In our contemporary age aesthetics seems to crumble and no longer be reducible to a coherent image. And yet given the vast amount of works in aesthetics produced in the last hundred years, this age could be defined "the century of aesthetics." "20th Century Aesthetics" is a new account of international aesthetic thought by Mario Perniola, one of Italy's leading contemporary thinkers. Starting from four conceptual fields - life, form, knowledge, action - Perniola identifies the lines of aesthetic reflection that derive from them and elucidates them with reference to major authors: from Dilthey to Foucault (aesthetics of life), from Wolfflin to McLuhan and Lyotard (aesthetics of form), from Croce to Goodman (aesthetics and knowledge), from Dewey to Bloom (aesthetics and action). There is also a fifth one that touches on the sphere of affectivity and emotionality, and which comes to aesthetics from thinkers like Freud, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Lacan, Derrida and Deleuze. The volume concludes with an extensive sixth chapter on Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Islamic, Brazilian, South Korean and South East Asian aesthetic thought and on the present decline of Western aesthetic sensibility.

"An eloquent work. Somer Brodribb not only gives us a feminist critique of postmodernism with its masculinist predeterminants in existentialism, its Freudian footholdings and its Sadean values, but in the very form and texture of the critique, she literally creates new discourse in feminist theory. Brodribb has transcended not only postmodernism but its requirement that we speak in its voice even when criticizing it. She creates a language that is at once poetic and powerfully analytical. Her insistent and compelling radical critique refuses essentialism--from both masculinist thinkers and their women followers. She demystifies postmodernism to reveal that it and its antecedents represent yet another mundane version of patriarchal politics. Ultimately Brodribb returns us to feminist theory with the message that we must refuse to be derivative and continue to originate theory and politics from the condition of women under male domination."
--Kathleen Barry, author of "Female Sexual Slavery"

An iconoclastic work brilliantly undertaken . . . "Nothing Mat(T)ers" magnificently shows that postmodernism is the cultural capital of late patriarchy. It is the art of self- display, the conceit of masculine self and the science of reproductive and genetic engineering in an ecstatic Nietzschean cycle of statis."
--Andre Michel

"Nothing Mat(T)ers" encapsulates in its title the valuelessness of the current academic fad of postmodernism. Somer Brodribb has written a brave and witty book demolishing the gods and goddesses of postmodernism by deconstructing their method and de-centering their subjects and, in the process, has deconstructed deconstructionism and decentered decentering! Thisis a long-awaited and much-needed book from a tough- minded, embodied, and unflinching scholar."
--Janice Raymond

This is an important collection of essays examining and promoting Foucault's influence on present-day philosophy, in both the analytic and Continental philosophical traditions."Foucault's Legacy" brings together the work of eight Foucault specialists in an important collection of essays marking the 25th anniversary of Foucault's death. Focusing on the importance of Foucault's most central ideas for present-day philosophy, the book shows how his influence goes beyond his own canonical tradition and linguistic milieu. The essays in this book explore key areas of Foucault's thought by comparing aspects of his work with the thought of a number of major philosophers, including Nietzsche, Heidegger, Rorty, Hegel, Searle, Vattimo and Williams. Crucially the book also considers the applicability of his central ideas to broader issues such as totalitarianism, religion, and self-sacrifice. Presenting a fresh and exciting vision of Foucault as a philosopher of enduring influence, the book shows how important Foucault remains to philosophy today.

Genealogies of Speculation looks to break the impasse between the innovations of speculative thought and the dominant strands of 20th century anti-foundationalist philosophy. Challenging emerging paradigms of philosophical history, this text re-evaluates different theoretical and political traditions such as feminism, literary theory, social geography and political theory after the speculative turn in philosophy. With contributions from leading writers in contemporary thought this book is a crucial resource for studying cultural and art-theory and continental philosophy.

This book provides novel reading of the relations between two central philosophical disciplines - metaphysics and ethics. "Pragmatist Metaphysics" proposes a pragmatist re-articulation of the nature, aims and methods of metaphysics. Rather than regarding metaphysics as a 'first philosophy', an inquiry into the world independent of human perspectives, the pragmatist views metaphysics as an inquiry into categorizations of reality laden with human practices. Insofar as our categorizations of reality are practice-laden, they are also, inevitably, value-laden.Sami Pihlstrom argues that metaphysics does not, then, study the world's 'own' categorical structure, but a structure we, through our conceptual and practical activities, impose on the reality we experience and interact with. Engaging with the classical American pragmatists, in particular William James, and neopragmatists, including Hilary Putnam, the author seeks to correct long-held misconceptions regarding the nature of the relationship between metaphysics and pragmatism. He argues that a coherent metaphysical alternative to the currently fashionable realist metaphysics emerges from pragmatism and that pragmatism itself should be reinterpreted in a metaphysically serious manner. Moreover, the book argues that, from a pragmatist perspective, metaphysics must be inextricably linked with ethics.

The volume develops the concepts of the self and its reflexive nature as they are linked to modern thought from Hegel to Luhmann. The moderns are reflexive in a double sense: they create themselves by self-reflexivity and make their world - society - in their own image. That the social world is reflexive means that it is made up of non-subjective (or supra-subjective) communication. The volume's contributors analyze this double reflexivity, of the self and society, from an interdisciplinary perspective, focusing both on individual and social narratives. This broad, interdisciplinary approach is a distinctive mark of the entire project. The volume will be structured around the following axes: Self-making and reflexivity - theoretical topics; Social self and the modern world; Literature - self and narrativity; Creative Self - text and fine art. Among the contributors are some of the most renowned specialists in their respective fields, including J. F. Kervegan, B. Zabel, P. Stekeler-Weithofer, I. James, L. Kvasz, H. Ikaheimo and others.

This volume of newly written chapters on the history and interpretation of Wittgenstein's Tractatus represents a significant step beyond the polemical debate between broad interpretive approaches that has recently characterized the field. Some of the contributors might count their approach as 'new' or 'resolute', while others are more 'traditional', but all are here concerned primarily with understanding in detail the structure of argument that Wittgenstein presents within the Tractatus, rather than with its final self-renunciation, or with the character of the understanding that renunciation might leave behind. The volume makes a strong case that close investigation, both biographical and textual, into the composition of the Tractatus, and into the various influences on it, still has much to yield in revealing the complexity and fertility of Wittgenstein's early thought. Amongst these influences Kant and Kierkegaard are considered alongside Wittgenstein's immediate predecessors in the analytic tradition. The themes explored range across the breadth of Wittgenstein's book, and include his accounts of ethics and aesthetics, as well as issues in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, and aspects of the logical framework of his account of representation. The contrast of saying and showing, and Wittgenstein's attitude to the inexpressible, is of central importance to many of the contributions. By approaching this concern through the various first-level issues that give rise to it, rather than from entrenched schematic positions, the contributors demonstrate the possibility of a more inclusive, constructive and fruitful mode of engagement with Wittgenstein's text and with each other.

Place has become a widespread concept in contemporary work in the humanities, creative arts, and social sciences. Yet in spite of its centrality, place remains a concept more often deployed than interrogated, and there are relatively few works that focus directly on the concept of place as such. The Intelligence of Place fills this gap, providing an exploration of place from various perspectives, encompassing anthropology, architecture, geography, media, philosophy, and the arts, and as it stands in relation to a range of other concepts. Drawing together many of the key thinkers currently writing on the topic, The Intelligence of Place offers a unique point of entry into the contemporary thinking of place - into its topographies and poetics - providing new insights into a concept crucial to understanding our world and ourselves.

This important new book offers the first full-length interpretation of the thought of Martin Heidegger with respect to irony. In a radical reading of Heidegger's major works (from "Being and Time" through the "Rector's Address" and the "Letter on Humanism" to "The Origin of the Work of Art" and the Spiegel interview), Andrew Haas does not claim that Heidegger is simply being ironic. Rather he argues that Heidegger's writings make such an interpretation possible - perhaps even necessary.Heidegger begins "Being and Time" with a quote from Plato, a thinker famous for his insistence upon Socratic irony. "The Irony of Heidegger" takes seriously the apparently curious decision to introduce the threat of irony even as philosophy begins in earnest to raise the question of the meaning of being. Through a detailed and thorough reading of Heidegger's major texts and the fundamental questions they raise, Haas reveals that one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century can be read with as much irony as earnestness. "The Irony of Heidegger" attempts to show that the essence of this irony lies in uncertainty, and that the entire project of onto-heno-chronophenomenology, therefore needs to be called into question.

Nietzsche's thought has been of renewed interest to philosophers in both the Anglo- American and the phenomenological and hermeneutic traditions. Nietzsche on Consciousness and the Embodied Mind presents 16 essays from analytic and continental perspectives. Appealing to both international communities of scholars, the volume seeks to deepen the appreciation of Nietzsche's contribution to our understanding of consciousness and the mind. Over the past decades, a variety of disciplines have engaged with Nietzsche's thought, including anthropology, biology, history, linguistics, neuroscience, and psychology, to name just a few. His rich and perspicacious treatment of consciousness, mind, and body cannot be reduced to any single discipline, and has the potential to speak to many. And, as several contributors make clear, Nietzsche's investigations into consciousness and the embodied mind are integral to his wider ethical concerns. This volume contains contributions by international experts such as Christa Davis Acampora (Emory University), Keith Ansell-Pearson (Warwick University), Joao Constancio (Universidade Nova de Lisboa), Frank Chouraqui (Leiden University), Manuel Dries (The Open University; Oxford University), Christian J. Emden (Rice University), Maria Cristina Fornari (University of Salento), Anthony K. Jensen (Providence College), Helmut Heit (Tongji University), Charlie Huenemann (Utah State University), Vanessa Lemm (Flinders University), Lawrence J. Hatab (Old Dominion University), Mattia Riccardi (University of Porto), Friedrich Ulfers and Mark Daniel Cohen (New York University and EGS), and Benedetta Zavatta (CNRS).

Deleuze's concept of 'becoming' provides the key to his notoriously complex metaphysics, yet it has not been systematized until now. Bankston tracks the concept of becoming and its underlying temporal processes across Deleuze's writings, arguing that expressions of becoming(s) appear in two modes of temporality: an appropriation of Nietzsche's eternal return (the becoming of the event), and Bergsonian duration (the becoming of sensation). Overturning the criticisms launched by Zizek and Badiou, with conceptual encounters between Bergson, Nietzsche, Leibniz, Borges, Klossowski, and Proust, the newly charted concept of double becoming provides a roadmap to the totality of Deleuze's philosophy. Bankston systematizes Deleuze's multi-mirrored universe where form and content infinitely refract in a vital kaleidoscope of becoming.

Edward Said and the Question of Subjectivity explores the notion of subjectivity implicated in and articulated by Said in his writings. Analyzing several of his major works, Pannian argues that there is a shift in Said's intellectual trajectory that takes place after the composition of Orientalism. In so doing, Said forthrightly attempts to retrieve a theoretical and political humanism, as Pannian identifies, despite the difficult and sanguinary aspects of its past. He elaborates upon Said's understanding that only after recognising the structures of violence and coming to discern strategies of interpellation, may the individual subject effectively resist them. Pannian also explores Said's ideas on exilic subjectivity, the role of intellectuals, acts of memory, critical secularism, affiliation and solidarity before dwelling on his interface with Marxist thinkers such as Antonio Gramsci, Theodor Adorno, and Raymond Williams. This engagement marks Said's own subject formation, and shapes his self-reflexive mode of knowledge production.

"Writing and Difference" is widely perceived to be an excellent starting place for those new to Derrida and this "Reader's Guide" is the perfect accompaniment to the study of one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th Century."Writing and Difference" is one of Jacques Derrida's most widely read and studied books. In a collection of essays that engage with literature, history, poetry, dramaturgy, psychoanalysis, ethnology and structuralism, Derrida demonstrates how philosophy and literature might be read, and revolutionises our understanding of writing, difference and life itself.This introduction is the ideal companion to an unprecedented and influential group of texts. Sarah Wood reengages with the original French text and offers guidance on: philosophical and historical context; key themes; reading the text; reception and influence; and, further reading."Continuum Reader's Guides" are clear, concise and accessible introductions to key texts in literature and philosophy. Each book explores the themes, context, criticism and influence of key works, providing a practical introduction to close reading, guiding students towards a thorough understanding of the text. They provide an essential, up-to-date resource, ideal for undergraduate students.

Merleau-Ponty was one of the most important European philosophers of the 20th century, whose work made enormous contributions to the development of phenomenology and the concept of the lived-body. Clearly and thematically structured, covering all Merleau-Ponty's key works and focussing particularly on the hugely important The Phenomenology of Perception, Starting with Merleau-Ponty leads the reader through a thorough overview of the development of his thought, resulting in a more thorough understanding of the roots of his philosophical concerns. Offering coverage of the full range of Merleau-Ponty's ideas, the book firmly sets his work in the context of the 20th century intellectual landscape and explores his contributions to phenomenology, existentialism, empiricism, objective thought and his vision of human reality. Crucially the book introduces the major thinkers and events that proved influential in the development of Merleau-Ponty's work, including Husserl, Sartre, Heidegger and those philosophers and psychologists whom he labelled 'intellectualists' and 'empiricists'. This is the ideal introduction for anyone coming to the work of this hugely important thinker for the first time.

Now available in English for the first time, Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess's meditation on the art of living is an exhortation to preserve the environment and biodiversity. As Naess approaches his ninetieth year, he offers a bright and bold perspective on the power of feelings to move us away from ecological and cultural degradation toward sound, future-focused policy and action. Naess acknowledges the powerlessness of the intellect without the heart, and, like Thoreau before him, he rejects the Cartesian notion of mind-body separation. He advocates instead for the integration of reason and emotion-a combination Naess believes will inspire us to make changes for the better. Playful and serious, this is a guidebook for finding our way on a planet wrecked by the harmful effects of consumption, population growth, commodification, technology, and globalization. It is sure to mobilize today's philosophers, environmentalists, policy makers, and the general public into seeking-with whole hearts rather than with superficial motives-more effective and timelier solutions. Naess's style is reflective and anecdotal as he shares stories and details from his rich and long life. With characteristic goodwill, wit, and wisdom, he denounces our unsustainable actions while simultaneously demonstrating the unsurpassed wonder, beauty, and possibility our world offers, and ultimately shows us that there is always reason for hope, that everyone is a potential ally in our fight for the future.

Our era is profoundly marked by the phenomenon of exile and it is has become increasingly urgent to rethink the concept of exile and our stance towards it. This renewed reflection on the problem of exile brings to the fore a number of questions regarding the traditionally negative connotation of exile. Is there not another way to understand the condition of exile? Permeated with references to the 'stranger', the 'other' and 'exteriority', the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas signifies a positive understanding of exile. This original and compelling book distills from Levinas's philosophy a wisdom of exile, for the first time shedding a positive light on the condition of exile itself. Abi Doukhan argues that Levinas's philosophy can be understood as a comprehensive philosophy of exile, from his ethics to his thoughts on society, love, knowledge, spirituality and art, thereby presenting a comprehensive view of the philosophy of Levinas himself as well as a renewed understanding of the wealth and contribution of exile to a given society.

Alain Badiou is undoubtedly the most exciting and influential voice in contemporary French philosophy and one of the most important theorists at work today. His impact on continental philosophy and the wider philosophy community, politics and the arts in the last twenty years has been immense. Alain Badiou: Live Theory offers a concise and accessible introduction to his work and thought, laying out the central themes of his major works, including his magnum opus, Being and Event, and its long-awaited sequel, Logics of Worlds. Oliver Feltham explores the fundamental questions through which Badiou's philosophy constantly evolves, identifies the key turning points in his ideas, and makes a clear case for the coherence and powerful singularity of his thought when employed in the analysis of political and artistic situations. Feltham examines the thinkers and theorists with whom Badiou has engaged and who have engaged with him, arguing that Badiou's work is compelling precisely because it opens up new genealogies and new polemics in the intellectual landscape. The book includes a brand new interview with Badiou, in which he discusses his current concerns and future plans. This is the ideal companion to study for students and readers encountering this fascinating thinker for the first time.

The work of the later Schelling (in and after 1809) seems antithetical to that of Nietzsche: one a Romantic, idealist and Christian, the other Dionysian, anti-idealist and anti-Christian. Still, there is a very meaningful and educative dialogue to be found between Schelling and Nietzsche on the topics of reason, freedom and religion. Both of them start their philosophy with a similar critique of the Western tradition, which to them is overly dualist, rationalist and anti-organic (metaphysically, ethically, religiously, politically). In response, they hope to inculcate a more lively view of reality in which a new understanding of freedom takes center stage. This freedom can be revealed and strengthened through a proper approach to religion, one that neither disconnects from nor subordinates religion to reason. Religion is the dialogical other to reason, one that refreshes and animates our attempts to navigate the world autonomously. In doing so, Schelling and Nietzsche open up new avenues of thinking about (the relationship between) freedom, reason and religion.