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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Western philosophy > Modern Western philosophy, c 1600 to the present > Western philosophy, from c 1900 - > General
This book is an original exploration of Deleuze's dynamic
philosophies of space, time and language, bringing Deleuze and
futurism together for the first time. Helen Palmer investigates
both the potential for creative novelty and the pitfalls of
formalism within both futurist and Deleuzian linguistic practices.
Through creative and rigorous analyses of Russian and Italian
futurist manifestos, the 'futurist' aspects of Deleuze's language
and thought are drawn out. The genre of the futurist manifesto is a
literary and linguistic model which can be applied to Deleuze's
work, not only at times when he writes explicitly in the style of a
manifesto but also in his earlier writings such as "Difference and
Repetition" (1968) and "The Logic of Sense" (1969). The way in
which avant-garde manifestos often attempt to perform and demand
their aims simultaneously, and the problems which arise due to
this, is an operation which can be perceived in Deleuze's writing.
With a particular focus on Russian zaum, the book negotiates the
philosophy behind futurist 'nonsense' language and how Deleuze
propounds analogous goals in The Logic of Sense. This book
critically engages with Deleuze's poetics, ultimately suggesting
that multiple linguistic models operate synecdochically within his
philosophy.
This is the first study to compare the philosophical systems of
secular scientific philosopher Mario Bunge (1919-2020), and
Moroccan Islamic philosopher Taha Abd al-Rahman (b.1945). In their
efforts to establish the philosophical underpinnings of an ideal
modernity these two great thinkers speak to the same elements of
the human condition, despite their opposing secular and religious
worldviews. While the differences between Bunge's critical-realist
epistemology and materialist ontology on the one hand, and Taha's
spiritualist ontology and revelational-mystical epistemology on the
other, are fundamental, there is remarkable common ground between
their scientific and Islamic versions of humanism. Both call for an
ethics of prosperity combined with social justice, and both
criticize postmodernism and religious conservatism. The aspiration
of this book is to serve as a model for future dialogue between
holders of Western and Islamic worldviews, in mutual pursuit of
modernity's best-case scenario.
The first collection of its kind, The Continental Philosophy of
Film Reader is the essential anthology of writings by continental
philosophers on cinema, representing the last century of
film-making and thinking about film, as well as all of the major
schools of Continental thought: phenomenology and existentialism,
Marxism and critical theory, semiotics and hermeneutics,
psychoanalysis, and postmodernism. Included here are not only the
classic texts in continental philosophy of film, from Benjamin's
"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" to extracts
of Deleuze's Cinema and Barthes's Mythologies, but also the
earliest works of Continental philosophy of film, from thinkers
such as Georg Lukacs, and little-read gems by philosophical giants
such as Sartre and Beauvoir. The book demonstrates both the
philosophical significance of these thinkers' ideas about film, as
well their influence on filmmakers in Europe and across the globe.
In addition, however, this wide-ranging collection also teaches us
how important film is to the last century of European philosophical
thought. Almost every major continental European thinker of the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries has had something to
say-sometimes, quite a lot to say-about cinema: as an art form, as
a social or political phenomenon, as a linguistic device and
conveyor of information, as a projection of our fears and desires,
as a site for oppression and resistance, or as a model on the basis
of which some of us, at least, learn how to live. Purpose built for
classroom use, with pedagogical features introducing and
contextualizing the extracts, this reader is an indispensable tool
for students and researchers in philosophy of film, film studies
and the history of cinema.
Concepts seem to work best when created in that interspace between
theory and praxis, between philosophy, art, and science. Deleuze
himself has generated many concepts in this encounter between
philosophy and non-philosophy (art, literature, film, botany, etc):
his ideas of affects and percepts, of becoming, the stutter,
movement-image and time-image, the rhizome, to name but a few. In
the case of this volume, the "other" is the "other" to English
language/culture (and its philosophy): what happens, if instead of
"other disciplines," we take other cultures, other languages, other
philosophies? Does not the focus on English as a hegemonic language
of academic discourse deny us a plethora of possibilities, of
possible Denkfiguren, of possible concepts? This collection is a
kind of travelogue. The journey does not follow a particular
trajectory-some countries are not on the map; some are visited
twice. So, there is no claim to completeness involved here-it is
rather an invitation to answer to the call ... there is much to
explore!
Mary Midgley is one of the most influential moral philosophers of
the twentieth century. Over the last 40 years, Midgley's writings
on such central yet controversial topics as human nature, morality,
science, animals, the environment, religion, and gender have shaped
the landscape of contemporary philosophy. She is celebrated for the
complexity, nuance, and sensibility with which she approaches some
of the most challenging issues in philosophy without falling into
the pitfalls of close-minded extremism. In turn, Midgley's
sophisticated treatment of the interconnected and often muddled
issues related to human nature has drawn interest from outside the
philosophical world, stretching from scientists, artists,
theologians, anthropologists, and journalists to the public more
broadly. Mary Midgley: An Introduction systematically introduces
readers to Midgley's collected thought on the most central and
influential areas of her corpus. Through clear and lively
engagement with Midgley's work, this volume offers readers
accessible explanation, interpretation, and analysis of the
concepts and perspectives for which she is best known, most notably
her integrated understanding of human nature, her opposition to
reductionism and scientism, and her influential conception of our
relationship to animals and the wider world. These insights,
supplemented by excerpts from original interviews with Midgley
herself, provide readers of all backgrounds with an informed
understanding and appreciation of Mary Midgley and the
philosophical problems to which she has devoted her life's work.
In this work, Belliotti unravels the paradoxes of human existence.
The purpose of this philosophical journey is to reveal paths for
forging meaningful, significant, valuable, even important lives. By
examining notions of The Absurd expressed within Search for the
Holy Grail, The Seventh Seal, and The Big Lebowski, the author
crafts a working definition of "absurdity." He then investigates
the contributions of classical thinkers such as Shakespeare,
Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Tolstoy, Sartre, Camus, as
well as philosophers such as Nagel, Feinberg, and Taylor. After
arguing that human life is not inherently absurd, Belliotti
examines the implications of mortality for human existence, the
relationship between subjective and objective meaning, and the
persuasiveness of several challenging contemporary renderings of
meaningful human lives.
The future of deconstruction lies in the ability of its
practitioners to mobilise the tropes and interests of Derrida's
texts into new spaces and creative readings. In Deconstruction
without Derrida, Martin McQuillan sets out to do just that, to
continue the task of deconstructive reading both with and without
Derrida. The book's principal theme is an attention to instances of
deconstruction other than or beyond Derrida and thus imagining a
future for deconstruction after Derrida. This future is both the
present of deconstruction and its past. The readings presented in
this book address the expanded field of deconstruction in the work
of Jean-Luc Nancy, Helene Cixous, Paul de Man, Harold Bloom, J.
Hillis Miller, Judith Butler, Gayatri Spivak and Catherine Malabou.
They also, necessarily, address Derrida's own readings of this
work. McQuillan accounts for an experience of otherness in
deconstruction that is, has been and always will be beyond Derrida,
just as deconstruction remains forever tied to Derrida by an
invisible, indestructible thread.
Michel Foucault continues to be regarded as one of the most
essential thinkers of the twentieth century. A brilliantly
evocative writer and conceptual creator, his influence is clearly
discernible today across nearly every discipline-philosophy and
history, certainly, as well as literary and critical theory,
religious and social studies, and the arts. This volume exploits
Foucault's insistent blurring of the self-imposed limits formed by
the disciplines, with each author in this volume discovering in
Foucault's work a model useful for challenging not only these
divisions but developing a more fundamental interrogation of
modernism. Foucault himself saw the calling into question of
modernism to be the permanent task of his life's work, thereby
opening a path for rethinking the social. Understanding Foucault,
Understanding Modernism shows, on the one hand, that literature and
the arts play a fundamental structural role in Foucault's works,
while, on the other hand, it shifts to the foreground what it
presumes to be motivating Foucault: the interrogation of the
problem of modernism. To that end, even his most explicitly
historical or strictly epistemological and methodological enquiries
directly engage the problem of modernism through the works of
writers and artists from de Sade, Mallarme, Baudelaire to Artaud,
Manet, Borges, Roussel, and Bataille. This volume, therefore,
adopts a transdisciplinary approach, as a way to establish
connections between Foucault's thought and the aesthetic problems
that emerge out of those specific literary and artistic works,
methods, and styles designated "modern." The aim of this volume is
to provide a resource for students and scholars not only in the
fields of literature and philosophy, but as well those interested
in the intersections of art and intellectual history, religious
studies, and critical theory.
Most human action has a technical dimension. This book examines
four components of this technical dimension. First, in all actions,
various individual, organizational or institutional agents combine
actional capabilities with tools, institutions, infrastructure and
other elements by means of which they act. Second, the deployment
of capabilities and means is permeated by ethical aspirations and
hesitancies. Third, all domains of action are affected by these
ethical dilemmas. Fourth, the dimensions of the technicity of
action are typical of human life in general, and not just a
regional or culturally specific phenomenon. In this study, an
interdisciplinary approach is adopted to encompass the broad
anthropological scope of this study and combine this bigger picture
with detailed attention to the socio-historical particularities of
action as it plays out in different contexts. Hermeneutics (the
philosophical inquiry into the human phenomena of meaning,
understanding and interpretation) and social science (as the study
of all human affairs) are the two main disciplinary orientations of
this book. This study clarifies the technical dimension of the
entire spectrum of human action ranging from daily routine to the
extreme of violent protest.
Hegel's critique of Early German Romanticism and its theory of
irony resonates to the core of his own philosophy in the same way
that Plato's polemics with the Sophists have repercussions that go
to the centre of his thought. The Anti-Romantic examines Hegel's
critique of Fr. Schlegel, Novalis and Schleiermacher. Hegel rarely
mentions these thinkers by name and the texts dealing with them
often exist on the periphery of his oeuvre. Nonetheless,
individually, they represent embodiments of specific forms of
irony: Schlegel, a form of critical individuality; Novalis, a form
of sentimental nihilism; Schleiermacher, a monstrous hybrid of the
other two. The strength of Hegel's polemical approach to these
authors shows how irony itself represents for him a persistent
threat to his own idea of systematic Science. This is so, we
discover, because Romantic irony is more than a rival ideology; it
is an actual form of discourse, one whose performative objectivity
interferes with the objectivity of Hegel's own logos. Thus, Hegel's
critique of irony allows us to reciprocally uncover a Hegelian
theory of scientific discourse. Far from seeing irony as a form of
consciousness overcome by Spirit, Hegel sees it as having become a
pressing feature of his own contemporary world, as witnessed in the
popularity of his Berlin rival, Schleiermacher. Finally, to the
extent that ironic discourse seems, for Hegel, to imply a certain
world beyond his own notion of modernity, we are left with the
hypothesis that Hegel's critique of irony may be viewed as a
critique of post-modernity.
This is a unique collection presenting work by Alain Badiou and
commentaries on his philosophical theories. It includes three
lectures by Badiou, on contemporary politics, the infinite, cinema
and theatre and two extensive interviews with Badiou - one
concerning the state of the contemporary situation and one wide
ranging interview on all facets of his work and engagements. It
also includes six interventions on aspects of Badiou's work by
established scholars in the field, addressing his concept of
history, Lacan, Cinema, poetry, and feminism; and four original
essays by young and established scholars in Australia and New
Zealand addressing the key concerns of Badiou's 2015 visit to the
Antipodal region and the work he presented there. With new material
by Badiou previously unpublished in English this volume is a
valuable overview of his recent thinking. Critical responses by
distinguished and gifted Badiou scholars writing outside of the
European context make this text essential reading for anyone
interested in the development and contemporary reception of
Badiou's thought.
French philosopher and Talmudic commentator Emmanuel Levinas
(1906-1995) has received considerable attention for his influence
on philosophical and religious thought. In this book, Victoria
Tahmasebi-Birgani provides the first examination of the
applicability of Emmanuel Levinas' work to social and political
movements. Investigating his ethics of responsibility and his
critique of the Western liberal imagination, Tahmasebi-Birgani
advances the moral, political, and philosophical debates on the
radical implications of Levinas' work.
Emmanuel Levinas and the Politics of Non-Violence is the first
book to closely consider the affinity between Levinas' ethical
vision and Mohandas Gandhi's radical yet non-violent political
struggle. Situating Levinas' insights within a transnational,
transcontinental, and global framework, Tahmasebi-Birgani
highlights Levinas' continued relevance in an age in which violence
is so often resorted to in the name of "justice" and "freedom."
This edition includes the letters exchanged between Charles S.
Peirce and the Open Court Publishing Company between 1890 and 1913.
Open Court published more of Peirce's philosophical writings than
any other publisher during his lifetime, and played a critical role
in what little recognition and financial income he received during
these difficult, yet philosophically rich, years. This
correspondence is the basis for much of what is known surrounding
Peirce's publications in The Monist and The Open Court-two of the
publishers most popular forums for philosophical, scientific, and
religious thought-and is therefore referenced heavily in Peirce
editions dealing partly or wholly with his later work, including
The Essential Peirce series and Writings of Charles S. Peirce. The
edition provides for the first time a complete text of this
oft-cited correspondence, with textual apparatus, contextual
annotation, and careful replications of existential graphs and
other complex illustrations. By so doing, this edition sheds
critical light not only on Peirce and Open Court, but also on the
context, relationships, and concepts that influenced the
development of Progressive Era intellectual history and philosophy.
This book provides the first detailed study in English of the
religious philosophy of Vasilii Rozanov, one of the most
influential and controversial thinkers of Russia's Silver Age. It
examines his subversion of traditional Russian Orthodoxy, including
his reverence for the Creation, his focus on the family, and his
worship of sex.Rozanov is one of the towering figures of Russian
culture, a major influence on thinkers and writers such as Bakhtin,
Maiakovskii, and Mandelshtam, as well as many European writers. He
critiqued Orthodox theology, and wrote extensively on philosophy,
literature, and politics, and helped reform marriage and divorce
laws.His enormous contribution to Russian thought has been largely
neglected, and much of his work has been misunderstood. Ure
addresses this by examining the basis of Rozanov's religious
philosophy, the Creation of the Earth and the Book of Genesis.>
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