gives us a complete account of his reading of contemporary critical philosophy, articulating it with immediate issues in the field of human rights and democratic politics. A tour de force which will give readers much to learn and much to think about. I will have it permanently on my desk, or not far. -- Étienne Balibar, author of Violence and Civility: On the Limits of Political PhilosophyHas critical philosophy completed its mission or has it renounced the task, which it posed in the 1920s, to link theory and praxis in order to change the world? Harcourt’s response is unequivocal: the critical theory that emerged from the Frankfurt School has lost its original orientation and separated theory from the passion for praxis. Many other philosophical tendencies have since occupied this terrain, reimagining the theoretical horizon and trying to construct practices adequate to contemporary society. Harcourt studies and critiques them attentively, be they liberal currents or socialist variants, European philosophies of the common or insurrectionalist approaches. For Harcourt, however, critique must return to its radical roots and be done ‘en situation.’ This book inaugurates a turn from Foucault-style genealogies to a critical thought that is rooted in praxis and critiques it politically. With this passage, Harcourt exclaims, with Haraway, that ‘the only scientific thing to do is to revolt!’ And he confesses that in his previous books he only scratched at the surface of this conversion. Today the paradigm has shifted and praxis must be posed as subjectivation. If before the problem consisted in responding to ‘What is to be done?,’ today the question is ‘What more am I to do?’ Harcourt thus transforms critical philosophy into a manifesto of ethical engagement. -- Antonio Negri, coauthor of EmpireA relentlessly honest and learned exploration of how critical theory can turn again to the task of changing the world. Learning from above but assiduously from below, activist legal scholar Bernard Harcourt utilizes illusion and value, makes theory and practice collide, and asks: 'What more am I to do?' Required reading. -- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, author of Other AsiasBernard Harcourt's pragmatic and comprehensive dissection of philosophy and the quest for social justice is timely, provocative, and critically needed in this moment of global uncertainty, endless conflict, and pervasive inequality. -- Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and RedemptionHarcourt has produced a challenging book, which addresses many of our current predicaments, and he has the moral authority to command our attention. * Marx and Philosophy Review of Books *His mountainous text is a repetitive tool-box of notes and thoughts from his seminar series and own readings. Like lightning, brilliant ideas flash across the pages. * Counterpunch *By any measure, Critique & Praxis is an impressive contribution, passionate, lucid, deeply committed and nearly always generous in its disagreements. As a conversation between Foucauldian philosophy and radical-political engagement, it is a tour de force. * New Left Review *It’s lucidly written and relatively short on jargon. Which makes it an important book to pay attention to, even for those with no interest in abstruse political-social theories, because we urgently need new ways to critique the system we live in and develop new strategies to oppose and replace it. * History News Network *Critique & Praxis is one of the most provoking contributions to critical theory of the twenty-first century. * Foucault Studies *Bernard Harcourt's latest book is bold, brave, and too short. -- Frieder Vogelmann * British Journal of Sociology *A wide-ranging effort to take up the conundrum of critical theory, which has been with us since Marx wrote the eleventh thesis—that is, that we think and act in and on a damaged society. * Political Theory *Table of ContentsPreface: The Primacy of Critique and PraxisIntroduction: Toward a Critical Praxis TheoryPart I. Reconstructing Critical Theory1. The Original Foundations2. Challenging the Frankfurt Foundations3. Michel Foucault and the History of Truth-Making4. The Return to Foundations5. The Crux of the Problem6. Reconstructing Critical Theory7. A Radical Critical Philosophy of IllusionsPart II. Reimagining the Critical Horizon8. The Transformation of Critical Utopias9. The Problem of Liberalism10. A Radical Critical Theory of Values11. A Critical Horizon of Endless Struggle12. The Problem of Violence13. A Way ForwardPart III. Renewing Critical Praxis14. The Transformation of Praxis15. The Landscape of Contemporary Critical Praxis16. The New Space of Critical PraxisPart IV. Reformulating Critique17. Reframing the Praxis Imperative18. What More Am I To Do?19. Crisis, Critique, PraxisConclusionPostscriptNotesBibliographyAcknowledgmentsName IndexConcept Index
£25.00
Stanford University Press Theory of the Earth
Book SynopsisWe need a new philosophy of the earth. Geological time used to refer to slow and gradual processes, but today we are watching land sink into the sea and forests transform into deserts. We can even see the creation of new geological strata made of plastic, chicken bones, and other waste that could remain in the fossil record for millennia or longer. Crafting a philosophy of geology that rewrites natural and human history from the broader perspective of movement, Thomas Nail provides a new materialist, kinetic ethics of the earth that speaks to this moment. Climate change and other ecological disruptions challenge us to reconsider the deep history of minerals, atmosphere, plants, and animals and to take a more process-oriented perspective that sees humanity as part of the larger cosmic and terrestrial drama of mobility and flow. Building on his earlier work on the philosophy of movement, Nail argues that we should shift our biocentric emphasis from conservation to expenditure, flux, and planetary diversity. Theory of the Earth urges us to rethink our ethical relationship to one another, the planet, and the cosmos at large.Trade Review"One of the most remarkable books I've read in some time. Thomas Nail forges a mode of materialist philosophy in conversation with recent, cross-disciplinary movements in the environmental humanities, generating a mode of thinking and theorizing that moves beyond the scale of human life." -- Claire Colebrook * Pennsylvania State University *"Thomas Nail has developed a much-needed, and previously underrepresented philosophy of geology. In elaborating a process theory of a kinetic earth, this book helps us imagine our planet as neither a static place of habitation nor a protective Mother Earth." -- Matthias Fritsch * Concordia University *"Is ecocide, unconsciously practiced by industrio-techno-capitalist humans to their own detriment and potential extinction, a direct result of the reduction and destruction of Earth's complex energy dissipation? In an ambitious and fabulous synthesis, with a Lucretian sensibility and deep scientific rapprochement, Thomas Nail gives us back a real Earth, where life is part of a planetary more-than-human dissipative system and humans better get with the flow. A fascinating, difficult, needed scientifico-philosophical document, Theory of the Earth should interest and irritate scientists as it provides a needed provocation to much modern environmental philosophy." -- Dorion Sagan * author of Cosmic Apprentice: Dispatches from the Edges of Science *"While Anthropocene ideology focuses on the destructive action of humans on a passive Earth, Nail posits that conceptual refocusing—away from conservation toward an ethics of energy transformation—can help address the serious environmental problems we face. Though chiefly a work of philosophy, this text is accessible for any advanced reader interested in environmental meta issues. Recommended." -- E. Kincanon * CHOICE *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction chapter abstractWe are witnessing a second Copernican revolution, in which the earth is not just moving around the sun but is itself internally on the move. Terrestrial events that we could in the past only have imagined taking place over huge time scales are now happening before our eyes. Flora and fauna are headed north in mass migrations, throwing tens of thousands of species into motion around the world. Today, half of all species on earth are on the move, including insects, viruses, and microbes. However, since not all species are moving at the same rate or in the same way, species are coming into contact with one another in new ways and producing new hybrids. A new history of the earth is necessary in order to understand the immanent conditions of the present and the kind of earth that we are. 1The Flow of Matter chapter abstractThe earth flows because the matter of the cosmos flows through it. It is not an unchanging or even uniformly changing substance following its own autonomous processes. Geology is also cosmology, and the cosmos flows. Flows of matter continually compose, cycle through, and flow out of the earth. The earth is only a regional circulation of a much larger kinetic and entropic process. Historically, however, philosophy, politics, and much of geology have not taken the ongoing flow of cosmic matter seriously. This has led to a complete inversion of what the earth is and the human relationship to it. The earth is not a planet, but rather a process of terrestrialization. 2The Fold of Elements chapter abstractThe pedetic flow and fluctuation of matter is constitutive of the earth and its elemental body. The word "earth" designates not only a planet and its soil but also one of the four classical elements. The earth is elemental and elementary only because the universe is—and the latter is the key to understanding the former. If the element "earth" is mineral, then the earth must share its elemental namesake with the mineral bodies of the cosmos. In this sense, earth is not just on the earth, but in the universe and from the universe. In other words, the universe was already earthly before the earth was terrestrialized. 3The Planetary Field chapter abstractMatter flows and folds into elements, but these elements are in turn distributed into celestial and planetary fields. Elements are conjoined into atomic and molecular composites that in turn are arranged and ordered together in a field of celestial and planetary circulation. This is the third core concept of geokinetics. If matter flows and elements fold into periodic cycles, planetary fields organize them all in a continuous feedback loop. This chapter provides a geokinetic theory of how conjoined flows become organized according to distinct regimes or planetary fields. 4Centripetal Minerality chapter abstractThe earth is material, kinetic, and thus historical; it is possible for different, coexisting, and mixed planetary fields to emerge. In other words, it is possible for matter to distribute itself differently over time into different patterns or orders of arrangement. There is no way to know what the earth is without understanding its historical process of becoming. If this is the case then it is possible to study this material history and to discern the planetary regimes or fields along with the different elements and beings that are distributed there: minerals, atmosphere, plants, and animals. What this means is that the contemporary earth is not defined by a single geokinetic field or pattern of motion, but is composed of a motley mixture of everything that has ever been. 5Hadean Earth chapter abstractIn this chapter we look closely at the kinetic patterns produced by three major geokinetic phenomena that define the Hadean earth: meteors, the moon, and water. The argument of this chapter is that each of these major phenomena is defined predominately by a distinctly centripetal pattern of motion and a geokinetics of mineralization. Centripetal mineralization was the first major transcendental kinetic regime invented by the earth. This first movement inward toward the center from the periphery along differentiated layers continues today as the immanent condition of planetary life and mineral-based technologies. 6Centrifugal Atmospherics chapter abstractThe second major geokinetic field to rise to dominance in the earth's history was the atmospheric field. This second type of field became increasingly prevalent over the course of the Archean Eon, from about 4 billion years ago to about 2.5 billion years ago. Three major events define this transition: the end of heavy meteor bombardment, the emergence of living organisms, and the rise of a highly oxygenated atmosphere. These events were the cause of a dramatic historical shift in the earth's pattern of motion, from one of largely centripetal accretion and crystallization to one of increasingly centrifugal movements of outward expansion, respiration, and reproduction. 7Archean Earth I: Pneumatology chapter abstractDuring the Archean Eon (4 to 2.5 billion years ago), the entire planet began to move in an increasingly centrifugal pattern of motion from the center out to the periphery (and back). This chapter argues that the emergence of a prevailing centrifugal pattern of motion occurs increasingly over the course of the Archean Eon. The deep history of atmospherization is the material condition of terrestrial motion for all subsequent eons, up to the present. In this chapter we look closely at the kinetic patterns produced by four major geokinetic phenomena that define the Archean earth: sky, clouds, mountains, and life. The argument of this chapter is that each of these major phenomena is defined predominately by a distinctly centrifugal pattern of motion and a geokinetics of atmospherics. 8Archean Earth II: Biogenesis chapter abstractThe second major historical event of the Archean Eon was the emergence of living organisms (prokaryotic bacteria and archaea) with metabolism, genetic multiplication, and natural selection. Organisms are dissipative or vortical systems that have the distinct ability to remember and reproduce the material kinetic patterns that produced them. During the Archean, the entire earth erupted into centrifugal motion. Volcanoes blasted themselves into the air, the ocean evaporated into the clouds, and organisms released an incredible amount of volatiles and stored energy. However, by the end of the Archean Eon, around 2.5 billion years ago, a new form of life emerged that would change the motion of the planet yet again: plants. 9Tensional Vegetality chapter abstractThe third major geokinetic planetary field to rise to dominance in the earth's history was the vegetal field. Over the course of the Proterozoic Eon, the longest eon in the earth's history, from about 2.5 billion years ago to 541 million years ago, three major events occurred: the emergence of eukaryotes (cells with a nucleus and organelles), the development of multicellular organisms (such as protozoa, fungi, and plants), and the arrival of life on land. All these events were defined by a new kind of tensional motion inside, between, and through these organisms. But this new pattern of motion defined by a system of held contrasts was not limited to life alone. Life, like mineral and atmospheric flows, is not just one discrete region among others, in isolation. Vegetal life completed, saturated, and transformed all planetary processes. 10Proterozoic Earth chapter abstractDuring the Proterozoic Eon, the entire life-saturated planet began to fold itself up into a vast knotwork of cellularized tensions. The birth of cellular and complex cellular life was not just the birth of a new type of substance "on" the earth but a new kinetic relation of the earth to itself. This chapter argues that the emergence of a prevailing tensional pattern of motion occurred increasingly over the course of the Proterozoic Eon. I argue that the deep history of phytality is the material condition of terrestrial motion for all subsequent eons, up to the present. In this chapter we look closely at the increasingly tensional kinetic patterns produced by vegetal bodies and that eventually defined the Proterozoic and early Phanerozoic earth: thallus, stem, leaf, root, seed, and flower. 11Elastic Animality chapter abstractAnimality is the fourth major geokinetic planetary pattern of motion. The rise of animality overlapped with the end of the Proterozoic Eon as vegetality slowly dovetailed into the Phanerozoic Eon, from 541 million years ago to the present. The Phanerozoic Eon began with the Cambrian explosion of diverse animal and plant life. This explosion was itself made possible by increased oxygen in the atmosphere and mineral-rich soils produced by vegetal life across the continents. The emergence and proliferation of animals on the earth was the source of a radical new regime of elastic motion defined by the ability of living matter to expand, contract, stretch and oscillate back and forth to a degree never before seen on the earth. 12Phanerozoic Earth I: Kinomorphology chapter abstractThe Phanerozoic Eon (541 million years ago to the present) is our geological eon. It began with the Cambrian explosion of living forms, the greatest number of evolving creatures in a a single period in the history of the earth. During the Phanerozoic, the entire planet became increasingly elastic as the proliferation of life forms expanded, contracted, and mutated more rapidly than ever before. The more new organisms emerged, the faster they changed their environment. This chapter argues that the emergence of a prevailing elastic pattern of motion occurred increasingly over the course of the Phanerozoic Eon. In this chapter we look closely at the increasingly elastic kinetic structures produced by animal bodies that eventually saturated the late Proterozoic and early Phanerozoic Earth: body, head, and tail. 13Phanerozoic Earth II: Terrestrialization chapter abstractThe third major historico-morphological event of the Phanerozoic Eon was the explosion of elastic sensory organs and limbs in the animal body. With the evolution of mollusks, arthropods, and vertebrates, an enormous transformation occurred as animal life in the seas spread to the land and the skies. The process of terrestrial animality saturated the untapped energy of these new regions—completing the transformation of the earth into its full animality. The material evolution of animal morphology is also a kinetic evolution toward the increasingl elasticity, mobility, sensitivity, and energy expenditure of the earth more broadly. Animals are not on the earth but aspects of the earth itself—the becoming animal and becoming elastic of the earth. 14Kinocene Earth chapter abstractToday, the earth is in increasingly unstable motion. The earth, as we have seen in this book, has always been in motion, but today these four major patterns of geological motion have become increasingly disrupted due to the coordinated efforts of certain human groups. What I am calling the "Kinocene" in the final Part of this book is a new geological period not because motion is new to the earth, as we have seen, but because of the increasing mobility of the earth's geological strata, described in Parts I and II. At the same time, however, we are also witnessing for the first time in a long time a significant reduction in the net kinetic expenditure of the planet as a whole. 15Kinocene Ethics chapter abstractThe ethics of kinetic expenditure is not a universal ethical ground but a hypothetical ethical ground that allows us to say not only that capitalism is descriptively wrong about nature but that it is unethical (assuming we want to survive), on the grounds that it leads to the reduction of planetary expenditure (including the reduction of human and ecological diversity). Furthermore, the ethics of expenditure relates to the material conditions of all human society as such. If we even want to have humanist ethics in the first place, there must be humans alive to practice it. Thus, implicit in all humanist ethics is the assumption of planetary existence and survival. In short: If we want human ethics, then we need to be alive and survive, and if we want to survive then we need to try to increase planetary expenditure (with all that entails). Conclusion: The Future chapter abstractEverything is in motion. The earth is in motion because so is the cosmos. The West's historically mistaken belief in a static or stable earth is one of the biggest mistakes ever made. This mistake is symptomatic of a similar belief in stasis in politics, ontology, science, and the arts. Together, the belief in stasis of one form or another across the major domains of human knowledge and activity is the source of our contemporary world crisis. Movement and expenditure had always been primary. Human history was not the progressive realization of static forms. Progress and development in the Western tradition are dead. Human history can now be seen for what it is: a series of kinetic patterns iterated in the material diffusion of the cosmos itself.
£23.39
Autonomedia Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews
Book Synopsis
£15.29
Broadview Press Ltd Civilization and Its Discontents
Book SynopsisIn Civilization and Its Discontents Freud extends and clarifies his analysis of religion; analyzes human unhappiness in contemporary civilization; ratifies the critical importance of the death drive theory; and contemplates the significance of guilt and conscience in everyday life. The result is Freud’s most expansive work, one wherein he discusses mysticism, love, interpretation, narcissism, religion, happiness, technology, beauty, justice, work, the origin of civilization, phylogenetic development, Christianity, the Devil, communism, the sense of guilt, remorse, and ethics. A classic, important, accessible work, Freud reminds us again why we still read and debate his ideas today. Todd Dufresne’s introduction expands on why, according to the late Freud, psychoanalysis is the key to understanding individual and collective realities or, better yet, collective truths. The Appendices include related writings by Freud, contemporary reviews, and scholarly responses from Marcuse, Rieff, and Ricoeur.Trade Review“Following on the heels of Beyond the Pleasure Principle and The Future of an Illusion, this new Broadview Edition of Civilization and Its Discontents concludes Todd Dufresne’s editorial trilogy on the late ‘philosophical’ Freud. Gregory Richter’s lucid and exact translation rejuvenates the text. Dufresne’s superb introduction renews our understanding of Freud’s final ‘romantic science’; it excerpts from other works by Freud and from critical responses to Freud in order to provide context and perspective. At last a truly critical edition of Freud!” — Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, University of Washington“Civilization and Its Discontents is one of Sigmund Freud’s darkest texts, offering an analysis of culture by reflecting on the place of death in a person’s life. Todd Dufresne’s thoughtful edition showcases the full relevance of this text for a historical, philosophical, and psychoanalytical reading by adding an informative introduction, references to other works by Freud, as well as excerpts from the work by scholars such as Herbert Marcuse and Paul Ricœur who have written about Freud’s text. The new translation by Gregory C. Richter is excellent. This edition of Civilization and Its Discontents will be very useful for the classroom, but also of interest for any general reader who wants to learn more about Freud’s late work.” — Liliane Weissberg, University of Pennsylvania“Gregory Richter’s new translation of Civilization and Its Discontents is complemented by Todd Dufresne’s careful contextualization and lively interrogation of Freud’s most widely read text. Dufresne’s pithy introduction stages the confrontation between Freud’s ‘late Romantic pessimism’ and Romain Rolland’s optimistic embrace of the ‘oceanic’ as the font of religion, morality, and, by extension, civilization. Dufresne’s larger argument is that Freud’s psychology is inseparable from his ‘metabiology’—inseparable, that is, from Freud’s belief in the transmission of acquired characteristics. Whether or not Lamarckism is to be understood as Freud’s signature failing, Dufresne’s critical reading challenges his audience to take up the task of interpretation—in this case, to locate Freud’s logic of the drives.” — Vanessa Parks Rumble, Boston College“This is an excellent edition of Civilization and its Discontents and will be particularly helpful in teaching contexts for both undergraduate and graduate classes. The translation by Gregory C. Richter is quite accessible and includes helpful footnotes which add to the readability of the text. … The three appendices included in the volume speak to the strength of this edition as one which can be utilized at multiple teaching levels. The culling of texts from Freud’s own work in the first appendix (A) which address similar themes to those found in Civilization and its Discontents, is particularly helpful and well chosen. The third appendix (C) which addresses the central scholarly responses to this text make this edition ideal for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses.” — Athena V. Colman, Brock UniversityTable of ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroductionSigmund Freud: A Brief ChronologyTranslator’s NoteCivilization and its Discontents (1930)Appendix A: Other Works of Freud From “‘Civilized’ Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Disease” (March 1908) From “Thought for the Times on War and Death” (1915) From Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) From The Future of an Illusion (1927) From Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, Why War? (1932) From Moses and Monotheism (1939) Appendix B: Contemporary Reviews of Civilization and Its Discontents E. G. Catlin, “Freud No Freudian” Saturday Review (27 September 1930) Joseph Jastrow, “Unhappiness Psycho-Analyzed” Saturday Review of Literature (6 December 1930) Harold D. Lasswell, “Review: Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud,” American Journal of Sociology (September 1931) Appendix C: Scholarly Responses to Civilization and Its Discontents Herbert Marcuse, “The Dialectic of Civilization” (1955) Philip Rieff, “Freud & the Value of Religion” (1959) Paul Ricoeur, “On Metaculture & ‘Death Against Death’” (1970) Select BibliographyIndex
£15.95
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Libidinal Economy
Book SynopsisFirst published in 1974, Libidinal Economy is a major work of twentieth century continental philosophy. In it, Lyotard develops the idea of economies driven by libidinal energies' or intensities' which he claims flow through all structures, such as the human body and political or social events. He uses this idea to interpret a diverse range of subjects including political economy, Marxism, sexual politics, semiotics and psychoanalysis. Lyotard also carries out a broad critique of philosophies of desire, as expounded by Deleuze and Guattari, Nietzsche, Bataille, Foucault and de Sade.Translated by Iain Hamilton Grant.
£23.74
Edinburgh University Press Philosophising by Accident
Book SynopsisIn this book of interviews, Bernard Stiegler discusses the reasons that motivated him to develop his philosophy of technics. Divided into four parts, Philosophising by Accident introduces some of the key points in Stiegler's argument about the technical constitution of the human, and its relation to politics, aesthetics and economics.
£18.99
John Wiley and Sons Ltd In the Presence of Schopenhauer
Book SynopsisThe work of Michel Houellebecq – one of the most widely read and controversial novelists of our time – is marked by the thought of Schopenhauer. When Houellebecq came across a copy of Schopenhauer's Aphorisms in a library in his mid-twenties, he was bowled over by it and he hunted down a copy of his major philosophical work, The World as Will and Representation. Houellebecq found in Schopenhauer – the radical pessimist, the chronicler of human suffering, the lonely misanthrope – a powerful conception of the human condition and of the future that awaits us, and when Houellebecq’s first writings appeared in the early 1990s, the influence of Schopenhauer was everywhere apparent. But it was only much later, in 2005, that Houellebecq began to translate and write a commentary on Schopenhauer’s work. He thought of turning it into a book but soon abandoned the idea and the text remained unpublished until 2017. Now available in English for the first time, In the Presence of Schopenhauer is the story of a remarkable encounter between a novelist and a philosopher and a testimony to the deep and enduring impact of Schopenhauer’s philosophy on one of France’s greatest living writers.Trade Review‘So when I borrowed “Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life” from the municipal library of the seventh arrondissement in Paris (more specifically, its annex in the Latour-Maubourg district), I may have been aged twenty-six, but equally possibly twenty-five, or twenty-seven. In any case, this is very late in life for such a major discovery. At the time, I already knew Baudelaire, Dostoevsky, Lautréamont, Verlaine, almost all the Romantics; a lot of science fiction, too. I had read the Bible, Pascal’s Pensées, Clifford D. Simak’s City, Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. I wrote poems; I already had the impression I was rereading, rather than really reading; I thought I had at least completed one period in my discovery of literature.’‘And then, in a few minutes, everything dramatically changed.’"In the Presence of Schopenhauer is a profound tribute that illuminates the French novelist’s own work."Times Literary SupplementTable of ContentsPreface by Agathe Novak-Lechevalier Leave childhood behind, my friend, and wake up! Chapter One: The world is my representation Chapter Two: Look at things attentively Chapter Three: In this way the will to live objectifies itself Chapter Four: The theatre of the world Chapter Five: The conduct of life: what we are Chapter Six: The conduct of life: what we have Notes
£9.49
Oxford University Press Pragmatism and Idealism
Book SynopsisIn this short book, based upon his Spinoza Lectures at the University of Amsterdam, Robert B. Brandom offers a pragmatist approach to representation and reality, drawing on Richard Rorty and Hegel. During the last decade of his life, Rorty emphasized the anti-authoritarian credentials of his pragmatism. He came to see pragmatism as the fighting faith of a second phase of the Enlightenment. The first stage, as Rorty construed it, concerned our emancipation from nonhuman authority in practical matters: issues of what we ought to do and how things ought to be. The envisaged second stage addresses rather our emancipation from nonhuman authority in theoretical matters.Brandom shows how pragmatism moves beyond the traditional model of reality as authoritative over our cognitive representations of it in language and thought, to a new conception of how discursive practices help us cope with the vicissitudes of life. Hegel anticipates the challenge to the very idea of objective reality as proviTrade ReviewBrandom otherwise constructs a careful and insightful conversation between Rorty and Hegel that is likely to be fecund for readers of either thinker. * Susan Dieleman, Metascience *Table of ContentsPreface Lecture 1: Pragmatism as Completing the Enlightenment: Reason Against Representation Lecture 2: Recognition and Recollection: The Social and Historical Dimensions of Reason Afterword
£16.29
Fordham University Press Let Them Rot: Antigone’s Parallax
Book SynopsisA provocative, highly accessible journey to the heart of Sophocles’ Antigone elucidating why it keeps resurfacing as a central text of Western thought and Western culture. There is probably no classical text that has inspired more interpretation, critical attention, and creative response than Sophocles’ Antigone. The general perspective from which the book is written could be summarized with this simple question: What is it about the figure of Antigone that keeps haunting us? Why do all these readings and rewritings keep emerging? To what kind of always contemporary contradiction does the need, the urge to reread and reimagine Antigone—in all kinds of contexts and languages—correspond? As key anchor points of this general interrogation, three particular “obsessions” have driven the author’s thinking and writing about Antigone. First is the issue of violence. The violence in Antigone is the opposite of “graphic” as we have come to know it in movies and in the media; rather, it is sharp and piercing, it goes straight to the bone. It is the violence of language, the violence of principles, the violence of desire, the violence of subjectivity. Then there is the issue of funerary rites and their role in appeasing the specific “undeadness” that seems to be the other side of human life, its irreducible undercurrent that death alone cannot end and put to rest. This issue prompted the author to look at the relationship between language, sexuality, death, and “second death.” The third issue, which constitutes the focal point of the book, is Antigone’s statement that if it were her children or husband lying unburied out there, she would let them rot and not take it upon herself to defy the decree of the state. The author asks, how does this exclusivist, singularizing claim (she would do it only for Polyneices), which she uses to describe the “unwritten law” she follows, tally with Antigone’s universal appeal and compelling power? Attempting to answer this leads to the question of what this particular (Oedipal) family’s misfortune, of which Antigone chooses to be the guardian, shares with the general condition of humanity. Which in turn forces us to confront the seemingly self-evident question: “What is incest?” Let Them Rot is Alenka Zupančič’s absorbing and succinct guided tour of the philosophical and psychoanalytic issues arising from the Theban trilogy. Her original and surprising intervention into the broad and prominent field of study related to Sophocles’ Antigone illuminates the classical text’s ongoing relevance and invites a wide readership to become captivated by its themes.Table of ContentsPreface | vii Prologue | 1 1. Violence, Terror, and Unwritten Laws | 9 2. Death, Undeadness, and Funeral Rites | 21 3. “I’d Let Them Rot” | 50 Works Cited | 83 Index | 85
£16.14
Harvard University Press A Life Worth Living
Book SynopsisExploring themes that preoccupied Albert Camus--absurdity, silence, revolt, fidelity, and moderation--Robert Zaretsky portrays a moralist who refused to be fooled by the nobler names we assign to our actions, and who pushed himself, and those about him, to challenge the status quo. For Camus, rebellion against injustice is the human condition.Trade ReviewEnlightening… Zaretsky probes Camus’s multifaceted sensibility. -- John Taylor * Times Literary Supplement *A Life Worth Living departs from the chronological approach… Instead, Zaretsky tells [Camus’s] story according to the five themes that preoccupied his life and work: absurdity, silence, measure, fidelity, and revolt. The result is a much more human portrait of a man whose life is often reduced to a meditation on the bleakness of absurdism. By chronicling the ideas rather than the events of Camus’s life, Zaretsky shows that ‘Camus was all too human: an obvious point that our desperate need for heroes, especially now, often obscures.’ -- Linda Kinstler * New Republic *This is a wonderful introduction to Albert Camus and an overview for those who have already read him. Zaretsky effortlessly explores sometimes difficult concepts in an accessible, even conversational study that blends significant aspects of Camus’ life—his Algerian background, life in France, the importance of the war; the Resistance and the TB that afflicted him for much of his life—with his works, in such a way that it offers a strong sense of the writings and the writer… The result is a concise portrait of an intellectual deeply concerned with ethics, but with an abiding love of the sensual, and life’s beauty. -- Steven Carroll * Sydney Morning Herald *In the beautifully titled and beautifully written A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning, historian Robert Zaretsky considers Camus’s lifelong quest to shed light on the absurd condition, his ‘yearning for a meaning or a unity to our lives,’ and its timeless yet increasingly timely legacy… A remarkable read in its entirety. -- Maria Popova * Brain Pickings *Some writers are lucky enough to be remembered 50 years after they die, and a few are even beloved. What is vanishingly rare, however, is for a long-dead writer to remain controversial. Albert Camus is one of those exceptions, a writer who still has the power to ignite political passions, because he managed to incorporate the history of the 20th century so deeply into his writing… Readers new to Camus will find in Zaretsky a deeply informed and warmly admiring guide. -- Adam Kirsch * Daily Beast *It is extremely limiting to think of Albert Camus as an existentialist philosopher of the absurd. While Camus was never trained as a philosopher, Zaretsky demonstrates that many other themes marked Camus’s thought. Camus was a highly principled person, and a strong advocate for justice… Camus’s voice still has resonance. * Christian Century *More than a half-century after his untimely death in 1960 at age 46, Camus continues to engage us… Zaretsky provides thorough and rigorous examinations into the author’s life and work while also helping us understand the disquiet of a man who gave readers seeking sustenance in art some of the most lyrical and encouraging advice in 20th-century literature. -- Kevin Rabalais * The Australian *For a good short study of [Camus’s] life, work and philosophy, try Robert Zaretsky’s A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning. -- Stephen Romei * The Australian *The centenary [of Camus’s birth] has spurred books, papers and reconsideration of his contributions to literature and his times. Robert Zaretsky’s is one of the best. The Algerian-French Nobel Prize winner, known for novels such as The Stranger and The Plague and essays including ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ and ‘Reflections on the Guillotine,’ wrote piercingly and urgently about facing injustice, the need for revolt, confronting absurdity and the search for meaning. Zaretsky underscores why the ideas of Camus, who died in a car accident in 1960, remain important today. -- Peter M. Gianotti * Newsday *Offer[s] concise, eloquent, and learned treatments of the life and work of the French-Algerian moralist… Camus contained multitudes and…Zaretsky returns to this truth again and again. -- Barry Lenser * PopMatters *What emerges is the paradoxical portrait of an exceptional everyman: imperfect, plagued by doubt, melancholic, flawed, but also sensitive, hopeful, passionate and heroic… A Life Worth Living reveals much about Camus, the times he lived in and wrote against… Those looking for a better understanding of the context in which Camus penned his books and essays on murder, torture, suicide, silence and rebellion will find much to ruminate on… Zaretsky is especially adept at seamlessly weaving Camus’ own words into the text, and the result is that the reader feels almost as though she is reading Camus as opposed to a biographer… Zaretsky’s book is good reading for dark times, a wonderfully written monograph about an absurd hero whose life serves as a reminder that, ‘while we have no reason to hope, we must also never despair.’ -- Jon Morris * PopMatters *Zaretsky identifies Camus as a moralist, not a moralizer, one who poses questions rather than imposes answers. Like such courageous moralists as Montaigne, Voltaire, Hugo and Zola, Camus extended his private quest for truth into the public sphere… In pithy prose worthy of his subject, Zaretsky reminds us that, in an age of suicide bombings and state-sanctioned murder, Camus is an author worth reading. -- Steven G. Kellman * Texas Observer *Zaretsky brings to light in this wonderfully readable intellectual biography of the iconoclastic pied noir the continued relevance of Camus in contemporary life… This volume offers a portrait of Camus not simply as an existentialist (as is typical) but rather as a ‘Mediterranean humanist’ disillusioned by the world’s failure to live up to its purest ideals. -- L. A. Wilkinson * Choice *Zaretsky delivers a lucid perspective on the intellectual provenance of the writer’s moral philosophy through an examination of Notebooks, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Rebel, The Plague, and The Stranger. His scrutiny converges on Camus’s sense of the fundamental absurdity of life and why suicide is not an option; his sensitivity to the positive and negative aspects of silence; his understanding of the human condition; and his conviction that rebellious response to injustice be measured, not extreme… An admirable, comprehensible introduction to Camus. -- Lonnie Weatherby * Library Journal *Zaretsky offers an invigorating blend of history, criticism, and biography in a stirring reassessment of the Nobel Prize–winning existentialist writer Albert Camus… Zaretsky demonstrates Camus’s commitment to justice and the joy of existence, evident in his rejection of Soviet communism, as well as his principled opposition to terrorism and capital punishment. Camus emerges as a compassionate thinker who always ruthlessly interrogated his own beliefs and assumptions. Zaretsky’s elegant prose and passion for the subject, meanwhile, will inspire both novices in existentialism as well as experts to revisit the contributions of this great French writer. * Publishers Weekly *A marvelously wise, concise, and adventurous exploration of Camus, his intellectual antecedents, the battles that raged around him, and his continuing power to unsettle and inspire us to this day. -- Sarah Bakewell, author of How to Live: A Life of Montaigne
£17.06
Vintage Publishing Sartre
Book SynopsisSartre''s powerful political passions were united with a memorable literary gift, placing him foremost among the novelists, as well as the philosophers, of our time. Iris Murdoch''s pioneering study analyses and evaluates the different strands of Sartre''s rich and complex oeurve. Combining the objectivity of the scholar with a profound interest in contemporary problems, Iris Murdoch discusses the tradition of philosophical, political and aesthetic thought that gives historical authenticity to Satre''s achievement, while showing the ambiguities and dangers inherent in his position.Trade ReviewA penetrating introduction to the romantic rationalist, novelist and penseur * The Times *Iris Murdoch's concise study... reads as clear and logical as it did in 1953, and remains one of the best friends to anyone who wants to understand what existentialism was all about * Evening Standard *With a cool and luminous introduction...Sartre: Romantic Rationalist is all about the thinker, about his philosophy and his novels... Her fair if unflattering book is the best way in to what finally matters to Sartre * Observer *A remarkably intelligent and penetrating introduction to Sartre * Times Literary Supplement *
£10.44
Oxford University Press Idealism in Modern Philosophy
Book SynopsisThis book tells the story of idealism in modern philosophy, from the seventeenth century to the turn of the twenty-first. Guyer and Horstmann discuss many philosophers who have played a role in the development of idealism, including Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein.Table of ContentsPreface 1: Introduction 2: Idealism in Early Modern Rationalism 3: Idealism in Early Modern British Philosophy 4: Kant 5: German Idealism 6: German Reactions against Idealism I: Schopenhauer and Nietzsche 7: British and American Idealism 8: The Rejection of British Idealism 9: German Reactions Against Idealism II: Neo-Kantianism without Idealism 10: Further into the Twentieth Century 11: Conclusion Bibliography
£21.49
The University of Chicago Press The Subversive Simone Weil
Book SynopsisDistinguished literary biographer Robert Zaretsky upends our thinking on Simone Weil, bringing us a woman and a philosopher who is complicated and challenging, while remaining incredibly relevant.Trade Review"Simone Weil was merciless (not least on herself), sometimes alarming, always compelling, and unavoidably significant. This is a beautifully sharp and thoughtful account of her life and work--a fascinating read."--Sarah Bakewell, author of At the Existentialist Cafe Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Others;"Zaretsky's work is unfailingly eloquent, fascinating, and relevant. In treating both her life and her writings, The Subversive Simone Weil displays a subject who, by going too far toward goodness, reminds so many of us that we have not gone far enough. In Zaretsky's hands, her courage stands as a complicated but necessary lesson for us all." --Todd May, author of A Decent Life: Morality for the Rest of Us;"Reading Zaretsky's absorbing and tender intellectual portrait of Simone Weil, I was reminded on every page of her astonishing relevance to our own times. With her demanding vision of the life well lived, in her extreme judgments and through her punishing empathy, Weil emerges here as a figurehead for the intellectual and ethical challenges of the current moment. As he has done so beautifully in his books on Camus, Zaretsky has opened Weil's life and work to our understanding. For readers familiar with Weil's, The Subversive Simone Weil is a valuable synthesis; for those coming to her for the first time, an inspiring primer."--Alice Kaplan, author of Looking for "The Stranger" Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary ClassicTable of ContentsPreface Introduction Chapter One The Force of Affliction Chapter Two Paying Attention Chapter Three The Varieties of Resistance Chapter Four Finding Roots Chapter Five The Good, the Bad, and the Godly Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes Index
£19.00
MIT Press The Parallax View
Book Synopsis
£24.30
MIT Press Ltd Heideggers Topology Being Place World A Bradford
Book SynopsisThis groundbreaking inquiry into the centrality of place in Martin Heidegger's thinking offers not only an illuminating reading of Heidegger's thought but a detailed investigation into the way in which the concept of place relates to core philosophical issues. In Heidegger's Topology, Jeff Malpas argues that an engagement with place, explicit in Heidegger's later work, informs Heidegger's thought as a whole. What guides Heidegger's thinking, Malpas writes, is a conception of philosophy's starting point: our finding ourselves already there, situated in the world, in place. Heidegger's concepts of being and place, he argues, are inextricably bound together.Malpas follows the development of Heidegger's topology through three stages: the early period of the 1910s and 1920s, through Being and Time, centered on the meaning of being; the middle period of the 1930s into the 1940s, centered on the truth of being; and the late period from the mid-1940s on, when the place of bein
£26.10
SPCK Publishing Theology After Wittgenstein
Book SynopsisOriginally published in 1986, this book - now reissued with a substantial new postscript - focuses on those of Wittgenstein's writings (primarily in the "Philosophical Investigations") that relate to theological issues, such as the inner life and the immortality of the soul.
£14.39
Taylor & Francis Ltd (Sales) Portraits from Memory And Other Essays Routledge
Book SynopsisâI have come to think that one of the main causes of trouble in the world is dogmatic and fanatical belief in some doctrine for which there is no adequate evidence.â â Bertrand Russell, Portraits from MemoryPortraits from Memory is one of Bertrand Russellâs most self-reflective and engaging books. Whilst not intended as an autobiography, it is a vivid recollection of some of his celebrated contemporaries, such as George Bernard Shaw, Sidney and Beatrice Webb and D. H. Lawrence. Russell provides some arresting and sometimes amusing insights into writers with whom he corresponded. He was fascinated by Joseph Conrad, with whom he formed a strong emotional bond, writing that his Heart of Darkness was not just a story but an expression of Conradâs âphilosophy of lifeâ. There are also some typically pithy Russellian observations; H. G. Wells âderived his importance from quantity rather than qualityâ, whilst after a brief and fraught friendship Russell thought D. H. Lawrence âhad no real wish to make the world better, but only to indulge in eloquent soliloquy about how bad it wasâ.This engaging book also includes some of Russellâs customary razor-sharp essays on a rich array of subjects, from his ardent pacifism, liberal politics and morality to the ethics of education, the skills of good writing and how he came to philosophy as a young man. These include âA Plea for Clear Thinkingâ, âA Philosophy for Our Timeâ and âHow I Writeâ.Portraits from Memory is Russell at his best and will enthrall those new to Russell as well as those already well-acquainted with his work. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new foreword by the Russell scholar Nicholas Griffin, editor of The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell.Table of ContentsForeword to the Routledge Classics Edition Nicholas Griffin 1. Adaptation: An Autobiographical Epitome 2. Six Autobiographical Talks 3. How to Grow Old 4. Reflections on my Eightieth Birthday 5. Portraits from Memory 6. Lord John Russell 7. John Stuart Mill 8. Mind and Matter 9. The Cult of "Common Usage" 10. Knowledge and Wisdom 11. A Philosophy for Our Time 12. A Plea for Clear Thinking 13. History as an Art 14. How I Write 15. The Road to Happiness 16. Symptoms of Orwell's 1984 17. Why I am Not a Communist 18. Man's Peril 19. Steps Towards Peace. Index
£16.99
Taylor & Francis The Explanation of Behaviour
Book SynopsisThe Explanation of Behaviour was the first book written by the renowned philosopher Charles Taylor. A vitally important work of philosophical anthropology, it is a devastating criticism of the theory of behaviourism, a powerful explanatory approach in psychology and philosophy when Taylor's book was first published. However, Taylor has far more to offer than a simple critique of behaviourism. He argues that in order to properly understand human beings, we must grasp that they are embodied, minded creatures with purposes, plans and goals, something entirely lacking in reductionist, scientific explanations of human behaviour.Taylorâs book is also prescient in according a central place to non-human animals, which like human beings are subject to needs, desires and emotions. However, because human beings have the unique ability to interpret and reflect on their own actions and purposes and declare them to others, Taylor argues that human experience differs to that of othTrade Review"A vehemently interesting book. The philosophical part displays the most remarkable grasp of the contemporary philosophical situation and its historical roots... There is also a satisfactory absence of the tones and attitudes of any particular philosophical school." - Elizabeth Anscombe, The New Statesman "A most valuable and systematic account of a major problem in the explanation of behaviour. His arguments are both powerful and of the greatest possible general interest." - Times Literary Supplement "A vehemently interesting book. The philosophical part displays the most remarkable grasp of the contemporary philosophical situation and its historical roots... There is also a satisfactory absence of the tones and attitudes of any particular philosophical school." - Elizabeth Anscombe, The New Statesman "A most valuable and systematic account of a major problem in the explanation of behaviour. His arguments are both powerful and of the greatest possible general interest." - Times Literary Supplement Table of ContentsForeword to the Routledge Classics Edition Alva Noë Preface to the Routledge Classics Edition Charles Taylor Part 1: Explanation by Purpose 1. Purpose and Teleology 2. Action and Desire 3. Intentionality 4. The Data Language 5. The Problem of Verification Part 2: Theory and Fact 6. The Determinants of Learning 7. What Is Learned? 8. Spatial Orientation 9. The Direction of Behaviour 10. The Ends of Behaviour 11. Conclusion Index
£18.99
WW Norton & Co The Norton Anthology of Western Philosophy After
Book SynopsisThe new standard anthology of nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy.
£48.27
Taylor & Francis Ltd Realism in International Relations and
Book SynopsisStefano Guzzini''s study offers an understanding of the evolution of the realist tradition within International Relations and International Political Economy. It sees the realist tradition not as a school of thought with a static set of fixed principles, but as a repeatedly failed attempt to turn the rules of European diplomacy into the laws of a US social science. Realism in International Relations and International Political Economy concentrates on the evolution of a leading school of thought, its critiques and its institutional environment. As such it will provide an invaluable basis to anyone studying international relations theory.Table of ContentsChapter 1 Assumptions of a historical sociology of realism; Part I Realism from containment to détente; Chapter 2 Classical realism: Carr, Morgenthau and the crisis of collective security; Chapter 3 The evolution of realist core concepts during the second debate; Chapter 4 Realism and the US policy of containment; Chapter 5 The turning point of the Cuban missile crisis: crisis management and the expanding research agenda; Chapter 6 Epilogue: Soviet theories of International Relations; interlude Interlude The crisis of realism; Chapter 7 The policy of détente: Kissinger and the limits of concert diplomacy; Chapter 8 International Relations in disarray: the inter-paradigm debate; Part II Realist responses to the crisis of realism; Chapter 9 Systemic neorealism: Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics; Chapter 10 International Political Economy as an attempt to update realism; Chapter 11 International Political Economy at the convergence of realism and structuralism; Conclusion The fragmentation of realism; Chapter 12 Realism gets lost: the epistemological turn of the 1980s and 1990s; Chapter 13 Realism at a crossroads;
£55.67
