Western philosophy from c 1800 Books

Book SynopsisTrade ReviewWolfson's new book Heidegger and Kabbalah is arguably the magnum opus of his long and productive career. It stands as a landmark study in Judaism and philosophy. -- Shaul Magid * Los Angeles Review of Books *By embracing a helix of competing paradoxes, Wolfson expertly shines the luminous speculum of kabbalah upon the darkening speculum of Heideggerean thinking to venture beyond all boundaries, opening a clearing for all future philosophical expositions of Jewish mysticism that would have otherwise been forgotten. * Religious Studies Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Belonging Together of the Foreign1. Hermeneutic Circularity: Tradition as Genuine Repetition of Futural Past2. Inceptual Thinking and Nonsystematic Atonality 3. Heidegger's Seyn/Nichts and Kabbalistic Ein Sof4. imum, Lichtung, and Bestowing Refusal 5. Autogenesis, Nihilating Leap, and Otherness of the Not-Other6. Temporalizing and Granting Timespace7. Disclosive Language: Poiēsis and Apophatic Occlusion of Occlusion8. Ethnolinguistic Enrootedness and Invocation of Historical Destiny Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis advanced introductory text offers a synoptic view of philosophical inquiry, discussing such topics as consciousness, the self, meaning, free will, the a priori, and knowledge. The emphasis is on the fundamental intractability of these questions, and a theory is proposed as to why the human mind has so much difficulty in resolving them. This theory turns upon a naturalistic picture of the scope and limits of human intelligence.Trade Review"In my view, this is an admirable book. It is concise, well organized, and clearly and vigorously written. It presents a real solution to a real and extremely important problem. It is perhaps the only solution to this problem that is currently available." Peter Van Inwagen, The Philosophical Review "Colin McGinn's thoughts about the nature and state of philosophical inquiry are lucid and suggestive, and, in my personal opinion, on the right track. They merit careful reading, and should place many of the fundamental questions of our intellectual tradition in a new and more wholesome light." Noam Chomsky, Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyTable of Contents1. Philosophical Perplexity. 2. Consciousness. 3. Self. 4. Meaning. 5. Free Will. 6. The A Priori. 7. Knowledge. 8. Reason, Truth and Philosophy. 9. The Future of Philosophy.

Read more less

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

Read more less

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.

Read more less

Book SynopsisRené Girard (1923-) was Andrew B. Hammond Professor Emeritus of French Language, Literature, and Civilization at Stanford University, USA, from 1981 to his retirement in 1995. A historian, literary critic and philosopher, he is the author of over 30 books including Violence and the Sacred.Trade ReviewRene Girard's work is both a rationally articulated study and a prophetic vision of the hidden origins of culture and the nature of cultural processes. In its enormous, breathtaking scope it suggests the projects of those nineteenth century intellectual giants (Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud) who still cast long shadows today. By contrast, contemporary criticism seems paltry and faint-hearted. * Comparative Literature *[A] highly readable talent for analyzing and deconstructing myth... original and provocative. * Sunday Times *One of the most striking theories of human culture ever presented. * Christianity and Literature *Table of ContentsBOOK I: FUNDAMENTAL ANTHROPOLOGY Chapter 1: The Victimage Mechanism as the Basis of Religion Acquisitive Mimesis and Mimetic Rivalry; The Function of the Law: Prohibiting Imitation; The Function of Ritual: Imperative Mimesis; Sacrifice and the Victimage Mechanism; The Theory of Religion Chapter 2: The Development of Culture and Institutions Variants in Ritual; Sacred Kingship and Central Power; The Polyvalence of Ritual and the Specificity of Institutions; The Domestication of Animals and Ritual Hunting; Sexual Prohibitions and the Principle of Exchange; Death and Funeral Rites Chapter 3: The Process of Hominization Posing the Problem; Ethology and Ethnology; The Victimage Mechanism and Hominization; The Transcendental Signifier Chapter 4: Myth: The Invisibility of the Founding Murder The 'Radical Elimination'; 'Negative Connotation', 'Positive Connotation'; Physical Signs of the Surrogate Victim Chapter 5: Texts of Persecution Persecution Demystified: The Achievement of the Modern and Western World; The Double Semantic Sense of the Word 'Scapegoat'; The Historical Emergence of the Victimage Mechanism BOOK II: THE JUDAEO-CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES Chapter 1: Things hidden since the Foundation of the World Similarities between the Biblical Myths and World Mythology; The Distinctiveness of the Biblical Myths; The Gospel Revelation of the Founding Murder Chapter 2: A Non-Sacrificial Reading of the Gospel Text Christ and Sacrifice; The Impossibility of the Sacrificial Reading; Apocalypse and Parable; Powers and Principalities; The Preaching of the Kingdom; Kingdom and Apocalypse; The Non-Sacrificial Death of Christ; The Divinity of Christ; The Virgin Birth Chapter 3: The Sacrificial Reading and Historical Christianity Implications of the Sacrificial Reading; The Epistle to the Hebrews; The Death of Christ and the End of the Sacred; Sacrifice of the Other and Sacrifice of the Self; The Judgement of Solomon; A New Sacrificial Reading: The Semiotic Analysis; The Sacrificial Reading and History; Science and Apocalypse Chapter 4: The Logos of Heraclitus and the Logos of John The Logos in Philosophy; The Two Types of Logos in Heidegger; Defining the Johannine Logos in Terms of the Victim; 'In the Beginning . . .'; Love and Knowledge BOOK III: INTERDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY Chapter 1: Mimetic Desire Acquisitive Mimesis and Mimetic Desire; Mimetic Desire and the Modern World; The Mimetic Crisis and the Dynamism of Desire; The Mimesis of Apprenticeship and the Mimesis ofRivalry; Gregory Bateson's 'Double Bind'; From ObjectRivalry to Metaphysical Desire Chapter 2: Desire without Object Doubles and Interdividuality; Symptoms of Alternation; The Disappearance of the Object and Psychotic Structure;Hypnosis and Possession Chapter 3: Mimesis and Sexuality What is known as 'Masochism'; Theatrical 'Sado-Masochism'; Homosexuality; Mimetic Latency and Rivalry; The End of Platonism in Psychology Chapter 4: Psychoanalytic Mythology Freud's Platonism and the Use of the Oedipal Archetype; How do you reproduce a Triangle?; Mimesis and Representation; The Double Genesis of Oedipus; Why Bisexuality?; Narcissism: Freud's Desire; The Metaphors of Desire Chapter 5: Beyond Scandal Proust's Conversion; Sacrifice and Psychotherapy; Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Structural Psychoanalysis; The DeathInstinct and Modern Culture; The Skandalon To Conclude Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

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.

Read more less

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

Read more less

Book SynopsisElías José Palti argues that the dimension of reality known as the political is not a natural, transhistorical entity. Instead, the horizon of the political arose in the context of a series of changes that affirmed the power of absolute monarchies in seventeenth-century Europe and was successively reconfigured from this period up to the present.Trade ReviewElías Palti's book is one of the most original interpretations of the political (as opposed to politics) in many years. His conceptual history is a longue durée account of practices of representation of the divine, the sovereign, the people, war, and the search for a basic unity of the world. As we consider whether we have come to the end of this long quest, this book can be read as the story of our journey. -- Jeremy I. Adelman, Henry Charles Lea Professor of History and Director of the Global History Lab at Princeton UniversityA tour de force. Palti's concise conceptual history of 'the political' dethrones our most cherished ideas about what political modernity is and where it came from. -- Mark Thurner, Institute of Latin American Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of LondonThis is a key book that fills significant gaps in the scholarship of the long conceptual history of the political. -- Federico Finchelstein, The New School for Social ResearchPalti's book is the best expression of the need to reconsider theology in light of its historical link to the Baroque. -- María Pía Lara, Universidad Autonoma de MexicoAt a time when confidence in virtually all traditional modes of governance is rapidly eroding, the historical roots of our current dilemma have to be exposed before any prospect can exist of viable solutions. In this bold and ambitious survey of Western political theory and practice since the seventeenth century, which draws its lessons from European and Latin American history, as well as baroque and modern art, Palti provides a ruthlessly incisive analysis of the sources of our unfolding crisis. An Archaeology of the Political exemplifies the power of conceptual history at its best not only to illuminate the past, but also perhaps light the way to a better future. -- Martin E. Jay, University of California, Berkeley[Palti] presents a broad but disturbing panorama to reflect upon the immense political challenges facing the contemporary world. -- Priscila Dorella * Society for U.S. Intellectual History *An Archaeology of the Political is notable not only for its breathtaking scope and its conceptual originality but also for the range of sources used, from political texts to a detailed and sophisticated dialogue with figurative arts, dramatic performance, and even music, and with a good ear for social historical questions thrown in. * Hispanic American Historical Review *Table of ContentsSeries Editor's Foreword, by Dick HowardAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: A Conceptual History of the Political—the Archaeological Project1. The Theological Genesis of the Political2. The Tragic Scene: The Symbolic Nature of Power and the Problem of Expression3. The Discourse of Emancipation and the Emergence of Democracy as a Problem: The Latin American Case4. The Rebirth of the Tragic Scene and the Emergence of the Political as a Conceptual ProblemConclusion: The End of a Long Cycle—the Second Disenchantment of the WorldNotesBibliographyIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisTrade ReviewDiscipline and Punish is clearly a tour de force ... that rare kind of book whose methods and conclusions must be reckoned with by humanists, social scientists and political activists * The New York Times Book Review *Foucault's genius is called forth into eloquent clarity of his passions ... his best book * Washington Post *'The main line of the thesis is enormously appealing and the range of historical sources and, even more, the analytical skill with which they are made to yield up their secrets, is quite dazzling' -- Harvie Ferguson * International Journal of Criminology and Penology *

Read more less

Book SynopsisImages of the Present Time presents nearly three years of Alain Badiou’s seminars, held from 2001 to 2004, which consider the relationship between philosophy and notions of “the present.”Trade ReviewThinking the present in, through, and against the image, Alain Badiou proposes and enacts a comedic philosophy attuned to now's urgent absurdities. It's a pleasure to move with the sharp curve and fissure of his thinking. Badiou’s Seminars are a major event in and for contemporary philosophy. -- Fred Moten, author of In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition'There are only bodies seized by languages, except there are also truths.' Philosophy is famously incapable of dealing with the present—except there is also Alain Badiou. Images of the Present Time is a pure joy to read, even as it confronts some of the saddest marvels of our commodified nonworld. A truly innovative affirmation of the materialist dialectic. -- Sianne Ngai, author of Theory of the Gimmick: Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist FormUnlike sparkling wine, vivid thought never ceases to tickle our established notions and sensibilities, bringing forth new concepts while transforming the very concept of the 'new.' By conceiving of the present as a matter of creation rather than mere presence, Badiou engages us in a series of unexpected and truly fascinating, powerful reflections. -- Alenka Zupančič, author of The Odd One In: On ComedyAlain Badiou is the most important contemporary French philosopher and indeed one of the three or four most important philosophers in the world today. This book, ranging widely across philosophy and literature, with a fluency that only a writer and thinker as simultaneously nimble and erudite as Badiou can summon, represents Badiou the public intellectual at his passionate, engaging, lucid, witty, and provocative best: it is a bracing diagnosis of the obsessions that keep us attached to the way we live now, as well as a fascinating reflection on what it would mean to live truly, in a world not ruled by the insidiously captivating 'images of the present time.' -- Joseph Litvak, author of The Un-Americans: Jews, the Blacklist, and Stoolpigeon CultureAlain Badiou is undoubtedly among the greatest of living philosophers. * APN News *Table of ContentsEditors’ Introduction to the English Edition of the Seminars of Alain BadiouThe Seminars of Alain Badiou (1983–2016): General PrefaceIntroduction to the Seminar Images of Present Time by Kenneth ReinhardAbout the 2001–2004 SeminarYear 1: Contemporary Nihilism1. Session 12. Session 23. Session 34. Session 45. Session 56. Session 67. Session 7Year 2: Logic of Exceptions8. Session 19. Session 210. Session 311. Session 412. Session 513. Session 614. Session 715. Session 8Year 3: What Does it Mean to Live?16. Session 117. Session 218. Session 319. Session 420. Session 5NotesIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn late 1633, as Descartes was preparing The World and Man for publication, he learned that Galileo had been condemned by the Catholic Church for defending the motion of the earth. His reaction to the news was swift and powerful: as his own treatises also espoused the proposition deemed heretical, he canceled their publication. More than thirty years after Descartes had begun his project, these works were finally published, posthumously, both to acclaim and to controversy. Together, they profoundly influenced the course of modern philosophy. This volume presents Roger Ariew’s clear and engaging translations of Descartes’s treatises, along with a general Introduction, describing the long road to publication, the reception of the works, and their significance. Appendices provide selections from Descartes’s correspondence on Galileo, Part V of the Discourse on Method, and a summary of Descartes’s Description of the Human Body.

Read more less

Book SynopsisManhattan is the tale of a young French scholar who travels to the United States in 1965 on a Fulbright Fellowship to consult the manuscripts of beloved authors. In Yale University’s Beinecke Library, tantalized by the conversational and epistolary brilliance of a fellow researcher, she is lured into a picaresque and tragic adventure. Meanwhile, back in France, her children and no-nonsense mother await her return. A young European intellectual’s first contact with America and the city of New York are the background of this story. The experience of Manhattan haunts this labyrinth of a book as, over a period of thirty-five years, its narrator visits and revisits Central Park and a half-buried squirrel, the Statue of Liberty and a never again to be found hotel in the vicinity of Morningside Heights: a journey into memory in which everything is never the same. Traveling from library to library, France to the United States, Shakespeare to Kafka to Joyce, Manhattan deploys with gusto all the techniques for which Cixous’s fiction and essays are known: rapid juxtapositions of time and place, narrative and description, analysis and philosophical reflection. It investigates subjects Cixous has spent her life probing: reading, writing, and the “omnipotence-other” seductions of literature; a family’s flight from Nazi Germany and postcolonial Algeria; childhood, motherhood, and, not least, the strange experience of falling in love with a counterfeit genius.Table of ContentsPrologue | vii Certes a Sacrifice | 1 The Eye-Patch | 23 A yellow Folder | 35 I Will Not Write This Book | 41 The Evidence | 53 I Loved Above All Literature | 59 The Necropolis | 71 More and More Notebooks | 83 I Am Naked | 95 The Charm of the Malady | 103 Folly usa | 115 Donne Is Done | 125 Room 91 | 133 The Vroom Vroom Period | 147 Elpenor’s Dream | 161 After the End | 177 Translator’s Notes | 185

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn ever-increasing proportion of our lives is spent in supermarkets, airports and hotels, on motorways or in front of TVs, computer and cash machines. This invasion of the world by what Marc Auge calls 'non-space' results in a profound alteration of awareness: something we perceive, but only in a partial and incoherent manner. Auge uses the concept of 'supermodernity' to describe the logic of these late-capitalist phenomena - a logic of excessive information and excessive space. In this fascinating and lucid essay he seeks to establish and intellectual armature for an anthropology of supermodernity. Starting with an attempt to disentangle anthropology from history, Auge goes on to map the distinction between place, encrusted with historical monuments and creative social life, and non-place, to which individuals are connected in a uniform manner and where no organic social life is possible.Unlike Baudelairean modernity, where old and new are interwoven, supermodernity is self-contained: from the motorway or aircraft, local or exotic particularities are presented two-dimensionally as a sort of theme-park spectacle. Auge does not suggest that supermodernity is all-encompassing: place still exist outside non-place and tend to reconstitute themselves inside it. But he argues powerfully that we are in transit through non-place for more and more of our time, as if between immense parentheses, and concludes that this new form of solitude should become the subject of an anthropology of its own.Trade ReviewUnsettling, elegantly written and illuminating: essential reading for anyone seeking to understand our supermodern condition. -- PD Smith * Guardian *Shopping malls, motorways, airport lounges-we are all familiar with these curious spaces which are both everywhere and nowhere. But only now do we have a coherent analysis of their far-reaching effects on public and private experience. Marc Augé has become their anthropologist, and has written a timely and original book. -- Patrick WrightIt is indeed very seldom that one finds it difficult to put down a book because of the intellectual excitement it generates. Augé's Non-Places is such a book-a powerful message, modestly delivered, which stands out as a unique and refreshing anthropological voice. * Current Anthropology *Table of ContentsIntroduction to the Second EditionPrologueThe Near and the ElsewhereAnthropological PlaceFrom Places to Non-PlacesEpilogueA Brief Bibliography

Read more less

Book SynopsisImmanuel Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals is widely regarded as one of the most influential works in the history of moral philosophy. Indeed, any student of ethics will soon encounter a translation of the book, although trying to read it is likely to cause bewilderment. What, one may ask, is Kant trying to say? This book provides the answers. Here, seven highly regarded teachers and scholars of Kant's ethics offer remarkably clear explanations of the most important concepts in the Groundwork: the good will, happiness, duty, hypothetical and categorical imperatives, the Formula of Universal Law, the Formula of Humanity, and freedom.Contents: Preface The Good Will, Nataliya Palatnik Happiness, Anne Margaret Baxley Duty, Laura Papish Imperatives, Tamar Schapiro The Formula of Universal Law, Kyla Ebels-Duggan The Formula of Humanity, Japa Pallikkathayil Freedom, Lucy Allais About the Contributors Index Trade Review“This is the rare guide to Kant’s Groundwork suitable even for students new to philosophy. The clear, concise chapters focus on only the most essential concepts from all three sections of the Groundwork. The authors expertly illuminate Kant’s ethical thought and facilitate engagement with the text.” —Lara Denis, Agnes Scott College“A collection of beautifully clear and concise essays on Kant’s most famous ethical work, each written by an outstanding scholar. The crucial ideas of the Groundwork are expertly explained in ways that are both philosophically rich and reader friendly. This volume is an invaluable companion for any student or teacher of Kantian ethics.” —Karen Stohr, Georgetown University“A wonderfully clear and concise philosophical introduction to Kant’s seminal ethical treatise.” —Jens Timmermann, University of St AndrewsTable of ContentsPreface; The Good Will, Nataliya Palatnik; Happiness, Anne Margaret Baxley ;Duty, Laura Papish; Imperatives, Tamar Schapiro; The Formula of Universal Law, Kyla Ebels-Duggan; The Formula of Humanity, Japa Pallikkathayil; Freedom, Lucy Allais; About the Contributors; Index.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

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

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book explores God’s use of violence as depicted in the Hebrew Bible. Focusing on the Pentateuch, it reads biblical narratives and codes of law as documenting formations of theopolitical imagination. Ophir deciphers the logic of divine rule that these documents betray, with a special attention to the place of violence within it. The book draws from contemporary biblical scholarship, while also engaging critically with contemporary political theory and political theology, including the work of Walter Benjamin, Giorgio Agamben, Jan Assmann, Regina Schwartz, and Michael Walzer. Ophir focuses on three distinct theocratic formations: the rule of disaster, where catastrophes are used as means of governance; the biopolitical rule of the holy, where divine violence is spatially demarcated and personally targeted; and the rule of law where divine violence is vividly remembered and its return is projected, anticipated, and yet postponed, creating a prolonged lull for the text’s present. Different as these formations are, Ophir shows how they share an urform that anticipates the main outlines of the modern European state, which has monopolized the entire globe. A critique of the modern state, the book argues, must begin in revisiting the deification of the state, unpacking its mostly repressed theological dimension.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments | vii Introduction | 1 1. Staying with the Violence | 13 Divine Violence—A Trailer, 13 • A Brief Note on Counting and Explaining Away, 21 • Violence, as It Is Unfolding: A Phenomenological Sketch, 24 • Literal Reading and the Biblical Language of Violence, 36 2. Theocracy: The Persistence of an Ancient Lacuna | 45 Theocracy, with and beyond Flavius Josephus, 45 • The Blind Spot: Three Contemporary Readings of Biblical Violence, 53 • On the Attribution of Power and Authority, 74 • Kingship, Anarchy, Theocracy, 79 • Hypothesis, Method, and Stakes, 86 3. The Rule of Disaster: Extinction, Genocides, and Other Calamities | 96 Becoming Political, 96 • From Extinction to Genocide, 99 • Beyond Destruction, 105 • Separation and Disaster, 113 • Violence and Law, 124 • The Sovereign’s Moment, 130 • Scouts in the Land of the Giants: Three Theocratic Formations, 139 4. Holy Power: States of Exception, Targeted Killings, and the Logic of Substitution | 145 Holiness, 145 • Rebellions in the Wilderness, 160 • Substitution and Containment, 178 5. The Time of the Covenant and the Temporalization of Violence | 193 The Experimental Setting: Recalling Violence and Regulating It, 196 • The Covenant and the Curses, 204 • The Weight of the Present, 214 • The Subjects’ Trap, or the People’s Irony, 222 • A Midianite Utopia, 230 Afterword: The Pentateuchal State, and Ours | 241 Notes | 257 Works Cited | 317 Index | 335

Read more less

Book SynopsisThrough several historical case studies from the last 300 years, Luis de Miranda shows how the phrase 'esprit de corps' acts as a combat concept with a clear societal impact. He also reveals how interconnected, yet distinct, French, English and American modern intellectual and political thought is.

Read more less

Book SynopsisUnhoused: Adorno and the Problem of Dwelling is the first book-length study of Theodor Adorno as a philosopher of housing. Treating his own experience of exile as emblematic of late modern life, Adorno observed that twentieth-century dwelling had been rendered “impossible” by nativism, by the decimations of war, and, in the postwar period, by housing’s increasingly thorough assimilation into private property. Adorno’s position on the meaning and prospects for adequate dwelling—a concept he never wrote about systematically but nevertheless returned to frequently—was not that some invulnerable state of home or dwelling should be revived. Rather, Adorno believed that the only responsible approach to housing was to cultivate an ethic of displacement, to learn “how not to be at home in one’s home.”Unhoused tracks four figurations of troubled dwelling in Adorno’s texts—homelessness, no man’s lands, the nature theater, and the ironic property relation—and reads them as timely interventions and challenges for today’s architecture, housing, and senses of belonging. Entangled as we are in juridical and financial frameworks that adhere to a very different logic, these figurations ask what it means to organize, design, build, and cohabit in ways that enliven non-exclusive relations to ourselves, others, objects, and place.Table of ContentsPrefaceIntroduction1. Homelessness2. Exteriors3. No Man’s Lands4. Property RelationsConclusion

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe book argues for deconstruction’s ongoing relevance, showing how Jacques Derrida’s deep engagement with Freud across the full trajectory of his work, in particular his engagement with Freud’s notion of life and death drives, supplies the key way into Derrida’s recasting of life as life death and, in turn, survival.Table of ContentsList of Abbreviations | ix Introduction: Derrida, Freud, and the Future of Deconstruction | 1 1 From Grammatology to Life Death | 11 2 Interrogating the Death Drive | 35 3 Survival as Autoimmunity | 68 4 Mortality and Normativity | 97 5 Sovereignty, Cruelty, and the Death Penalty | 127 Acknowledgments | 155 Notes | 157 Bibliography | 185 Index | 195

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn Heidegger’s Way of Being, the follow-up to his 2010 book, Engaging Heidegger, Richard Capobianco makes the case clearly and compellingly that the core matter of Heidegger’s lifetime of thought was Being as the temporal emergence of all beings and things. Drawing upon a wide variety of texts, many of which have been previously untranslated, Capobianco illuminates the overarching importance of Being as radiant manifestation – “the truth of Being” – and how Heidegger also named and elucidated this fundamental phenomenon as physis (Nature), Aletheia, the primordial Logos, and as Ereignis, Lichtung, and Es gibt.Heidegger’s Way of Being brings back into full view the originality and distinctiveness of Heidegger’s thought and offers an emphatic rejoinder to certain more recent readings, and particularly those that propose a reduction of Being to “Trade Review'This book will prove indispensable to anybody working within Heidegger studies, especially those interested in his work on poetry, language, and Heraclitus.' -- S. Montgomery Ewegen Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews January 2015

Read more less

Book SynopsisRey Chow rearticulates the plight of the humanities in the age of global finance and neoliberal mores through a focus on Foucault's concept outside. She foregrounds a nonutilitarian approach, stressing anew the intellectual and pedagogical objectives fundamental to humanistic inquiry.Trade ReviewIn this lucid, concise, and passionate book, Rey Chow theorizes the dire effects of entrepreneurial capitalism in our digital age while showing how a humanistic intellectual should confront the essential problems created and obscured by that capitalism. This recovery of Foucault is brilliant, timely, and liberating. -- Paul A. Bové, author of Love's ShadowIn A Face Drawn in Sand, Rey Chow not only offers a provocative and original reading of Foucault but also mobilizes this reading to analyze some of the most important oppositions in literary studies today: close reading versus distant reading, surface reading with its re-aestheticization of the text versus STEM-inspired social science approaches, identity versus racialization, among others. Rather than attempt simply to adjudicate these conflicts in the interests of compromise, Chow reconstructs their theoretical and historical conditions of possibility to determine how these oppositions came to be posed in their current form. In doing so, she allows us to rethink them and perhaps better articulate the problems they seek to address. This is a much-needed book. -- Warren Montag, coauthor of The Other Adam SmithIf, as Foucault said, we have yet to cut off the head of the king, Chow offers the sharpest blade yet: critique forged in immanence. With the equanimity of a saint and the tenacity of a battle-scarred scholar, she puts a point on Foucault’s productive hypothesis: to denounce power is not to say no to it. The result is a compelling series of interventions into the fields of study that matter most for humanistic inquiry today: critical race studies, sound studies, media studies, transnational and global studies. Chow’s gift is a vision of what these fields might be, beheaded. -- Thomas Lamarre, author of The Anime Ecology: A Genealogy of Television, Animation, and Game MediaA Face Drawn in Sand cuts into the present with breathtaking clarity. Redeploying Foucault’s work in startling new ways, Chow engages everything from humanistic study in the neoliberal university to racism, sound theory, the digitized smart self, and sand painting. As brilliant as it is courageous, this book not only changes how we read Foucault. It teaches us how to think: how to press against the limits of our contemporary order. A tour de force! -- Lynne Huffer, author of Foucault's Strange ErosChow’s text accomplishes something rare these days: an original reading of Foucault that crackles with insight. * Critical Inquiry *Table of ContentsPart I. Humanistic Inquiry in the Era of the Moralist-EntrepreneurIntroduction: Rearticulating “Outside”Part II. Exercises in the Unthought1. Literary Study’s Biopolitics2. “There Is a ‘There Is’ of Light”; or, Foucault’s (In)visibilities3. Thinking “Race” with Foucault4. “Fragments at Once Random and Necessary”: The Énoncé Revisited, Alongside Acousmatic Listening5. From the Confessing Animal to the SmartselfCoda: Intimations from a Series of Faces Drawn in SandAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book argues that the work of Theodor W. Adorno is best understood through the lens of his highly suggestive—yet often overlooked—concept of the “uncoercive gaze,” an innovative way of relating to the object of one’s analysis that interweaves critical intimacy and analytic vigilance.Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Art of Reading | 1 1. Adorno and the Uncoercive Gaze | 17 2. Buried Possibility: Adorno and Arendt on Tradition | 39 3. The Inheritance of the Constellation: Adorno and Hegel | 70 4. Judging by Refraining from Judgment: Adorno’s Artwork and Its Einordnung | 95 5. The Literary Artwork between Word and Concept: Adorno and Agamben Reading Kafka | 115 6. The Artwork without Cardinal Direction: Notes on Orientation in Adorno | 131 7. False Life, Living On: Adorno with Derrida | 144 Conclusion: A Kind of Leave-Taking | 161 Acknowledgments | 167 Notes | 169 Index | 203

Read more less

Book SynopsisAccording to Michel Serres, a process of ''hominescence'' has taken place throughout human history. Hominescence can be described as a type of adolescence; humanity in a state of growing, a state of constant change, on the threshold of something unpredictable. We are destined never to be the same again but what does the future hold? In this innovative and passionately original work of philosophy, Serres describes the future of man as an adolescence, transitioning from childhood to adulthood, or luminescence, when a dark body becomes light. After considering the radical changes that humanity has experienced over the last fifty years, Serres analyzes the new relationship that man has with diverse concepts, like the dead, his own body, agriculture, and new communication networks. He alerts us to the consequences of these changes, particularly on the danger of growing inequalities between rich and poor countries. Should we rejoice in the future, ignore it, or even dread it? Unlike otherTrade ReviewThis fascinating text will interest readers across the entire spectrum of scholarship and human endeavor. Summing Up: Essential. All readers. * CHOICE *Produced in certain collectivities, in the course of their history, by their sciences and their technologies, in their economy and their politics, these ruptures affect, beneath these cultural components, the ‘nature’ of humans and of the world. That is why I call such ruptures hominescent. This study provides a powerful, innovative analysis of a new form of being human, ‘hominescence’. In the three domains, corporeal, worldly and in relation to other kinds of otherness, Michel Serres pursues enquiries begun over forty year ago, in his innovative reading of the system of Gottfried Leibniz. These enquiries gain from their expansion into the current context of digital tele-communications, and the internet of things, transgenic modifications and the resulting new ontologies of large numbers and quasi objects. -- Joanna Hodge, Professor of Philosophy, Manchester Metropolitan University, UKHominescence is Michel Serres’s best book – a profound mediation on the prodigious transformations the human species has faced in the past fifty years, which have altered our relation to death, to our bodies, our technologies, our planet, and even to thought itself. -- Daniel W. Smith, Professor of Philosophy, Purdue University, USAIn Hominescence, Michel Serres draws together themes which span decades of his work to illuminate the critical moment of human history where we cease to be natured and become forces of naturing. He offers a bold vision of the renewed relationship between the sciences and humanities to think beyond the crisis. -- Steven D. Brown, Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology, The Open University, UK * 20/02/2019 *Table of ContentsDeaths The Body How Our Body Changed The First Loop of Hominescence Three Global Houses The Greatest Contemporary Discovery Ego: Who Signs These Pages? The World The Greatest Contemporary Event Ancient and New Common Houses The Evolutionary House The Second Loop of Hominescence Who, ego? The Others The Event of Communication Contemporary Humanity The End of Networks: the Universal House The Third Loop of Hominescence The Others and the Death of the Ego Peace

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Adventure of French Philosophy is essential reading for anyone interested in what Badiou calls the "French moment" in contemporary thought.Badiou explores the exceptionally rich and varied world of French philosophy in a number of groundbreaking essays, published here for the first time in English or in a revised translation. Included are the often-quoted review of Louis Althusser's canonical works For Marx and Reading Capital and the scathing critique of "potato fascism" in Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus. There are also talks on Michel Foucault and Jean-Luc Nancy, and reviews of the work of Jean-François Lyotard and Barbara Cassin, notable points of interest on an expansive tour of modern French thought.Guided by a small set of fundamental questions concerning the nature of being, the event, the subject, and truth, Badiou pushes to an extreme the polemical force of his thinking. Against the formless continuum of life, he posits the need for radical discontinuity; against the false modesty of finitude, he pleads for the mathematical infinity of everyday situations; against the various returns to Kant, he argues for the persistence of the Hegelian dialectic; and against the lure of ultraleftism, his texts from the 1970s vindicate the role of Maoism as a driving force behind the communist Idea.Trade ReviewFrench philosophy still has a kick in it, and it can still turn heads. You have been warned. -- Jonathan Rée * Prospect *One of the most important philosophers writing today. -- Joan CopjecA figure like Plato or Hegel walks here among us! -- Slavoj ZizekAn heir to Jean-Paul Sartre and Louis Althusser. * New Statesman *Focused and illuminating, technical and deft. -- Shahidha Bari * Times Higher Education *A series of snapshots of how Badiou participates in and understands what ... we might call the post-1960s moment in French philosophy. * Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *

Read more less

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

Read more less

Book SynopsisCarl Schmitt is one of the most widely read and influential German thinkers of the twentieth century. His fundamental works on friend and enemy, legality and legitimacy, dictatorship, political theology and the concept of the political are read today with great interest by everyone from conservative Catholic theologians to radical political thinkers on the left. In his private life, however, Schmitt was haunted by the demons of his wild anti-Semitism, his self-destructive and compulsive sexuality and his deep-seated resentment against the complacency of bourgeois life. As a young man from a modest background, full of social envy, he succeeded in making his way to the top of the academic world in Germany, and yet he never felt at home in the academic establishment and among those of high social standing. When the Nazis seized power, Schmitt was susceptible to their ideology. He broke with his Jewish friends, joined the Nazi Party in May 1933 and lent a helping hand to Hitler, Trade Review"Mehring’s study...lay bare the links between Schmitt’s litigious life and his complicated ideas."Library Journal "Reinhard Mehring offers the English speaking world the first comprehensive intellectual biography of the highly controversial legal and political theorist, Carl Schmitt. Based on extensive archival research and a vast amount of unpublished material, Mehring identifies the psychological and emotional motivations that drove the intellectual endeavors of the notorious philosopher of "the political" and "the state of exception." Mehring demonstrates conclusively how Schmitt's struggles with, among other issues, his sexual desire and his obsession with the Jews, generated some of the most important, influential and dangerous political writings of the twentieth century."John P. McCormick, University of Chicago "In this fascinating biography, Mehring has used Schmitt’s only recently available diaries and calendar entries to lay bare the obsessions of this brilliant thinker -- often referred to as the Hobbes of the 20th century. Especially revealing are his struggles to shatter “the Jew in him,” which led him to aspire to become Hitler’s “pope” with all that that implied. Politically naïve about Nazism, he was severely attacked by the SS in 1936 and marginalized for, among other reasons, his pre-1933 close association with Jews and his anti-Nazism."George Schwab, President, National Committee on American Foreign Policy ‘Mehring’s book is a remarkable achievement: an intellectual biography that illuminates a whole era while taking very seriously the intimate connections between the theory and the restless and obsessive personality of its main character. It is bound to remain a fundamental reference in the vast literature on one of the most decisive chapters in European constitutional history: the Weimar Republic.’Political Studies Review ‘By presenting a complete account of Schmitt’s life, heretofore absent, Mehring has done a great service. This biography will no doubt be the point of departure for studies of Carl Schmitt and his intellectual legacy for a long time.’ConstellationsTable of ContentsAbbreviations Translator’s Preface A White Raven: The Strange Life of the German State Theorist Carl Schmitt Part One That ‘false and arrogant idea “I am”’ Schmitt’s Rise in the Wilhelminian Era 1. An ‘Obscure Young Man from a Modest Background’ 2. The Law of Practice 3. Apotheosis of the Poet, Rant against Literary Figures: the ‘Untimely Poet’ and the ‘Received Wisdom of the Educated’ 4. On the Eve of the Great War: State, Church and Individual as Points of Reference 5. Düsseldorf: Living in a State of Exception 6. World War and Defeatism: Carl Schmitt in Munich 7. Strasbourg, the State of Siege and a Decision in Favour of Catholicism 8. Political Romanticists 1815/1919 Part 2 Beyond Bourgeois Existence Schmitt’s Life and Work during the Weimar Republic 1. A Permanent Position? The Handelshochschule in Munich 2. A ‘Faithful Gypsy’ in Greifswald 3. Arrival in Bonn? Schmitt’s Turn towards the Catholic Church 4. Schmitt as a Teacher in Bonn 5. From Status Quo to Democratic ‘Myth’ 6. The Yield of the Bonn Years: 7. From ‘Ice Floe to Ice Floe’: Signals in the Berlin Maelstrom 8. Reconstructing the ‘Strong’ State 9. Within the Journalistic Circles of Weimar’s Last Days 10. Carl Schmitt as an Actor During the Rule by Presidential Decree Part Three In The Belly of the Leviathan: Schmitt’s Involvement in National Socialism 1. After 30 January 1933 2. Schmitt’s Resistible Rise to the Position of ‘Crown Jurist’ 3. The ‘Year of Construction’? Beginning and End of the Juridico-Institutional Provision of Meaning 4. Anti-Semitic Provision of Meaning 5. A New Turn with Hobbes? Meaning and Failure of Schmitt’s Commitment to National Socialism 6. The Right to Power? Großraum Order and Empire Formation 7. The Captain held Hostage? Carl Schmitt’s Farewell to the ‘Reich’ 8. Last Writings under National Socialism Part Four ‘One man remains’ Schmitt’s Slow Retreat after 1945 1. Detention and ‘Asylum’ 2. From Benito Cereno to Hamlet: The ‘Comeback’ of the Intellectual? 3. Private Seminars in Plettenberg: Schmitt’s Renewed Influence on Pupils in the Federal Republic 4. The Partisan in Conversation 5. Past Eighty: A Look Back to Old Questions Appendix Afterword Chronology Bibliography Endnotes Acknowledgments

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn this book George Marsden responds to critics of his The Soul of the American University (OUP 1994), and attempts to explain how, without heavy-handed dogmatism or moralizing, Christian faith can be of great relevance to contemporary scholarship of the highest standards.Trade Review"A frank assertion that religious faith does indeed have a place in academia."--Kirkus Reviews "A lucid, thoughtful book even his toughest critics will find compelling."--Publishers Weekly "An exciting and thought-provoking work."--Commonweal "Marsden's arguments need to be read both off and on the campus."--Fort Worth Star-Telegram "Marsden's earlier book...established him as an astute student of today's academic culture. In The Outrageous Idea, Marsden expands his former inquiry into basic ideas about scholarship that create a climate that is pervasively hostile to religion....The book is not an instance of special pleading for Christians. The gravamen of Marsden's case is that the academy's hostility to religion undermines the very idea of the university as an institution dedicated to honest intellectual engagement. Academics both junior and senior should want to check out Marden's diagnosis and explore what they together might do about it, even at the risk of appearing outrageous."--First Things "Marsden presents his 'outrageous idea' with such calm, persuasive power and fundamental decency that it is hard to imagine any person of good will taking exception. He here reaffirms his status as one of our leading interpreters of religion and contemporary American culture."--Jean Bethke Elshtain, Professor of Social and Political Ethics, The University of Chicago, author of Augustine and the Limits of Politics." "A masterly explanation and defense of Christian learning in the contemporary world, displaying the learning it advocates."--Nicholas Wolterstorff, Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology, Yale University "A frank assertion that religious faith does indeed have a place in academia."--Kirkus Reviews "In a lucid, thoughtful book even his toughest critics will find compelling, Marsden outlines specific ways that a scholarship informed by faith can, within the accepted rules of academic discourse, contribute new insights to the most sharply debated issues of the day, such as how to assert moral claims and affirm pluralism without lapsing into relativism."--Publishers Weekly "An exciting and thought-provoking work for anyone who cares about the future of the university and education today."--Commonweal "Marsden's arguments need to be read both off and on the campus."--Fort Worth Star-Telegram "For all those who take seriously the command to 'love the Lord your God...with all your mind,' Marsden's book is essential reading."--Christianity Today "Much is at stake in Mr. Marsden's program--not only the truth about the past, but a way of getting at issues often excluded in the present."--Robert Royal, The Washington Times "The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship is a heavenward glance. The scholarly community, secular and Christian alike, cannot but be the better for it."--Glenn Tinder, The Christian Century "This study combines the virtues of competence in historical analysis with personal commitment and experience....This is a book that should be pondered by all thoughtful Christians, and should be read by ministers and seminary professors, as well as Christians working in colleges and universities."--Theology Today "Marsden paints the canvas of Academia with the foundational tools of faith, purpose, and meaning. To be a scholar (a true scholar) one must be Christian."--Eric Pratt, Anderson College "Excellent text. Marsden surveys the academic landscape and summarizes it well. His characterization is apt."--Mark Discher, Ottawa University, Kansas "Marsden's work provides an excellent and accurate overview of the status of the modern academy with its operating, theoretical frameworks. He offers carefully poised responses and critiques from a Christian perspective."--The Master's Seminary Journal

Read more less

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

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less