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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Western philosophy > Modern Western philosophy, c 1600 to the present
At stake in this book is a struggle with language in a time when
our old faith in the redeeming of the word-and the word's power to
redeem-has almost been destroyed. Drawing on Benjamin's political
theology, his interpretation of the German Baroque mourning play,
and Adorno's critical aesthetic theory, but also on the thought of
poets and many other philosophers, especially Hegel's phenomenology
of spirit, Nietzsche's analysis of nihilism, and Derrida's writings
on language, Kleinberg-Levin shows how, because of its
communicative and revelatory powers, language bears the utopian
"promise of happiness," the idea of a secular redemption of
humanity, at the very heart of which must be the achievement of
universal justice. In an original reading of Beckett's plays,
novels and short stories, Kleinberg-Levin shows how, despite
inheriting a language damaged, corrupted and commodified, Beckett
redeems dead or dying words and wrests from this language new
possibilities for the expression of meaning. Without denying
Beckett's nihilism, his picture of a radically disenchanted world,
Kleinberg-Levin calls attention to moments when his words suddenly
ignite and break free of their despair and pain, taking shape in
the beauty of an austere yet joyous lyricism, suggesting that,
after all, meaning is still possible.
For centuries, philosophers have addressed the ontological question
of whether God exists. Most recently, philosophers have begun to
explore the axiological question of what value impact, if any,
God's existence has (or would have) on our world. This book brings
together four prestigious philosophers, Michael Almeida, Travis
Dumsday, Perry Hendricks and Graham Oppy, to present different
views on the axiological question about God. Each contributor
expresses a position on axiology, which is then met with responses
from the remaining contributors. This structure makes for genuine
discussion and developed exploration of the key issues at stake,
and shows that the axiological question is more complicated than it
first appears. Chapters explore a range of relevant issues,
including the relationship between Judeo-Christian theism and
non-naturalist alternatives such as pantheism, polytheism, and
animism/panpsychism. Further chapters consider the attitudes and
emotions of atheists within the theism conversation, and develop
and evaluate the best arguments for doxastic pro-theism and
doxastic anti-theism. Of interest to those working on philosophy of
religion, theism and ethics, this book presents lively accounts of
an important topic in an exciting and collaborative way, offered by
renowned experts in this area.
In Nietzsche's Search for Philosophy: On the Middle Writings Keith
Ansell-Pearson makes a novel and thought-provoking contribution to
our appreciation of Nietzsche's neglected middle writings. These
are the texts Human, All Too Human (1878-80), Dawn (1881), and The
Gay Science (1882). There is a truth in the observation of Havelock
Ellis that the works Nietzsche produced between 1878 and 1882
represent the maturity of his genius. In this study he explores key
aspects of Nietzsche's philosophical activity in his middle
writings, including his conceptions of philosophy, his commitment
to various enlightenments, his critique of fanaticism, his search
for the heroic-idyllic, his philosophy of modesty and his
conception of ethics, and his search for joy and happiness. The
book will appeal to readers across philosophy and the humanities,
especially to those with an interest in Nietzsche and anyone who
has a concern with the fate of philosophy in the modern world.
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.
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.
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.
This volume is composed of extended versions of selected papers
presented at an international conference held in June 2011 at Opole
University-the seventh in a series of annual American and European
Values conferences organized by the Institute of Philosophy, Opole
University, Poland. The papers were written independently with no
prior guidelines other than the obvious need to address some aspect
of George Herbert Mead's work. While rooted in careful study of
Mead's original writings and transcribed lectures and the
historical context in which that work was carried out, these papers
have brought that work to bear on contemporary issues in
metaphysics, epistemology, cognitive science, and social and
political philosophy. There is good reason to classify Mead as one
of the original classical American pragmatists (along with Charles
Peirce, William James, and John Dewey) and consequently as a major
figure in American philosophy. Nevertheless his thought has been
marginalized for the most part, at least in academic philosophy. It
is our intention to help recuperate Mead's reputation among a
broader audience by providing a small corpus of significant
contemporary scholarship on some key aspects of his thought.
This book attempts to open up a path towards a phenomenological
theory of values (more technically, a phenomenological axiology).
By drawing on everyday experience, and dissociating the notion of
value from that of tradition, it shows how emotional sensibility
can be integrated to practical reason. This project was prompted by
the persuasion that the fragility of democracy, and the current
public irrelevance of the ideal principles which support it,
largely depend on the inability of modern philosophy to overcome
the well-entrenched skepticism about the power of practical reason.
The book begins with a phenomenology of cynical consciousness,
continues with a survey of still influential theories of value
rooted in 20th century philosophy, and finally offers an outline of
a bottom-up axiology that revives the anti-skeptical legacy of
phenomenology, without ignoring the standards set by contemporary
metaethics.
Speculative realism is one of the most talked-about movements in
recent Continental philosophy. It has been discussed widely amongst
the younger generation of Continental philosophers seeking new
philosophical approaches and promises to form the cornerstone of
future debates in the field. This book introduces the contexts out
of which speculative realism has emerged and provides an overview
of the major contributors and latest developments. It guides the
reader through the important questions asked by realism (what can I
know? what is reality?), examining philosophy's perennial questions
in new ways. The book begins with the speculative realist's
critique of 'correlationism', the view that we can never reach what
is real beneath our language systems, our means for perception, or
our finite manner of being-in-the-world. It goes on to critically
review the work of the movement's most important thinkers,
including Quentin Meillassoux, Ray Brassier, and Graham Harman, but
also other important writers such as Jane Bennett and Catherine
Malabou whose writings delineate alternative approaches to the
real. It interrogates the crucial questions these thinkers have
raised and concludes with a look toward the future of speculative
realism, especially as it relates to the reality of time.
Georges Bataille's influence upon 20th-century philosophy is hard
to overstate. His writing has transfixed his readers for decades -
exerting a powerful influence upon Foucault, Blanchot and Derrida
amongst many others. Today, Bataille continues to be an important
reference for many of today's leading theorists such as Giorgio
Agamben, Roberto Esposito, Jean-Luc Nancy and Adrianna Caverero.
His work is a unique and enigmatic combination of mystical
phenomenology, politics, anthropology and economic theory -
sometimes adopting the form of literature, sometimes that of
ontology. This is the first book to take Bataille's ambitious and
unfinished Accursed Share project as its thematic guide, with
individual contributors isolating themes, concepts or sections from
within the three volumes and taking them in different directions.
Therefore, as well as providing readings of Bataille's key
concepts, such as animality, sovereignty, catastrophe and the
sacred, this collection aims to explore new terrain and new
theoretical problems.Georges Bataille and Contemporary Thought acts
simultaneously as a companion to Bataille's three-volume secular
theodicy and as a laboratory for new syntheses within his thought.
This book investigates a number of central problems in the
philosophy of Charles Peirce grouped around the realism of his
semiotics: the issue of how sign systems are developed and used in
the investigation of reality. Thus, it deals with the precise
character of Peirce's realism; with Peirce's special notion of
propositions as signs which, at the same time, denote and describe
the same object. It deals with diagrams as signs which depict more
or less abstract states-of-affairs, facilitating reasoning about
them; with assertions as public claims about the truth of
propositions. It deals with iconicity in logic, the issue of
self-control in reasoning, dependences between phenomena in their
realist descriptions. A number of chapters deal with applied
semiotics: with biosemiotic sign use among pre-human organisms: the
multimedia combination of pictorial and linguistic information in
human semiotic genres like cartoons, posters, poetry, monuments.
All in all, the book makes a strong case for the actual relevance
of Peirce's realist semiotics.
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.
This volume examines (1) the philosophical sources of the Kantian
concepts "apperception" and "self-consciousness", (2) the
historical development of the theories of apperception and
deduction of categories within the pre-critical period, (3) the
structure and content of A- as well as B-deduction of categories,
and finally (4) the Kantian (and non-Kantian) meaning of
"apperception" and "self-consciousness".
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.
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