Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"In these exceptionally complex, wide-ranging lectures written for a 1975–76 course, Derrida takes very seriously Nietzsche's warning to 'beware . . . saying that death is opposed to life' . . . . Essential." * Choice *
"Translated . . . with unparalleled grace and rigor.” * Philosophy Today *
"One of Derrida’s most challenging and urgently relevant seminars.” * Style *
"Daring and wide-ranging.” * Research in Phenomenology *
“Derrida’s 1975-76 seminar,
Life Death, is surely one of his greatest achievements. It begins with a deconstructive reading of François Jacob’s
Logic of the Living, advancing to a critique of scientific ‘models’ in general. It then takes up Nietzsche’s notions of life and the living in terms of both biography and biology. Finally, it reads Freud’s
Beyond the Pleasure Principle in an exciting and challenging way. The translation by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas is reliable and eminently readable.” -- David Farrell Krell, author of The Sea: A Philosophical Encounter
“This is a splendid translation of one of Derrida’s most challenging seminars, one that relates, in unprecedented ways, the vocabulary and concepts of historical and contemporary biology and genetics with selected and relevant works of Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Freud.” -- Dawne McCance, author of The Reproduction of Life Death: Derrida's La Vie la Mort
"This one is lucid and rich, with sparing translators’ interventions . . . to see even republished material within its original scene is exciting. So too proves the book as a whole." * The Heythrop Journal *
Table of ContentsForeword to the English Edition
General Introduction to the French Edition
Editorial Note
Translators’ Note
First Session: Programs
Second Session: Logic of the Living (She the Living)
Third Session: Transition (Oedipus’s Faux Pas)
Fourth Session: The Logic of the Supplement: The Supplement of the Other, of Death, of Meaning, of Life
Fifth Session: The Indefatigable
Sixth Session: The “Limping” Model: The Story of the Colossus
Seventh Session
Eighth Session: Cause (“Nietzsche”)
Ninth Session: Of Interpretation
Tenth Session: Thinking the Division of Labor—and the Contagion of the Proper Name
Eleventh Session: The Escalade—of the Devil in Person
Twelfth Session: Freud’s Leg(acies)
Thirteenth Session: Sidestep Detour: Thesis, Hypothesis, Prosthesis
Fourteenth Session: Tightenings
Index of Proper Names
