Pluralist democratic systems, according to Philipe Braud, do not do what they claim to do, but rather, serve to channel, diffuse, or reconcile society's conflicts. As one reviewer of the original French edition notes, the book can be seen as part of a long tradition in European political thought that "sees democracy as a front for capitalism." Braud asserts that pluralist democracy is credible only because of the complete failure of communism. There is no government by the people; "the rule of law" is a tautology. What fundamental changes occur happen because of the forces of economics, culture, and labor, and in response to political direction. The efficacy of democracy comes from its ability to manage social emotions, specifically by addressing anguish with promises of security and identity: by meeting the need to be wooed and seduced by constant personalization of politics, offering the illusion of choice; by transposing the frustrations of gender, age, and class inequalities into the political domain; by providing pleasure in the game of politics; and by promising greed, power, and its prerequisites. Pluralist democracies know best how to manage these emotions, and how to use them without suffocating them. A powerful and disturbing vision of pluralist democracy that will be of great interest to students and scholars of contemporary political thought.

This volume gives us the transcription of the first of Michel Foucault's annual courses at the CollA]ge de France. Its publication marks a milestone in Foucault's reception and it will no longer be possible to read him in the same way as before.
In these lectures the reader will find the deep unity of Foucault's project from "Discipline and Punish" (1975), dominated by the themes of power and the norm, to "The Use of Pleasure" and "The Care of the Self" (1984), devoted to the ethics of subjectivity.
"Lectures on the Will to Know" remind us that Michel Foucault's work only ever had one object: truth. "Discipline and Punish" completed an investigation of the role of juridical forms in the formation of truth-telling, the preparatory groundwork for which is found here in these lectures. Truth arises in conflicts, in rival claims for which the rituals of judicial judgment provide the possibility of deciding between who is right and who is wrong.
At the heart of ancient Greece there is a succession of different and opposing juridical forms and ways of dividing true and false into which the disputes between sophists and philosophers are soon inserted. In "Oedipus the King," Sophocles stages the peculiar force of forms of truth-telling: they establish power just as they depose it. Against Freud, who will make "Oedipus" the drama of a shameful sexual desire, Michel Foucault shows that the tragedy articulates the relations between truth, power, and law. The history of truth is that of the tragedy.
Beyond the irenicism of Aristotle, who situated the will to truth in the desire for knowledge, Michel Foucault deepens the tragic vision of truth inaugurated by Nietzsche, who Foucault, in a secret dialogue with Deleuze, rescues from Heidegger's reading.
After this course, who will dare speak of a skeptical Foucault?

The question of what characterizes feelings of being alive is a puzzling and controversial one. Are we dealing with a unique affective phenomenon or can it be integrated into existing classifications of emotions and moods? What might be the natural basis for such feelings? What could be considered their specifically human dimension? These issues are addressed by researchers from various disciplines, including philosophy of mind and emotions, psychology, and history of art. This volume contains original papers on the topic of feelings of being alive by Fiorella Battaglia, Eva-Maria Engelen, Joerg Fingerhut, Thomas Fuchs, Alice Holzhey-Kunz, Matthias Jung, Tanja Klemm, Riccardo Manzotti, Sabine Marienberg, Matthew Ratcliffe, Arbogast Schmitt, Jan Slaby, and Achim Stephan.

In this work of philosophy, theology, and intellectual history, Duane Armitage offers a clear interpretation of Heidegger's enigmatic theology as uniquely Pauline and Lutheran. He argues that the real impetus, aim, and structure of Heidegger's philosophy of religion as well as his philosophy as a whole, are rooted in Pauline (and Lutheran) ontology. He thus demonstrates that continental philosophy of religion, and, to an extent, Continental Philosophy as a whole, is indebted to St. Paul and Martin Luther. This examination also shows how much of continental thinking itself is traceable to Heidegger's onto-theological critique and hence to Luther and St. Paul. Armitage argues that St. Paul and Luther, or at least Luther's specific reading of St. Paul, remain the un-thought origins of postmodern thinking on religion, and perhaps postmodern thinking in general.

"Deleuze, Whitehead, Bergson: Rhizomatic Connections" is the first book length collection of essays exploring the relations between the work of Gilles Deleuze, Alfred North Whitehead and Henri Bergson. With contributions by established international scholars from cultural studies, philosophy and theology, "Deleuze, Whitehead, Bergson" examines the articulation between their concepts, methods and modes of doing philosophy and how their thought relates to different disciplines. Organized thematically, each essay examines the section themes in the context of the contrasts, differences and conjunctions--the rhizomatic connections--between their shared concepts. "Deleuze, Whitehead, Bergson" will make a significant impact upon and contribution to the scholarship on these philosophers, challenging many of the preconceptions, the "images of thought," through which they are all too often read and interpreted.

This book offers an interpretation of certain Hegelian concepts, and their relevance to various themes in contemporary philosophy, which will allow for a non-metaphysical understanding of his thought, further strengthening his relevance to philosophy today by placing him in the midst of current debates.

It is usually assumed that Wittgenstein's philosophical development is determined either by one dramatic or one subtle change of mind. This book challenges the one-change view. Wittgenstein had many changes of mind and they are so substantial that he can be understood as holding several different philosophies in the late twenties and early thirties. Early in 1929, Wittgenstein envisages a complementary (phenomenological) symbolism in order to carry out the Tractarian task of giving the limits of language and thought. The symbolism failed and he then developed a comprehensive notion of 'grammar' that, he hoped, would fulfill the task. This notion of 'grammar' leads in 1930-1 to the calculus conception of language, which is still defended in the Big Typescript (1932-3). As a complementary tool of the calculus conception, Wittgenstein invents the genetic method, which aims at dissolving philosophical puzzles by the understanding of how they come about. After the Big Typescript, Wittgenstein assimilates an anthropological perspective and puts the genetic method at the center of the stage of his philosophy. The use of the genetic method (associated with an anthropological perspective) develops gradually, taking various forms of application: in the Blue Book, in the versions of the Brown Book (1934-6), and in the Philosophical Investigations.

This volume brings together distinguished Wittgenstein scholars and renowned philosophers of language in order to examine what Wittgenstein has to say about language and to assess its significance for contemporary philosophy.

This is the first systematic overview of Julia Kristeva's vision and work in relation to philosophical modernity. It provides a clear, comprehensive, and interdisciplinary analysis of her thought on psychoanalysis, art, ethics, politics, and feminism in the secular aftermath of religion. Sara Beardsworth shows that Kristeva's multiple perspectives explore the powers and limits of different discourses as responses to the historical failures of Western cultures, failures that are undergone and disclosed in psychoanalysis.

Kant, in the Critique of pure reason, only dedicates a few pages to the principle of Anticipations of Perception and only a few critical studies are outspokenly dedicated to this issue in recent critical literature. But if one considers the history of post-Kantian philosophy, one can immediately perceive the great importance of the new definition of the relationship between reality and negation, which Kant's principle proposes. Critical philosophy is here radically opposed to the pre-critical metaphysical tradition: "Reality" no longer appears as absolutely positive being, which excludes all negativity from itself, and "negation" is not reduced to being a simple removal, the mere absence of being. Instead, reality and negation behave as an equally positive something in respect to one another such that negation is itself a reality that is actively opposed to another reality. Such a definition of the relation between reality and negation became indispensible for post-Kantian Philosophy and represents a central aspect of Kantian-inspired philosophy in respect to Leibnizian metaphysics. The present work therefore departs from the hypothesis that the essential philosophical importance of the Anticipations of Perception can only be fully measured by exploring its impact in the Post-Kantian debate.

This lecture, given by Michel Foucault at the College de France, launches an inquiry into the notion of parresia and continues his rereading of ancient philosophy. Through the study of this notion of truth-telling, of speaking out freely, Foucault re-examines Greek citizenship, showing how the courage of the truth forms the forgotten ethical basis of Athenian democracy. The figure of the philosopher king, the condemnation of writing, and Socrates' rejection of political involvement are some of the many topics of ancient philosophy revisited here.

The human body is not simply a physical, anatomical, or physiological object; in an important sense we are our bodies. In this collection, Sartre scholars and others engage with the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre's brilliant but neglected descriptions of our experience of human bodies. The authors bring a wide variety of perspectives to bear on Sartre's thinking about the body, and, alongside in-depth scholarly historical and critical investigations, bring him into dialogue with feminists, sociologists, psychologists and historians, addressing such questions as: Why have philosophers found it so difficult to conceptualize the relationship between consciousness and the body? Do men and women experience their own bodies in fundamentally different ways? What is pain? What is sexual desire? What is it like to live as a racially marked body in a racist society? How do society and culture shape our bodies, and can we re-shape them?

After 9/11/2001, gendered narratives of humiliation and revenge proliferated in the U.S. national imaginary. How is it that gender, which we commonly take to be a structure at the heart of individual identity, is also at stake in the life of the nation? What do we learn about gender when we pay attention to how it moves and circulates between the lived experience of the subject and the aspirations of the nation in war? What is the relation between national sovereignty and sovereign masculinity? Through examining practices of torture, extra-judicial assassination, and first person accounts of soldiers on the ground, Bonnie Mann develops a new theory of gender. It is neither a natural essence nor merely a social construct. Gender is first and foremost an operation of justification which binds the lived existence of the individual subject to the aspirations of the regime. Inspired by a reexamination of the work of Simone de Beauvoir, the author exposes how sovereign masculinity hinges on the nation's ability to tap into and mobilize the structure of self-justification at the heart of masculine identity. At the national level, shame is repeatedly converted to power in the War on Terror through hyperbolic displays of agency including massive aerial bombardment and practices of torture. This is why, as Mann demonstrates, the phenomenon of gender itself demands a four-dimensional analysis that moves from the phenomenological level of lived experience, through the collective life of a people expressed in the social imaginary and the operations of language, to the material relations that prevail in our times.

This volume brings out the varieties of forms of philosophical skepticism that have continued to preoccupy philosophers for the past of couple of centuries, as well as the specific varieties of philosophical response that these have engendered - above all, in the work of those who have sought to take their cue from Kant, Wittgenstein, or Cavell - and to illuminate how these philosophical approaches are related to and bear upon one another. The philosophers brought together in this volume are united by the thought that a proper appreciation of the depth of the skeptical challenge must reveal it to be deeply disquieting, in the sense that skepticism threatens not just some set of theoretical commitments, but also-and fundamentally-our very sense of self, world, and other. Second, that skepticism is the proper starting point for any serious attempt to make sense of what philosophy is, and to gauge the prospects of philosophical progress.

Ludwig Wittgenstein's writings inspired contemporary philosophical thinking and advanced many issues that had been addressed by traditional philosophy. The questions raised by the Viennese philosopher initiated debates on a reconsideration of philosophical terminology. This is especially true for a term that has generated at least three significant controversies since its creation and will probably generate more disputes in the following years. It is the expression "form(s) of life" which translates into German as "Lebensform(en)" and "Form des Lebens". The present volume contains contributions on forms of life, language games and the influence of Wittgenstein's philosophy on other scholears.

This Dictionary offers points of entry into Derrida's complex and extensive works.
This Dictionary offers points of entry into Derrida's complex and extensive works.
From 'aporia' to 'yes', the Dictionary suggests ways into Derrida that show what is at stake in his work.
Demonstrates that Derrida is not just about philosophy, but also about politics and pop music.
Explains why deconstruction matters, and how Derrida can change the way you think.
The A-Z entries are framed by essays on the inherent interdisciplinarity of Derrida's work and on Derrida's relationship to a range of other thinkers.

What do we mean when we talk about philosophy today? How does philosophy relate to science, to politics, to literature? What methods does the modern philosopher use, and how does philosophy progress? Does philosophy differ from place to place? What can philosophy do for us? And what can it not do? This book, with contributions from such exciting and influential contemporary philosophers as Simon Blackburn, Michael Friedman, Simon Critchley and Manuel DeLanda, offers us a fascinating picture of the character and methods of philosophy; its possibilities and its limitations. And of course, it is itself a piece of philosophy in action, not merely offering us answers but also prompting us to ask further questions and to philosophise for ourselves.>

Knowing that we are finite, how can we live to the fullest? Philosopher George Santayana suggested 'spirituality' enables us to enjoy what we have. This book clarifies and extends Santayana's account of spirituality, while suggesting how the detachment of spirituality can relieve human suffering, enrich our lives, and make us better human beings.

An important contribution to the burgeoning field of the ethics of recognition, this book examines the contradictions inherent in the very concept of intimacy. Working with a wide variety of philosophical and literary sources, it warns against measuring our relationships against ideal standards, since there is no consummate form of intimacy. After analyzing ten major ways that we aim to establish intimacy with one another, including gift-giving, touching, and fetishes, the book concludes that each fails on its own terms, since intimacy wants something that is impossible. The very concept of intimacy is a superlative one; it aims not just for closeness, but for a closeness beyond closeness. Nevertheless, far from a pessimistic diagnosis of the human condition, this is a meditation on how to live intimately in a world in which intimacy is impossible. Rather than contenting itself with a deconstructive approach, it proposes to treat intimacy dialectically. For all its contradictions, it shows intimacy is central to how we understand ourselves and our relations to others.

"This is the first volume of its kind to analyze the impact that theories and practices of imaging have had on a variety of fields. It draws on an impressive range of philosophical approaches, from analytic, to pragmatic, to phenomenological -- concluding that imaging is developing a social and cultural impact comparable to language"--Provided by publisher.

Pynchon and Philosophy radically reworks our readings of Thomas Pynchon alongside the theoretical perspectives of Wittgenstein, Foucault and Adorno. Rigorous yet readable, Pynchon and Philosophy seeks to recover philosophical readings of Pynchon that work harmoniously, rather than antagonistically, resulting in a wholly fresh approach. Dr. Martin Paul Eve is a lecturer in literature at the University of Lincoln, UK. In addition to editing the open access journal of Pynchon Studies, Orbit, he has work published or forthcoming in Textual Practise, Neo-Victorian Studies, C21, Pynchon Notes and several edited collections. This book was originally published with exclusive rights reserved by the Publisher in (2014) and was licensed as an open access publication in [SEPTEMBER 2021] under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license if changes were made. This is an open access book.

This book is the first volume to bring together the most prominent scholars who work on Slavoj i ek's philosophy, examining and interrogating his understanding of dialectical materialism. It deserves to be thoroughly and systematically elaborated because it attempts to propose a new foundation for dialectical materialism.

In this remarkable book, Joseph Margolis, one of America's leading and most celebrated philosophers, examines the relationship between two apparently contradictory philosophical tendencies - realism and relativism. In order to examine the relationship between the two, Margolis establishes a taxonomy of different kinds of realism and different kinds of relativism. Drawing on both the analytic and Continental traditions, he examines (from a pragmatic point of view) the various relationships between these two tendencies in the light of two major developments in modern philosophy - the concern for praxis and the concern for historicity. Twenty years after it was first published to great acclaim, Margolis has updated "Pragmatism Without Foundations" in the light of his most recent work and the development of pragmatism in the intellectual world. This second edition includes an updated preface and a brand new epilogue addressing these developments and their implications for his earlier work.

Nicholas Rescher has enjoyed a long and distinguished career in philosophy, writing on many different areas from logic to philosophy of language, epistemology, pragmatism, ethics and political philosophy, and metaphilosophy. Reason, Method, and Value: A Reader on the Philosophy of Nicholas Rescher offers a selection of Rescher's writings over a span of decades representing the core of his prodigious research interests in six key areas. Each section of the *Reader* is accompanied by a compact critical introduction written by a leading philosophical scholar with spezial expertise in Rescher's philosophy, and the volume opens with an appreciative introduction written by the editor and a concluding retrospective by Rescher, looking back over his oeuvre and explaining connecting themes and the unity of system contained in this extensive body of work. Taken together, the volume encapsulates the heart of Rescher's impressive lifelong contributions to philosophy between two covers, in a single volume that provides a solid overview of his thought while serving to direct readers to the corpus of Rescher's writings for amore complete picture.