There has been a significant renewal of interest in the British Idealists in recent years. Scholars have acknowledged their critical contribution to the development of a communitarian theory of the relation of the individual to society and a widely accepted theory of rights. "British Idealism: A Guide for the Perplexed" offers a clear and thorough account of this key philosophical movement, providing an outline of the key terms and central arguments employed by the idealists. David Boucher and Andrew Vincent lay out the historical context and employ analytical and critical methods to explain the philosophical background and key concepts. The book explores the contribution of British Idealism to contemporary philosophical, political and social debates, emphasising the continuing relevance of the central themes. Geared towards the specific requirements of students who need to reach a sound understanding of British Idealism, the book serves as an ideal companion to study of this most influential and important of movements. "Continuum's Guides for the Perplexed" are clear, concise and accessible introductions to thinkers, writers and subjects that students and readers can find especially challenging - or indeed downright bewildering. Concentrating specifically on what it is that makes the subject difficult to grasp, these books explain and explore key themes and ideas, guiding the reader towards a thorough understanding of demanding material.

During his late period, Nietzsche is particularly concerned with the value that mankind attributes to truth. In dealing with that topic, Nietzsche is not primarly interested in the metaphysical disputes on truth, but rather in the effects that the "will to truth" has on the human being. In fact, he argues that the "faith in a value as such of truth" influenced Western culture and started the anthropological degeneration of the human type that characterizes European morality. To call into question the value of truth is therefore necessary, if one wants to help mankind to find her way in the labyrinth of nihilism. In this new addition to Nietzsche scholarship, Gori explores the origin and aim of the philosopher's late perspectival thought by merging the theoretical with the historical approach, with a special focus on the epistemological debate that influenced Nietzsche. As a result, the book provides a contextual reading of the issue that supports the idea that Nietzsche's attitude in addressing the problem of truth is, in a broad sense, pragmatic.

This book provides a clear and comprehensive introduction to Arendt's key ideas and texts, ideal for students coming to her work for the first time. Hannah Arendt is considered to be one of the most influential political thinkers of the twentieth century. Although her writing is somewhat clear, the enormous breadth of her work places particular demands on the student coming to her thought for the first time. "Arendt: A Guide for the Perplexed" provides a clear, concise and accessible introduction to this hugely important political thinker. The book examines the most important themes of Hannah Arendt's work, as well as the main controversies surrounding it. Karin Fry explores the systematic nature of Arendt's political thought that arose in response to the political controversies of her time and describes how she sought to envision a coherent framework for thinking about politics in a new way.Thematically structured and covering all Arendt's key writings and ideas, this book is designed specifically to meet the needs of students coming to her work for the first time. "Continuum's Guides for the Perplexed" are clear, concise and accessible introductions to thinkers, writers and subjects that students and readers can find especially challenging - or indeed downright bewildering. Concentrating specifically on what it is that makes the subject difficult to grasp, these books explain and explore key themes and ideas, guiding the reader towards a thorough understanding of demanding material.

Wittgenstein's philosophical career began in 1911 when he went to Cambridge to work with Russell. He compiled the Notes on Logic two years later as a kind of summary of the work he had done so far. Russell thought that they were "as good as anything that has ever been done in logic," but he had Wittgenstein himself to explain them to him. Without the benefit of Wittgenstein's explanations, most later scholars have preferred to treat the Notes solely as an interpretative aid in understanding the Tractatus (which draws on them for material), rather than as a philosophical work in their own right.
Michael Potter unequivocally demonstrates the philosophical and historical importance of the Notes for the first time. By teasing out the meaning of key passages, he shows how many of the most important insights in the Tractatus they contain. He discusses in detail how Wittgenstein arrived at these insights by thinking through ideas he obtained from Russell and Frege. And he uses a challenging blend of biography and philosophy to illuminate the methods Wittgenstein used in his work.
The book features the complete text of the Notesi in a critical edition, with a detailed discussion of the circumstances in which they were compiled, leading to a new understanding of how they should be read.

Frederick R. Bauer captures the essence of William James in "Science, God's Hard Gift." We have all heard the word "pragmatic." It entered our everyday vocabulary as a result of a series of lectures delivered by William James, the greatest of all great American thinkers. He gave those lectures in 1906, four years before his death at age sixty-eight, in 1910. In the first of those lectures, James described the type of person he wanted to reach, a person not unlike a large number of persons today: "He wants facts; he wants science," James said, "but he also wants a religion."

James did not live to see the incredible new scientific discoveries of the 1900s. Those discoveries have led increasing numbers of experts to claim that modern science has made religion "obsolete." "Science, God's Hard Gift" celebrates this centenary of James's death by updating and expanding his ideas on pragmatism for those contemporaries who want facts and science, but also a religion.

Georg Lukcs stands as a towering figure in the areas of critical theory, literary criticism, aesthetics, ethical theory and the philosophy of Marxism and German Idealism. Yet, despite his influence throughout the twentieth century, his contributions to the humanities and theoretical social sciences are marked by neglect. What has been lost is a crucial thinker in the tradition of critical theory, but also, by extension, a crucial set of ideas that can be used to shed new light on the major problems of contemporary society. This book reconsiders Lukcs intellectual contributions in the light of recent intellectual developments in political theory, aesthetics, ethical theory, and social and cultural theory. An international team of contributors contend that Luk ideas and theoretical contributions have much to offer the theoretical paucity of the present. Ultimately the book reintegrates Lukcs as a central thinker, not only in the tradition of critical theory, but also as a major theorist and critic of modernity, of capitalism, and of new trends in political theory, cultural criticism and legal theory.

Foucault's philosophical relationship to Heidegger is the subject of continuing academic debate. To date, no comprehensive interpretation of this relationship has emerged. This book provides a groundbreaking new approach to Foucault and Heidegger's relationship, based in an original approach to the problem itself. Rather than explore points of similarity between these thinkers, the book identifies a Heideggerian style, or practice, of thinking in Foucault's work, which first emerges in his early studies of madness and literature. Through a series of penetrating studies, Foucault's Heidegger shows how this philosophical practice informs the content and objectives of Foucault's critical writings to the end of his career. This argument clarifies the central role of transformative experience in Foucault's work. In addition to establishing the nature of Foucault's engagement with Heidegger, it provides a new perspective on the role of 'fiction' in Foucault's critique, and revitalizes our conception of Foucault's status as a philosopher. Foucault's Heidegger will be a landmark in Foucault studies, the first comprehensive account of Foucault's relationship to Heidegger in print. As such, it will be a key reference for future debates on this matter and discussions of Foucault's work generally.

Presenting a comprehensive portrayal of the reading of Chinese and Buddhist philosophy in early twentieth-century German thought, Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought examines the implications of these readings for contemporary issues in comparative and intercultural philosophy. Through a series of case studies from the late 19th-century and early 20th-century, Eric Nelson focuses on the reception and uses of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism in German philosophy, covering figures as diverse as Buber, Heidegger, and Misch. He argues that the growing intertextuality between traditions cannot be appropriately interpreted through notions of exclusive identities, closed horizons, or unitary traditions. Providing an account of the context, motivations, and hermeneutical strategies of early twentieth-century European thinkers' interpretation of Asian philosophy, Nelson also throws new light on the question of the relation between Heidegger and Asian philosophy. Reflecting the growing interest in the possibility of intercultural and global philosophy, Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought opens up the possibility of a more inclusive intercultural conception of philosophy.

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.

Part of the "Blackwell Readings in the History of Philosophy" series, this survey of late modern philosophy focuses on the key texts and philosophers of the period whose beliefs changed the course of western thought.
Gathers together the key texts from the most significant and influential philosophers of the late modern era to provide a thorough introduction to the period.
Features the writings of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Leibniz, Kant, Rousseau, Bentham and other leading thinkers.
Examines such topics as empiricism, rationalism, and the existence of God.
Readings are accompanied by expert commentary from the editors, who are leading scholars in the field.

Introduction to New Realism provides an overview of the movement of contemporary thought named New Realism, by its creator and most celebrated practitioner, Maurizio Ferraris. Sharing significant concerns and features with Speculative Realism and Object Oriented Ontology, New Realism can be said to be one of the most prescient philosophical positions today. Its desire to overcome the postmodern antirealism of Kantian origin, and to reassert the importance of truth and objectivity in the name of a new Enlightenment, has had an enormous resonance both in Europe and in the US. Introduction to New Realism is the first volume dedicated to exposing this continental movement to an anglophone audience. Featuring a foreword by the eminent contemporary philosopher and leading exponent of Speculative Realism, Iain Hamilton Grant, the book begins by tracing the genesis of New Realism, and outlining its central theoretical tenets, before opening onto three distinct sections. The first, 'Negativity', is a critique of the postmodern idea that the world is constructed by our conceptual schemas, all the more so as we have entered the age of digitality and virtuality. The second thesis, 'positivity', proposes the fundamental ontological assertion of New Realism, namely that not only are there parts of reality that are independent of thought, but these parts are also able to act causally over thought and the human world. The third thesis, 'normativity,' applies New Realism to the sphere of the social world. Finally, an afterword written by two young scholars explains in more detail the relationship between New Realism and other forms of contemporary realism.

Noel Carroll, a brilliant and provocative philosopher of film, has gathered in this book eighteen of his most recent essays on cinema and television--what Carroll calls "moving images." The essays discuss topics in philosophy, film theory, and film criticism. Drawing on concepts from cognitive psychology and analytic philosophy, Carroll examines a wide range of fascinating topics. These include film attention, the emotional address of the moving image, film and racism, the nature and epistemology of documentary film, the moral status of television, the concept of film style, the foundations of film evaluation, the film theory of Siegfried Kracauer, the ideology of the professional western, and films by Sergei Eisenstein and Yvonne Rainer. Carroll also assesses the state of contemporary film theory and speculates on its prospects. The book continues many of the themes of Carroll's earlier work Theorizing the Moving Image and develops them in new directions. A general introduction by George Wilson situates Carroll's essays in relation to his view of moving-image studies.

"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

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 is an original study aiming to explain fully Lacanian thought and apply it to the study of literary texts.In contemporary academic literary studies, Lacan is often considered impenetrably obscure, due to the unavailability of his late works, insufficient articulation of his methodologies and sometimes stereotypical use of Lacanian concepts in literary theory.This study aims to integrate Lacan into contemporary literary study by engaging with a broad range of Lacanian theoretical concepts, often for the first time in English, and using them to analyse a range of key texts from different periods.Azari explores Lacan's theory of desire as well as his final theories of lituraterre, littoral, and the sinthome and interrogates a range of poststructuralist interpretive approaches. In the second part of the book, he outlines the variety of ways in which Lacanian theory can be applied to literary texts and offers detailed readings of texts by Shakespeare, Donne, Joyce and Ashbery. This ground-breaking study provides original insights into a number of the most influential intellectual discussions in relation to Lacan and will fill a recognised gap in understanding Lacan and his legacy for literary study and criticism.

"Marx Through Post-Structuralism" presents a thorough critical examination of the readings of Marx given by four post-structuralist thinkers, all key figures in Continental philosophy: Jean-Francois Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze. Arguing that both Marx and the post-structuralists seek to produce a genuinely materialist philosophy, the author aims to develop a better understanding of both Marx and post-structuralism and in so doing to reflect on the possibilities and problems for materialist philosophy more broadly.
Against the common assumption that post-structuralism begins with a rejection of Marx, Choat argues that Marx has been a key influence on post-structuralist thought and that each of the four thinkers examined affirms Marx's contemporary significance. By looking at how these thinkers have read Marx - analysing their direct comments, unspoken uses, and implicit criticisms - the book demonstrates that there is a distinct and original post-structuralist approach to Marx that allows us to read him in a new light.