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Books > Philosophy > Western philosophy > Modern Western philosophy, c 1600 to the present
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.
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.
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.
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.
Descartes and the 'Ingenium' tracks the significance of embodied
thought (ingenium) in the philosophical trajectory of the founding
father of dualism. The first part of the book defines the notion of
ingenium in relation to core concepts of Descartes's philosophy,
such as memory and enumeration. It focuses on Descartes's uses of
this notion in methodical thinking, mathematics, and medicine. The
studies in the second part place the Cartesian ingenium within
preceding scholastic and humanist pedagogical and
natural-philosophical traditions, and highlight its hitherto
ignored social and political significance for Descartes himself as
a member of the Republic of Letters. By embedding Descartes' notion
of ingenium in contemporaneous medical, pedagogical, but also
social and literary discourses, this volume outlines the
fundamentally anthropological and ethical underpinnings of
Descartes's revolutionary epistemology. Contributors: Igor
Agostini, Roger Ariew, Harold J. Cook, Raphaele Garrod, Denis
Kambouchner, Alexander Marr, Richard Oosterhoff, David Rabouin,
Dennis L. Sepper, and Theo Verbeek.
In a "return" to Edmund Husserl and Sigmund Freud, Intimacy and the
Anxieties of Cinematic Flesh explores how we can engage these
foundational thinkers of phenomenology and psychoanalysis in an
original approach to film. The idea of the intimate spectator
caught up in anxiety is developed to investigate a range of topics
central to these critical approaches and cinema, including: flesh
as a disruptive state formed in the relationships of intimacy and
anxiety; time and the formation of cinema's enduring objects; space
and things; the sensual, the "real" and the unconscious; wildness,
disruption, and resistance; and the nightmare, reading "phantasy"
across the critical fields. Along with Husserl and Freud, other key
thinkers discussed include Edith Stein, Roman Ingarden, Maurice
Merleau-Ponty, Mikel Dufrenne in phenomenology; Melanie Klein,
Ernest Jones, Julia Kristeva, and Rosine Lefort in psychoanalysis.
Framing these issues and critical approaches is the question: how
might Husserlian phenomenology and Freudian/Lacanian
psychoanalysis, so often seen as contradistinctive, be explored
through their potential commonalities rather than differences? In
addressing such a question, this book postulates a new approach to
film through this phenomenological/psychoanalytic
reconceptualization. A wide range of films are examined not simply
as exemplars, but to test the idea that cinema itself can be a
version of critical thinking.
Julia Kristeva has revolutionized the study of modernism by
developing a theoretical approach that is uniquely attuned to the
dynamic interplay between, on the one hand, linguistic and formal
experimentation, and, on the other hand, subjective crisis and
socio-political upheaval. Inspired by the contestatory spirit of
the late 1960s in which she emerged as a theorist, Kristeva has
defended the project of the European avant-gardes and has
systematically attempted to reclaim their legacy in the new
societal structures produced by a global, spectacle-dominated
capitalism. Understanding Kristeva, Understanding Modernism brings
together essays that take up the threads in Kristeva's analyses of
the avant-garde, offering an appreciation of her overall
contribution, the intellectual and political horizon within which
she has produced her seminal works as well as of the blind spots
that need to be acknowledged in any contemporary examination of her
insights. As with other volumes in this series, this volume is
structured in three parts. The first part provides new readings of
key texts or central aspects in Kristeva's oeuvre. The second part
takes up the task of showing the impact of Kristeva's thought on
the appreciation of modernist concerns and strategies in a variety
of fields: literature, philosophy, the visual arts, and dance. The
third part is a glossary of some of Kristeva's key terms, with each
entry written by an expert contributor.
What constituted the 'private' in the eighteenth-century? In
Representing private lives of the Enlightenment authors look beyond
a simple equation of the private and the domestic to explore the
significance of the individual and its constructions of identity
and environment. Taking case studies from Russia, France, Italy and
England, specialists from a range of disciplines analyse
descriptions of the private situated largely outside the familial
context: the nobleman at the theatre or in his study, the woman in
her boudoir, portraitists and their subject, the solitary wanderer
in the public garden, the penitent at confession. This critical
approach provides a comparative framework that simultaneously
confirms the Enlightenment as a pan-European movement, both
intellectually and socially, whilst uncovering striking
counterpoints. What emerges is a unique sense of how individuals
from different classes and cultures sought to map their social and
domestic sphere, and an understanding of the permeable boundaries
separating private and public.
In Pride, Manners, and Morals: Bernard Mandeville's Anatomy of
Honour Andrea Branchi offers a reading of the Anglo-Dutch physician
and thinker's philosophical project from the hitherto neglected
perspective of his lifelong interest in the theme of honour.
Through an examination of Mandeville's anatomy of early
eighteenth-century beliefs, practices and manners in terms of
motivating passions, the book traces the development of his thought
on human nature and the origin of sociability. By making honour and
its roots in the desire for recognition the central thread of
Mandeville's theory of society, Andrea Branchi offers a unified
reading of his work and highlights his relevance as a thinker far
beyond the moral problem of commercial societies, opening up new
perspectives in Mandeville's studies.
'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.
Although discredited by seventeenth-century scientists, temperament
theory - which attributed human moods to the interaction of four
distinct bodily fluids or 'humours' - was refashioned a century
later to create a moral and physiological typology of social
classes. This revival was the work of leading physiologists of the
time, but the impact of their thinking extended far beyond medicine
to embrace the history of ideas and, in particular, the
representation of the human body in art. In this richly-illustrated
book, Tony Halliday argues that matters of artistic representation
were closely connected to medical and political discourses
throughout the later eighteenth century, especially during the
successive phases of the French Revolution. He explores the effects
of the reworked theory of humours on visual representation,
focusing on: the interaction of art and politics in debates about
the visual portrayal of the 'new citizen' Antique notions of an
ideal body and their transformation in contemporary art the concept
of a new 'muscular' temperament, and its social, political and
artistic implications the impact of certain works of art such as
Bouchardon's statue of Cupid fashioning a bow from the club of
Herculesand the unease they revealed in late eighteenth-century
Europe about the relationship of character, appearance and
occupation.
Feminist Theory After Deleuze addresses the encounter between one
of the 20th century's most important philosophers, Gilles Deleuze,
and one of its most significant political and intellectual
movements, feminism. Feminist theory is a broad, contradictory, and
still evolving school of thought. This book introduces the key
movements within feminist theory, engaging with both Anglo-American
and French feminism, as well as important strains of feminist
thought that have originated in Australia and other parts of
Europe. Mapping both the feminist critique of Deleuze's work and
the ways in which it has brought vitality to feminist theory, this
book brings Deleuze into dialogue with significant thinkers such as
Simone de Beauvoir, Rosi Braidotti, Judith Butler, Elizabeth Grosz
and Luce Irigaray. It takes key terms in feminist theory such as,
'difference', 'gender', 'bodies', 'desire' and 'politics' and
approaches them from a Deleuzian perspective.
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.
The prolific Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673) published books on
natural philosophy as well as stories, plays, poems, orations,
allegories, and letters. Her mature philosophical system offered a
unique panpsychist theory of Nature as composed of a continuous,
non-atomistic, perceiving, knowing matter. In contrast to the
dominant philosophical thinking of her day, Cavendish argued that
all matter has free will and can choose whether or not to follow
Nature's rules. The Well-Ordered Universe explores the development
of Cavendish's natural philosophy from the atomism of her 1653
poems to the panpsychist materialism of her 1668 Grounds of Natural
Philosophy. Deborah Boyle argues that her natural philosophy, her
medical theories, and her social and political philosophy are all
informed by an underlying concern with order, regularity, and
rule-following. This focus on order reveals interesting connections
among apparently disparate elements of Cavendish's philosophical
program, including her views on gender, on animals and the
environment, and on sickness and health. Focusing on the role of
order in Cavendish's philosophy also helps reveal key differences
between her natural philosophy and her more conservative social and
political philosophy. Cavendish believed that humans' special
desire for public recognition often leads to an unruly ambition,
causing humans to disrupt society in ways not seen in the rest of
Nature. Thus, The Well-Ordered Universe defends Cavendish as a
royalist who endorsed absolute monarchy and a rigid social
hierarchy for maintaining order in human society.
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.
What is given to us in conscious experience? The Given is an
attempt to answer this question and in this way contribute to a
general theory of mental content. The content of conscious
experience is understood to be absolutely everything that is given
to one, experientially, in the having of an experience. Michelle
Montague focuses on the analysis of conscious perception, conscious
emotion, and conscious thought, and deploys three fundamental
notions in addition to the fundamental notion of content: the
notions of intentionality, phenomenology, and consciousness. She
argues that all experience essentially involves all four things,
and that the key to an adequate general theory of what is given in
experience-of 'the given'-lies in giving a correct specification of
the nature of these four things and the relations between them.
Montague argues that conscious perception, conscious thought, and
conscious emotion each have a distinctive, irreducible kind of
phenomenology-what she calls 'sensory phenomenology', 'cognitive
phenomenology', and 'evaluative phenomenology' respectively-and
that these kinds of phenomenology are essential in accounting for
the intentionality of these mental phenomena.
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.
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