Jean Baudrillard is one of the most controversial theorists of our time, famous for his claim that the Gulf War never happened and for his provocative writing on terrorism, specifically 9/11. This new and fully updated second edition includes:

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• an introduction to Baudrillard's key works and theories such as simulation and hyperreality
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• coverage of Baudrillard's later work on the question of postmodernism
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• a new chapter on Baudrillard and terrorism
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• engagement with architecture and urbanism through the Utopie group
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• a look at the most recent applications of Baudrillard's ideas.
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Richard J. Lane offers a comprehensive introduction to this complex and fascinating theorist, also examining the impact that Baudrillard has had on literary studies, media and cultural studies, sociology, philosophy and postmodernism.

Hannah Arendt's work offers a powerful critical engagement with the cultural and philosophical crises of mid-twentieth-century Europe. Her idea of the banality of evil, made famous after her report on the trial of the Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann, remains controversial to this day.

In the face of 9/11 and the 'war on terror', Arendt's work on the politics of freedom and the rights of man in a democratic state are especially relevant. Her impassioned plea for the creation of a public sphere through free, critical thinking and dialogue provides a significant resource for contemporary thought.

Covering her key ideas from The Origins of Totalitarianism and The Human Condition as well as some of her less well-known texts, and focussing in detail on Arendt's idea of storytelling, this guide brings Arendt's work into the twenty-first century while helping students to understand its urgent relevance for the contemporary world.

Kierkegaard: The Self in Society brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines to explore Kierkegaard's continuing relevance to political and social issues. Kierkegaard is often portrayed as an out-and-out individualist with no concern for interpersonal relations. These essays not only refute this caricature, they bring out the complex nature of Kierkegaard's engagements with questions of selfhood and society. What Kierkegaard has to say about love, the church, politics and justice is shown to test the limits of what we take for granted in the modern (and postmodern) world.

The indebtedness of contemporary thinkers to Derrida's project of deconstruction is unquestionable, whether as a source of inspiration or the grounds of critical antagonism. This collection considers: how best to recall deconstruction? Rather than reduce it to an object of historical importance or memory, these essays analyze its significance in terms of complex matrices of desire; provoked in this way, deconstruction cannot be dismissed as 'dead', nor unproblematically defended as alive and well. Repositioned on the threshold of life-death, deconstruction profoundly complicates the field of critical thought which still struggles to memorialize, inter, or reduce the deconstructive corpus to ashes.

As the founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl has been hugely influential in the development of contemporary continental philosophy. In The Philosophy of Husserl, Burt Hopkins shows that the unity of Husserl's philosophical enterprise is found in the investigation of the origins of cognition, being, meaning, and ultimately philosophy itself. Hopkins challenges the prevailing view that Husserl's late turn to history is inconsistent with his earlier attempts to establish phenomenology as a pure science and also the view of Heidegger and Derrida, that the limits of transcendental phenomenology are historically driven by ancient Greek philosophy. Part 1 presents Plato's written and unwritten theories of eide and Aristotle's criticism of both. Part 2 traces Husserl's early investigations into the formation of mathematical and logical concepts and charts the critical necessity that leads from descriptive psychology to transcendentally pure phenomenology. Part 3 investigates the movement of Husserl's phenomenology of transcendental consciousness to that of monadological intersubjectivity. Part 4 presents the final stage of the development of Husserl's thought, which situates monadological intersubjectivity within the context of the historical a priori constitutive of all meaning. Part 5 exposes the unwarranted historical presuppositions that guide Heidegger's fundamental ontological and Derrida's deconstructive criticisms of Husserl's transcendental phenomenology. The Philosophy of Husserl will be required reading for all students of phenomenology.

In the first full-length analysis of Wittgenstein's Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, Brian R. Clack presents a fresh and innovative interpretation of Wittgenstein's conception of religion. While previous commentators have tended to sideline the Remarks on Frazer, Clack shows how the key to Wittgenstein's thought on religion lies in these remarks on primitive magico-religious observances. This book shows that Wittgenstein neither embraces expressivism, as it is generally assumed, nor straightforwardly denies instrumentalism. Focusing instead on Wittgenstein's suggestion that magic is somehow akin to metaphysics, a view of ritual as the spontaneous expression of human beings (conceived as "ceremonial animals") is presented.

When I entered the graduate program in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh in 1961, Nicholas Rescher had just joined the department of philosophy' to begin, with Adolf Grunbaum, the building of what is now a philosophy center of worldwide renown. Very soon his exceptional energy and versatility were in evidence, as he founded the American Philosophical Quarterly, generated a constantly rising stack of preprints, pursued impor tant scholarly research in Arabic logic, taught a staggering diversity of histori cal and thematic courses, and obtained, in cooperation with Kurt Baier, a major grant for work in value theory. That is all part of the record. What may come as a surprise is that none of it was accomplished at the expense of his students. Papers were returned in a matter of days, often the next class meet ing. And so easily accessible was he for philosophical discussion that, since (inevitably) we shared many philosophical interests, I asked him to serve as my dissertation advisor. My work in connection with this project led to a couple of journal articles while his, characteristically, led to a book. Our dis cussions certainly helped me, and while they may also have had some small influence on him, in the end our views were quite distinct. I was not only allowed complete independence, but was positively encouraged to think of my own ideas and to develop them independently. The length and breadth of Rescher's bibliography defy belief."

History and memory rank as central themes in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. As one of the last philosophers of the 19th century, Nietzsche naturally belongs to the so-called 'historical century'. The contentious exchange with the past and with antiquity - as much as the mechanisms, the dangers, and the lessons of memory and tradition - are continually examined and stand in close relationship with Nietzsche's vision of life and his project of human development. As Jacob Burckhardt once wrote of the cultural critique to his Basel colleague: "Fundamentally, you are always teaching history" (9/13/1882). Following Burckhardt's judgment, the contributors focus on the analysis of core questions in the philosophies of history and memory, and their respective convergence in the thought of Nietzsche. The epistemological relevance of these central concepts will be thematized alongside those concerning tradition, and education. The discussion of these rich themes unifies a broad spectrum of questions, ranging from cultural memory to contemporary philosophy of mind. The contributions are revised versions of selected papers presented at the 2018 conference of the annual meeting of the Nietzsche Society in Naumburg.

The controversy over Jacques Derrida's legacy is one of the most effective engines driving the contemporary debate, far beyond the bounds of philosophy. By now, the variety of contesting positions is so wide that it calls for a critical assessment to achieve a unified theoretical scheme. The dyad of deconstruction and reconstruction, to which the title of the volume refers, aims at composing a kind of map of this debate. The three sections of the book include essays that investigate specific aspects of Derrida's reception, from the view of 1. philosophy, 2. literary studies and 3. politics and law. These contributions study the implications of deconstruction beyond its original scope and intervene by taking stock of its most relevant aporias.

Claude Levi-Strauss and the style of thinking known as 'structuralism, ' with which his work is conventionally associated, is widely recognized as having made a seminal contribution to the discipline of anthropology. More generally, his writings register the turn to language in social theory in the 1960s, and are marked by the influence of Kant, Rousseau, Saussurian linguistics, Marx and Freud. In turn, Levi-Strauss is recognized as having been a key influence on thinkers such as Althusser, Lacan, Foucault and Derrida. This volume seeks to address a key gap in the burgeoning secondary literature about Levi-Strauss: his importance to the study of religions. This volume pays particular attention to Levi-Strauss' writings on totemism, myth and "la pensee sauvage," situating these writings both in terms of previous theories of religion and in terms of the wider influences that informed his work. This volume provides an accessible and comprehensive overview of Levi-Strauss' life and work, the thinkers and theories that informed his writings, and his contribution to the study of religions.

In popularizing the term 'speaking truth to power', now widely used throughout the world, Michel Foucault established the basis upon which a new ethics can be constructed. This is the thesis that Mark Olssen advances in Constructing Foucault's ethics. Olssen not only 'speaks truth' to existing moral and ethical theories that have dominated western philosophy since Plato, but also shows how, by using Foucault's insights, an alternative ethical and moral theory can be established that both avoids the pitfalls of postmodern relativism and simultaneously grounds ethical, moral, and political discourse for the present age. Taking the late 'ethical turn' in the philosopher's thought as its starting point, this ambitious study seeks to construct an ethics beyond anything Foucault ever attempted while remaining consistent with his core postulates. In doing so it advances the concept of 'life continuance', which expresses a normative orientation to the future in terms of the quest for survival and well-being, giving rise to irreducible normative values as part of the discursive order of events. This approach is explored in contrast with a range of other, established systems, from the Kantian to the Marxist to contract ethics and utilitarianism. -- .

A vital book for understanding the use of political violence in pursuit of political ends, by one of the major French philosophers of the 20th century Includes a fascinating chapter on Arthur Koestler's famous novel about the 1930s 'show trials' in Moscow, Darkness at Noon Extremely clearly written and still highly relevant for dealing with questions of political power and authoritarianism This Routledge Classics edition includes a new foreword by William McBride, helpfully placing the book in the context of Merleau-Ponty's thought as a whole

Rohmer is one of the most popular French directors of the second half of the 20th century, one of the members of the famous Nouvelle Vague that reconstituted French cinema based on the theoretical principles articulated in the Cahiers du Cinema - from whose editorship he was fired when the conservative Catholic opposed its turn toward politicization. Like some of his colleagues, Rohmer is extremely interested in both the history and the philosophy of film: Brother of the noted French philosopher Rene Scherer, he begins his career as a film critic In his films, deep moral conflicts as well as the search for one's own identity emerge from the intricacies of seemingly superficial everyday life interactions, particularly between a man and a woman. Hoesle's book puts Rohmer in the context of a long French tradition of reflected eroticism, with Marivaux, Musset, Stendhal, and Jean Renoir as crucial figures, and shows how Rohmer both recognizes the inner logic of eroticism and subjects it to moral demands that he inherits from his Catholic background. For Rohmer, the tension between the two can usually only be solved by some unexpected event that can be interpreted as an equivalent of grace.

This series, originally published in the 1920s and 1930s, includes work by some of the twentieth century's most well-known thinkers, scientists, philosophers, doctors, critics and artists. When first published it was immediately recognized as a noteworthy event. Written from various points of view, with one books frequently opposing the argument of another, the volumes provide the reader with numerous aspects of modern thought. It Sheds light on the conception of disciplines at the time Shows how disciplinary thinking is shaped by humanistic rhetoric Illustrates how literature is reshaped by scientific discourses Reveals the changing status of public intellectuals between the wars

A wide-ranging and important collection of Broad's unpublished writings, shedding new light on his work Includes writings on topics that are not found in any of Broad's published work Broad is increasingly recognized as having made important contributions to philosophy of science, philosophy of mind and metaphysics that were overlooked in his own time Helpful introductions to each section set Broad's thought in context and includes a new foreword by Simon Blackburn

Richard Rorty is one of the most influential, controversial and widely-read philosophers of the twentieth century. In this GuideBook to Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature Tartaglia analyzes this challenging text and introduces and assesses:

• Rorty's life and the background to his philosophy
• the key themes and arguments of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
• the continuing importance of Rorty's work to philosophy.

Rorty and the Mirror of Nature is an ideal starting-point for anyone new to Rorty, and essential reading for students in philosophy, cultural studies, literary theory and social science.

In this book, Rupert Read offers the first outline of a resolute reading, following the highly influential New Wittgenstein 'school', of the Philosophical Investigations. He argues that the key to understanding Wittgenstein's later philosophy is to understand its liberatory purport. Read contends that a resolute reading coincides in its fundaments with what, building on ideas in the later Gordon Baker, he calls a liberatory reading. Liberatory philosophy is philosophy that can liberate the user from compulsive (and destructive) patterns of thought, freeing one for possibilities that were previously obscured. Such liberation is our prime goal in philosophy. This book consists in a sequential reading, along these lines, of what Read considers the most important and controversial passages in the Philosophical Investigations: 1, 16, 43, 95 & 116 & 122, 130-3, 149-151, 186, 198-201, 217, and 284-6. Read claims that this liberatory conception is simultaneously an ethical conception. The PI should be considered a work of ethics in that its central concern becomes our relation with others. Wittgensteinian liberations challenge widespread assumptions about how we allegedly are independent of and separate from others. Wittgenstein's Liberatory Philosophy will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working on Wittgenstein, and to scholars of the political philosophy of liberation and the ethics of relation.

The much-acclaimed present-day philosophical turn to the letters of Saint Paul points to a profound consonance between ancient and modern thought. Such is the bold claim of this study in which scholars from contemporary continental philosophy, new testamentary studies and ancient philosophy discuss with each other the meaning Paul's terms pistis, faith. In this volume, this theme discusses in detail the threefold relation between Paul and (1) continental thought, (2) the Graeco-Roman world, and (3) political theology. It is shown that pistis does not only concern a mode of knowing, but rather concerns the human ethos or mode of existence as a whole. Moreover, it is shown that the present-day political theological interest in Paul can be seen as an attempt to recuperate Paul's pistis in this comprehensive sense. Finally, an important discussion concerning the specific ontological implications and background of this reinterpretation of pistis is examined by comparing the ancient ontological commitments to those of the present-day philosophers. Thus, the volume offers an insight in a crucial consonance of ancient and modern thought concerning the question of pistis in Paul while not forgetting to stipulate important differences.

Provides students and general readers with a basic understanding of the central concepts, issues, and thinkers of the early modern era of philosophy Is there a world that exists apart from ourselves? If an external world exists, what is its nature? Can an external world based on evidence from our sense perception be known? How do such questions arise? Is it even possible for them to be answered? This is Modern Philosophy: An Introduction surveys how philosophers from the late sixteenth century to the early nineteenth century investigated central metaphysical and epistemological issues. Focusing on six key philosophers, this accessible volume provides readers with a solid and balanced appreciation of how philosophy was done in the Modern period. Each chapter explores the views of a particular thinker--Rene Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, George Berkeley, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Lady Mary Shepherd--with special attention paid to their engagement with 'The Problem of the External World.' Throughout the book, readers are invited to consider related philosophical problems and doctrines, such as transcendental idealism, mind-body dualism, and skepticism. Introduces a range of philosophical concepts, including materialism, idealism, rationalism, and empiricism Discusses how the philosophical views from each of the philosophers covered are similar and different Addresses the views of other important thinkers such as John Locke and Adam Smith Features an epilogue that helps readers locate other important philosophers from different historical periods Provides links to high-quality online editions and translations of primary texts that are freely available to students Part of Wiley-Blackwell's popular This Is Philosophy series, This is Modern Philosophy: An Introduction is an invaluable resource for undergraduate students in Early Modern philosophy courses, graduate philosophy students looking to refresh their knowledge, and general readers looking for an easy-to-read introduction to the subject.

Taking inspiration from the later Wittgenstein, On Moral Certainty, Justification and Practice explores the practical basis of human morality. It offers an account of moral certainty, which it links with a view of moral competence. Drawing on everyday examples, it is shown how morality is grounded in action, not in reasoning.

This pioneering book presents a reconstitution of Charles Sanders Peirce philosophical system as a coherent architecture of concepts that form a unified theory of reality. Historically, the majority of Peircean scholars adopted a thematic approach to study isolated topics such as semiotics and pragmatism without taking into account the author's broader philosophical framework, which led to a poor and fragmented understanding of Peirce's work. In this volume, professor Ivo Assad Ibri, past president of The Charles Sanders Peirce Society and a leading figure in the Brazilian community of Peircean scholars, adopts a systemic approach to Peirce's thought and presents Peirce's scientific metaphysics as a deep ontological architecture based on a semiotic logic and on pragmatism as criteria of meaning. Originally published in Portuguese, this book became a classic among Brazilian Peircean scholars by presenting a conceptual matrix capable of providing a clear reference system to ground the thematic studies into the broader Peircean system. Now translated to English, this reviewed, amplified and updated edition aims to make this contributions available to the international community of Peircean scholars and to serve as a tool to understand Peirce's work in a more systemic way by integrating concepts such as experience, phenomenon, existence and reality, as well as theories such as Chance, Continuity, Objective Idealism, Cosmology and Pragmatism, in a coherent system that reveals Peirce's complex metaphysical architecture. "As the philosophical reputation of Charles S. Peirce continues to rise to first-tier prominence in the history of American philosophy, Ivo Ibri's Kosmos Noetos assumes a unique status in both a pioneering and a magisterial work of transcontinental Peirce scholarship. This original work of this internationally renowned scholar and editor, and Professor of Philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic University of San Paulo, penetrates to the heart of Peirce's architectonic system of phenomenological, metaphysical, and semiotic categories which heuristically characterize our world as "a universe perfused with signs." Ibri's own synergistic commentary on the radiating registers of Peirce's cosmogonically and pragmatistically conceived "one intelligible theory of the universe" also instructively contributes to the illumination of significant nodes of interface with a range of relevant theoretical trends in the contemporary academy; as well, it places Peirce in the company of such thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Kant, and Schelling who preceded Peirce in providing a legacy of first-tier reasoning on our intelligibly developing world. Kosmos Noetos impresses as Ibri's pure, lucid, passionately thought-loving, philosophical articulation of his own and as the indispensable prolegomena to all future Peirce studies." David Dilworth, State University of New York at Stone Brook - USA "Ivo Ibri has offered us in this exquisite work a framing of the inner logic of Charles S. Peirce's core metaphysical vision and its existential implications. It is a deep and nuanced exploration of the internal dynamics of Peirce's central metaphysical categories, developed through rigorous and detailed attention to the evolution of Peirce's thought on the 'vitally important topics' of the appearing, the reality, and the intelligibility of the world. The two-leveled format of the book, an intricate weaving of Peirce's texts and discursive elaboration and linkage by Ibri, gives it a distinctive feel and is the bedrock of its value. The book is a remarkable combination of presentation and analysis. It is informed by Ibri's deep philosophical culture and is a gentle and convincing argument for the centrality of metaphysics in understanding Peirce's thought. It offers in a new way indispensable suggestions for our own attempts to think about our places in an evolving universe with the aid of Peirce and offers threads of thought to be followed up by others." Robert E. Innis, University of Massachusetts Lowell - USA

This interdisciplinary project is situated at the boundary between literary studies and philosophy. Its chief focus is on American Romanticism and it examines work by a number of prominent writers and philosophers, from Whitman and Thoreau to Barthes and Rorty.

(nach Berichten von Martin Buber) "Aus den Anfangen unsrer Schriftiibertragung," so iiberschrieb Martin Buber seinen ersten Bericht, den Bericht iiber die Prinzipien, die ihn und Rosenzweig leiteten, iiber die Arbeitsweise bei der Schriftiibertragung und iiber die wachsende gegenseitige Befruchtung im Verstehen und im Verstandlichmachen der Schrift. Dieser Bericht, der in der Rosenzweig-Gedenknummer der Zeitschrift "Der Orden Bne Briss" (Berlin, Marz 1930) dreieinhalb Monate nach Rosenzweigs Tod erschienen ist und in dem Aufsatzband "Martin Buber und Franz Rosenzweig, Die Schrift und ihre Verdeutschung" (Verlag Schocken, Berlin 1936) fast unverandert abgedruckt wurde, ist noch ganzund gar von dem unmittelbaren Erleben - dem menschlichen der 1 Zusammenarbeit wie dem sachlichen der Schrifterhellung-gepragt: " . . . AIs 1923 Franz Rosenzweig, mit der Ubertragung von Gedich ten lehuda Halevis beschaftigt, sich haufig an mich um Rat wandte, und wir bald dazu gelangten, an der Hand der jeweiligen Beispiele miteinander die Problematik des Ubersetzens iiberhaupt und die Probleme der iibersetzerischen Aufgabe zu erartern, ergaben sich uns unmerklich, zuerst nur als der zuweilen erleuchtete, meist dammrige Hintergrund unsres Gesprachs, dann aber immer gebieterischer als seine magnetische Mitte, die Fragen: 1st die Schrift iibersetzbar? 1st sie schon wirklich iibersetzt? Was bleibt noch zu tun? wenig? viel? das Entscheidende? . . ."