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Books > Philosophy > Western philosophy > Modern Western philosophy, c 1600 to the present
Source d'etude mais egalement d'inspiration, l'Orient a influence
de nombreux penseurs, historiens et ecrivains anglais du XVIIIe
siecle, dont les textes ont contribue au developpement d'une
veritable mode orientale en Angleterre. Mais parmi ces
representations de l'Orient se confondent ouvrages erudits et
fictifs, connaissance et imagination. Relisant un corpus de romans
dits pseudo-orientaux a partir de leur intertexte savant, Claire
Gallien met en evidence la deconstruction des frontieres entre
textes fictifs et non-fictifs. Si le roman s'inspire de l'erudition
orientaliste, celle-ci emploie des techniques de vulgarisation
propres a l'ecriture romanesque. Dans L'Orient anglais C. Gallien
examine le lien qui unissait une mode a un systeme de connaissance,
et permet de voir le role d'une culture etrangere dans la
constitution d'une litterature nationale.
Deleuze's fondness for geography has long been recognised as
central to his thought. This is the first book to introduce
researchers to the breadth of his engagements with space, place and
movement. Focusing on pressing global issues such as urbanization,
war, migration, and climate change, Arun Saldanha presents a
detailed Deleuzian rejoinder to a number of theoretical and
political questions about globalization in a variety of
disciplines. This systematic overview of moments in Deleuze's
corpus where space is implicitly or explicitly theorized shows why
he can be called the twentieth century's most interesting thinker
of space. Anyone with an interest in refining such concepts as
territory, assemblage, body, event and Anthropocene will learn much
from the "geophilosophy" which Deleuze and Guattari proposed for
our critical times.
Translation exposes aspects of language that can easily be ignored,
renewing the sense of the proximity and inseparability of language
and thought. The ancient quarrel between philosophy and literature
was an early expression of a self-understanding of philosophy that
has, in some quarters at least, survived the centuries. This book
explores the idea of translation as a philosophical theme and as an
important feature of philosophy and practical life, especially in
relation to the work of Stanley Cavell. The essays in this volume
explore philosophical questions about translation, especially in
the light of the work of Stanley Cavell. They take the questions
raised by translation to be of key importance not only for
philosophical thinking but for our lives as a whole. Thoreau's
enigmatic remark "The truth is translated" reveals that apparently
technical matters of translation extend through human lives to
remarkable effect, conditioning the ways in which the world comes
to light. The experience of the translator exemplifies the
challenge of judgement where governing rules and principles are
incommensurable; and it shows something of the ways in which words
come to us, opening new possibilities of thought. This book puts
Cavell's rich exploration of these matters into conversation with
traditions of pragmatism and European thought. Translation, then,
far from a merely technical matter, is at work in human being, and
it is the means of humanisation. The book brings together
philosophers and translators with common interests in Cavell and in
the questions of language at the heart of his work.
Marian Hobson's work has made a seminal contribution to our
understanding of the European Enlightenment, and of Diderot and
Rousseau in particular. This book presents her most important
articles in a single volume, translated into English for the first
time. Hobson's distinctive approach is to take a given text or
problematique and position it within its intellectual, historical
and polemical context. From close analysis of the underlying
conceptual structures of literary texts, she offers a unique
insight into the vibrant networks of people and ideas at work
throughout Europe, and across disciplinary boundaries as diverse as
literature and mathematics, medicine and music. In their
translations of Hobson's essays, Kate Tunstall and Caroline Warman
present the primary sources in both the original eighteenth-century
French and modern English, making the detail of these debates
accessible to everyone, from the specialist to the student,
whatever their academic discipline or interest.
Hospitality, in particular hospitality to strangers, was promoted
in the eighteenth century as a universal human virtue, but writing
of the period reveals many telling examples of its abuse. Through
analysis of encounters across cultural and sexual divides, Judith
Still revisits the current debate about the social, moral and
political values of the Enlightenment. Focussing on (in)hospitality
in relation to two kinds of exotic Other, Judith Still examines
representations of indigenous peoples of the New World, both as
hosts and as cannibals, and of the Moslem 'Oriental' in Persia and
Turkey, associated with both the caravanserai (where travellers
rest) and the harem. She also explores very different examples of
Europeans as hosts and the practice of 'adoption', particularly
that of young girls. The position of women in hospitality, hitherto
neglected in favour of questions of cultural difference, is central
to these analyses, and Still considers the work of women writers
alongside more canonical male-authored texts. In this
thought-provoking study, Judith Still uncovers how the
Enlightenment rhetoric of openness and hospitality is compromised
by self-interest; the questions it raises about attitudes to
difference and freedom are equally relevant today.
Although Joseph de Maistre has long been regarded as characterising
the Counter-Enlightenment, his intellectual relationship to
eighteenth-century philosophy remains unexplored. In this first
comprehensive assessment of Joseph de Maistre's response to the
Enlightenment, a team of renowned scholars uncover a writer who was
both the foe and heir of the philosophes. While Maistre was deeply
indebted to thinkers who helped to fashion the Enlightenment -
Rousseau, the Cambridge Platonists - he also agreed with
philosophers such as Schopenhauer who adopted an overtly critical
stance. His idea of genius, his critique of America and his
historical theory all used 'enlightened' language to contradict
Enlightenment principles. Most intriguingly, and completely
unsuspected until now, Maistre used the writings of the early
Christian theologian Origen to develop a new, late, religious form
of Enlightenment that shattered the logic of philosophie. The
Joseph de Maistre revealed in this book calls into question any
simple opposition of Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment, and
offers particular lessons for our own time, when religion is at the
forefront of public debate and a powerful political tool.
The Grundrisse is widely regarded as one of Marx's most important
texts, with many commentators claiming it is the centrepiece of his
entire oeuvre. It is also, however, a notoriously difficult text to
understand and interpret. In this - the first guide and
introduction to reading the Grundrisse - Simon Choat helps us to
make sense of a text that is both a first draft of Capital and a
major work in its own right. As well as offering a detailed
commentary on the entire text, this guide explains the Grundrisse's
central themes and arguments and highlights its impact and
influence. The Grundrisse's discussions of money, labour, nature,
freedom, the role of machinery, and the development and dynamics of
capitalism have influenced generations of thinkers, from
Anglo-American historians such as Eric Hobsbawm and Robert Brenner
to Continental philosophers like Antonio Negri and Gilles Deleuze,
as well as offering vital insights into Marx's methodology and the
trajectory of his thought. Contemporary examples are used
throughout this guide both to illuminate Marx's terminology and
concepts and to illustrate the continuing relevance of the
Grundrisse. Readers will be offered guidance on: -Philosophical and
Historical Context -Key Themes -Reading the Text -Reception and
Influence
On ne peut penser les Lumieres sans l'auteur du Contrat social et
l'Emile, mais on ne saurait cependant nier que Rousseau denonce les
'philosophes modernes' dans les termes les plus forts. Comment donc
penser les rapports entre Rousseau et les philosophes? Dans ce
volume les specialistes de Rousseau vont au-dela des oppositions
figees. Ils montrent comment le 'citoyen de Geneve', a partir de
sources philosophiques partagees avec ses contemporains, delimite
le champ de la raison et construit une pensee politique rigoureuse,
s'imposant ainsi a ceux qui souvent rejettent ses idees religieuses
ou sa denonciation des sciences et des arts. Confrontant la
richesse irreductible de ses ecrits, les auteurs proposent le
portrait intellectuel d'un homme qui construit sa pensee a la fois
avec et contre les philosophes, les obligeant a justifier ou a
modifier leurs propres convictions face au defi que represente son
oeuvre. Figure emblematique de son siecle, Rousseau suscite
l'indignation mais oblige aussi a des reexamens difficiles. C'est
par l'etude de cette position a la fois centrale et marginale que
l'on peut saisir la force de sa pensee et discerner ce qu'elle
signifie pour nous.
This reader makes the key essays of 19th century French philosopher
Felix Ravaisson available in English for the first time. In recent
years, Ravaisson has emerged as an extremely important and
influential figure in the history of modern European philosophy.
The volume contains the classic 1838 dissertation Of Habit, studies
of Pascal, Stoicism and the wider history of philosophy together
with the Philosophical Testament that he left unfinished when he
died in 1900. The volume also features Ravaisson's work in
archaeology, the history of religions and art-theory, and his essay
on the Venus de Milo, which occupied him over a period of twenty
years after he noticed, when hiding the statue behind a false wall
in a dingy Parisian basement during the Franco-Prussian war, that
it had previously been presented in a way that deformed its
original bearing and meaning. Felix Ravaisson: Selected Essays
contains an introductory intellectual biography of Ravaisson, which
contextualises each of the essays in the volume. It also features
an annotated bibliography of suggested further reading. This book
will grant scholars and students alike wider access to his
distinctive contribution to the history of philosophy.
'Women seem to be destined solely for our pleasure. When they no
longer have that attraction, they have lost everything' (letter
from Diderot to Sophie Volland, 1762). How typical was this view of
the 'older woman' in the eighteenth century? What was it like for
women of intelligence and sensibility to grow old in such a
culture? By studying the correspondences of four prominent women
(Francoise de Graffigny, Marie Du Deffand, Marie Riccoboni and
Isabelle de Charriere) during their middle and late years, Stewart
explores the relation of female aging to respectability, sexuality
and power. The author's focus lies in the physical, emotional and
professional well-being of middle-aged and elderly women during a
time when all the available dignity of age seemed to belong to men.
The 'repulsiveness' of growing old was patently a female issue. One
of the most emblematic aspects of these correspondences is the
often unrequited love of older women for younger men during a
period when the common wisdom denied women the right to any
feelings except piety. Stewart juxtaposes their letters with
representations of aging women in the period's fictional and
medical literature. She takes up several canonical, mostly
male-authored, texts that purvey this common wisdom, and re-reads
them with originality and grace. Through The Enlightenment of age -
at once learned, highly personal and entertaining - Stewart speaks
to us about the secret lives of older women, and about the ethos of
an era.
Bare Architecture: a schizoanalysis, is a poststructural
exploration of the interface between architecture and the body.
Chris L. Smith skilfully introduces and explains numerous concepts
drawn from poststructural philosophy to explore the manner by which
the architecture/body relation may be rethought in the 21st
century. Multiple well-known figures in the discourses of
poststructuralism are invoked: Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari,
Roland Barthes, Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, Jorges Luis
Borges and Michel Serres. These figures bring into view the
philosophical frame in which the body is formulated. Alongside the
philosophy, the architecture that Smith comes to refer to as 'bare
architecture' is explored. Smith considers architecture as a
complex construction and the book draws upon literature, art and
music, to provide a critique of the limits, extents and
opportunities for architecture itself. The book considers key works
from the architects Douglas Darden, Georges Pingusson, Lacatan and
Vassal, Carlo Scarpa, Peter Zumthor, Marco Casagrande and Sami
Rintala and Raumlabor. Such works are engaged for their capacities
to foster a rethinking of the relation between architecture and the
body.
Why were Chinese and Indian ways of thinking excluded from European
philosophy in early modern times? This is a study of what happened
to the European understanding of China and India between the late
16th century and the first half of the 18th century. Investigating
the description of these two Asian civilizations during a century
and a half of histories of philosophy, this book accounts for the
change of historiographical paradigms, from Neoplatonic philosophia
perennis and Spinozistic atheism to German Eclecticism. Uncovering
the reasons for inserting or excluding Chinese and Indian ways of
thinking within the field of Philosophy in early modern times, it
reveals the origin of the Eurocentric understanding of Philosophy
as a Greek-European prerogative. By highlighting how this narrowing
and exclusion of non-Western ways of thought was a result of
conviction of superiority and religious prejudice, this book
provides a new way of thinking about the place of Asian traditions
among World philosophies.
Hegel's Philosophy of Right has long been recognized as the only
systematic alternative to the dominant social contract tradition in
modern political philosophy. Dean Moyar here takes on the difficult
task of reading and representing Hegel's view of justice with the
same kind of intuitive appeal that has made social contract theory,
with its voluntary consent and assignment of rights and privileges,
such an attractive model. Moyar argues that Hegelian justice
depends on a proper understanding of Hegel's theory of value and on
the model of life through which the overall conception of value,
the Good, is operationalized. Closely examining key episodes in
Phenomenology of Spirit and the entire Philosophy of Right, Moyar
shows how Hegel develops his account of justice through an
inferentialist method whereby the content of right unfolds into
increasingly thick normative structures. He asserts that the theory
of value that Hegel develops in tandem with the account of right
relies on a productive unity of self-consciousness and life, of
pure thinking and the natural drives. Moyar argues that Hegel's
expressive account of the free will enables him to theorize rights
not simply as abstract claims, but rather as realizations of value
in social contexts of mutual recognition. Moyar shows that Hegel's
account of justice is a living system of institutions centered on a
close relation of the economic and political spheres and on an
understanding of the law as developing through practices of public
reason. Moyar defends Hegel's metaphysics of the State as an
account of the sovereignty of the Good, and he shows why Hegel
thought that philosophy needs to offer an account of world history
and reformed religion to buttress the modern social order.
Before he had even conceived of the Decline and fall of the Roman
Empire there was another Edward Gibbon, a young expatriate living
in Switzerland and writing in French. In the Essai, a work of
remarkable erudition and energy completed by the age of twenty-one,
Gibbon reflects on the present state of knowledge in
post-Renaissance Europe - what he calls litterature. The first
publication of the Essai since 1761, this critical edition sets
Gibbon's work in its intellectual context. A detailed introduction
examines the biographical, cultural and historical background to
this text: the young writer's perception of European intellectual
life as he observed it from Lausanne, his relation to the
Encyclopedie and the French academies, the fate of erudition, and
the modern organization of learning in books. An extensive
commentary completes this edition, providing invaluable annotation
of each chapter, including the important but little-known sections
on religion that were replaced by Gibbon in the final text. As
current debates revisit the meaning of Enlightenment, readers will
find in this edition of Gibbon's Essai a new approach to the
intellectual networks and tensions that lie at its heart.
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