This book draws the philosophical contribution of Martin Heidegger together with theological-spiritual insights from the East, especially that of Nikolai Berdyaev. Thus, it brings into dialogue the West with the East, and philosophy with theology. By doing so, it offers Christian theology an existential-spiritual language that is relevant and meaningful for the contemporary reader. In particular, the work explores Heidegger's 'being towards death' (Sein zum Tode) as the basis for theological-philosophical thinking. Only the one who embraces 'being towards death' has the courage to think and poetize. This thinking, in turn, makes 'being towards death' possible, and in this circular movement of thinking and being, the mystery of being reveals itself and yet remains hidden. Since the work aims at demonstrating 'being towards death' through language, it transitions away from the common formulations and traditionally accepted ways of writing (dogmatic) theology towards an original, philosophical reflection on faith and spirituality. At different points, however, the work also retrieves the profound thoughts and theologies of the past, the insightful creativity of which cannot be denied.

The commonly held view that Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion is fideistic loses plausibility when contrasted with recent scholarship on Wittgenstein's corpus and biography. This book reevaluates the place of Wittgenstein in the philosophy of religion and charts a path forward for the subfield by advancing three themes.

Ranging from Antiquity to contemporary analytic philosophy, it provides a concise but thorough analysis of the arguments developed by some of the most outstanding philosophers of all times. Besides the aesthetics of music proper, the volume touches upon metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of language, psychology, anthropology, and scientific developments that have influenced the philosophical explanations of music. Starting from the very origins of philosophy in Western thought (Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle) the book talks about what music is according to Augustine, Descartes, Leibniz, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, the Romantics, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Susanne Langer, Bloch, Adorno, and many others. Recent developments within the analytic tradition are illustrated with particular attention to the ontology of the musical artwork and to the problem of music and emotions. A fascinating idea which recurs throughout the book is that philosophers allow for a sort of a secret kinship between music and philosophy, as means to reveal complementary aspects of truth.

This is a translation of Rossi's account of the art of memory and the logic of linkage and combination

Critical Semiotics provides long overdue answers to questions at the junction of information, meaning and 'affect'. The affective turn in cultural studies has received much attention: a focus on the pre-individual bodily forces, linked to automatic responses, which augment or diminish the body's capacity to act or engage with others. In a world dominated by information, how do things that seem to have diminished meaning or even no meaning still have so much power to affect us, or to carry on our ability to affect the world? Linguistics and semiotics have been accused of being adrift from the affective turn and not accounting for these visceral forces beneath or generally other from conscious knowing. In this book, Gary Genosko delivers a detailed refutation, with analyses of specific contributions to critical semiotic approaches to meaning and signification. People want to understand how other people are moved and to understand embodied social actions, feelings and passions at the same time as understanding how this takes place. Semiotics must make the affective turn.

This book is an autobiographical meditation on the way in which the world's population has been transformed into a society of refugees and emigres seeking -indeed, demanding- an alternative way of political belonging. Focusing on the interregnum we have precariously occupied since the end of World War II-and especially after 9/11- it constitutes a series of genealogical chapters that trace the author's journey from his experience as a prisoner of war in Nazi Germany to the horrific fire-bombing of Dresden in February 1945. In doing so, it explores his search for an intellectual vocation adequate to the dislocating epiphany he experienced in bearing witness to these traumatising events. Having subsequently lost faith in the logic of belonging perpetuated by the nation-state, Spanos charts how he began to look in the rubble of that zero zone for an alternative way of belonging: one in which the old binary -whose imperative was based on the violence of the Friend/enemy opposition- was replaced by a paradoxical loving strife that enriched rather than negated the potential of each side. The chapters in this book trace this errant vocational itinerary, from the author's early undergraduate engagement with Kierkegaard and Heidegger to Cornel West, moving from that disclosive occasion in the zero zone to this present moment.

This book presents Heidegger as a thinker of revolution. Understanding revolution as an occurrence whereby the previously unforeseeable comes to appear as inevitable, the temporal character of such an event is explored through Heidegger's discussion of temporality and historicity. Beginning with his magnum opus, Being and Time, Heidegger is shown to have undertaken a radical rethinking of time in terms of human action, understood as involving both doing and making and as implicated in an interplay of the opportune moment (kairos) and temporal continuity (chronos). Developing this theme through his key writings of the early 1930s, the book shows how Heidegger's analyses of truth and freedom led to an increasingly dialectical account of time and action culminating in his phenomenology of the - artistic and political - 'work'. A context is thus given for Heidegger's political engagement in 1933. While diagnosing the moral failure of this engagement, the book defends Heidegger's account of the time of human action and shows it to foreshadow his later thought of a 'new beginning'.

Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922) remains one of the most enigmatic works of twentieth century thought. In this bold and original new study, Ben Ware argues that Wittgenstein's early masterpiece is neither an analytic treatise on language and logic, nor a quasi-mystical work seeking to communicate 'ineffable' truths. Instead, we come to understand the Tractatus by grasping it in a twofold sense: first, as a dialectical work which invites the reader to overcome certain 'illusions of thought'; and second as a modernist work whose anti-philosophical ambition is intimately tied to its radical aesthetic character. By placing the Tractatus in the force field of modernism, Dialectic of the Ladder clears the ground for a new and challenging exploration of the work's ethical dimension. It also casts new light upon the cultural, aesthetic and political significances of Wittgenstein's writing, revealing hitherto unacknowledged affinities with a host of philosophical and literary authors, including Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Adorno, Benjamin, and Kafka.

This book develops a new Wittgenstein interpretation called Wittgenstein's Metametaphysics. The basic idea is that one major strand in Wittgenstein's early and later philosophy can be described as undermining the dichotomy between realism and idealism. The aim of this book is to contribute to a better understanding of the relation between language and reality and to open up avenues of dialogue to overcome deep divides in the research literature. In the course of developing a comprehensive and in-depth interpretation, the author provides fresh and original analyses of the latest issues in Wittgenstein scholarship and gives new answers to both major exegetical and philosophical problems. This makes the book an illuminating study for scholars and advanced students alike.

This is above all a practical book. It discusses with a wealth of illustration and insight such subjects as the organization of the intellectual worker's time, materials, and his life; the integration of knowledge and the relation of one's specialty to general knowledge; the choice and use of reading; the discipline of memory; the taking of notes, their classification and use; and the preparation and organization of the final production.

Despite Enlightenment scepticism about the supernatural, stories about spirits were regularly printed and shared throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This case-study in the transmission of a single story (of a young gunsmith near Bristol conjuring spirits, leading to his early death) reveals both how and why successive generations found meaning in such accounts. It shows the workings of an expanding national print culture, but also the continued importance of locality, oral culture and manuscript copying, especially among the newly educated. It offers an insight into the culture of Anglican clergy, spiritual autodidacts, evangelical preachers, pioneering astrologers, mesmerists and spiritualists, revealing the on-going appeal of Bible-based providentialism. Initially told as a warning-lesson against meddling with the demonic, the story also appealed to those keen to uphold the existence of spirits, and to various groups who themselves wished to communicate with spirits, while its portrayal of a doomed youth attracted sympathy.

Heidegger, Art, and Postmodernity offers a radical new interpretation of Heidegger's later philosophy, developing his argument that art can help lead humanity beyond the nihilistic ontotheology of the modern age. Providing pathbreaking readings of Heidegger's The Origin of the Work of Art and his notoriously difficult Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), this book explains precisely what postmodernity meant for Heidegger, the greatest philosophical critic of modernity, and what it could still mean for us today. Exploring these issues, Iain D. Thomson examines several postmodern works of art, including music, literature, painting, and even comic books, from a post-Heideggerian perspective. Clearly written and accessible, this book will help readers gain a deeper understanding of Heidegger and his relation to postmodern theory, popular culture, and art.

Through both an historical and philosophical analysis of the concept of possibility, we show how including both potentiality and actuality as part of the real is both compatible with experience and contributes to solving key problems of fundamental process and emergence. The book is organized into four main sections that incorporate our routes to potentiality: (1) potentiality in modern science [history and philosophy; quantum physics and complexity]; (2) Relational Realism [ontological interpretation of quantum physics; philosophy and logic]; (3) Process Physics [ontological interpretation of relativity theory; physics and philosophy]; (4) on speculative philosophy and physics [limitations and approximations; process philosophy]. We conclude that certain fundamental problems in modern physics require complementary analyses of certain philosophical and metaphysical issues, and that such scholarship reveals intrinsic features and limits of determinism, potentiality and emergence that enable, among others, important progress on the quantum theory of measurement problem and new understandings of emergence.

Over recent decades, Spinoza scholarship has significantly developed in both France and the United States, shedding new light on the work of this major philosopher. Spinoza in Twenty-First-Century American and French Philosophy systematically unites for the first time American and French Spinoza specialists in conversation with each other, illustrating the fecundity of bringing together diverse approaches to the study of Early Modern philosophy. Spinoza in Twenty-First-Century American and French Philosophy gives readers a unique opportunity to discover the most consequential and sophisticated aspects of American and French Spinoza research today. Featuring chapters by American scholars with French experts responding to these, the book is structured according to the themes of Spinoza's philosophy, including metaphysics, philosophy of mind, moral philosophy and political philosophy. The contributions consider the full range of Spinoza's philosophy, with chapters addressing not only the Ethics but his lesser-known early works and political works as well. Issues covered include Spinoza's views on substance and mode, his conception of number, his account of generosity as freedom, and many other topics.

Kevin Hermberg's book fills an important gap in previous Husserl scholarship by focusing on intersubjectivity and empathy (i.e., the experience of others as other subjects) and by addressing the related issues of validity, the degrees of evidence with which something can be experienced, and the different senses of 'objective' in Husserl's texts. Despite accusations by commentators that Husserl's is a solipsistic philosophy and that the epistemologies in Husserl's late and early works are contradictory, Hermberg shows that empathy, and thus other subjects, are related to one's knowledge on the view offered in each of Husserl's Introductions to Phenomenology. Empathy is significantly related to knowledge in at least two ways, and Husserl's epistemology might, consequently, be called a social epistemology: (a) empathy helps to give evidence for validity and thus to solidify one's knowledge, and (b) it helps to broaden one's knowledge by giving access to what others have known. These roles of empathy are not at odds with one another; rather, both are at play in each of the Introductions (if even only implicitly) and, given his position in the earlier work, Husserl needed to expand the role of empathy as he did. Such a reliance on empathy, however, calls into question whether Husserl's is a transcendental philosophy in the sense Husserl claimed.

"The World Unclaimed" argues that Heidegger's critique of modern epistemology in "Being and Time" is seriously flawed. Heidegger believes he has done away with epistemological problems concerning the external world by showing that the world is an existential structure of Dasein. However, the author argues that Heidegger fails to make good his claim that he has "rescued" the phenomenon of the world, which he believes the tradition of philosophy has bypassed. Heidegger fails not only to reclaim the world but also to acknowledge its loss. Alweiss thus calls into question Heidegger's claim that ontology is more fundamental than epistemology.
"The World Unclaimed" develops its powerful critique of Being and Time by arguing for a return to Husserl. It draws on Husserl's insight that it is the moving and sensing body that discloses how we are already familiar with the world. Kinaesthesia provides a key for understanding our relation to the world. The author thus suggests that thinkers in the vein of Husserl and Kant -who, for Heidegger, epitomize the tradition of modern philosophy by returning to a "worldless subject"- may provide us with the resources to reclaim the phenomenon of the world that "Being and Time" sets out to salvage.
Alweiss's fresh and innovative study demonstrates that it is possible to overcome epistemological skepticism without ever losing sight of the phenomenon of the world. Moreover, Alweiss challenges us to reconsider the relation between Husserl and Heidegger by providing a forceful defense of Husserl's critique of cognition.

This edited volume offers a new approach to understanding social conventions by way of Martin Heidegger. It connects the philosopher's conceptions of the anyone, everydayness, and authenticity with an analysis and critique of social normativity. Heidegger's account of the anyone is ambiguous. Some see it as a good description of human sociality, others think of it as an important critique of modern mass society. This volume seeks to understand this ambiguity as reflecting the tension between the constitutive function of conventions for human action and the critical aspects of conformism. It argues that Heidegger's anyone should neither be reduced to its pejorative nor its constitutive dimension. Rather, the concept could show how power and norms function. This volume would be of interest to scholars and students of philosophy and the social sciences who wish to investigate the social applications of the works of Martin Heidegger.

A collection of essays which explores the significance of Wittgenstein for the Philosophy of Religion. Explorations of central notions in Wittgenstein's later philosophy are brought to bear on the clash between belief and atheism; understanding religious experience; language and ritual; evil and theodicies; miracles; and the possibility of a Christian philosophy.

This book begins with an observation: At the time when empiricism arose and slowly established itself, the word itself had not yet been coined. Hence the central question of this volume: What does it mean to conduct empirical science in early modern Europe? How can we catch the elusive figure of the empiricist? Our answer focuses on the practices established by representative scholars. This approach allows us to demonstrate two things. First, that empiricism is not a monolith but exists in a plurality of forms. Today's understanding of the empirical sciences was gradually shaped by the exchanges among scholars combining different traditions, world views and experimental settings. Second, the long proclaimed antagonism between empiricism and rationalism is not the whole story. Our case studies show that a very fruitful exchange between both systems of thought occurred. It is a story of integration, appropriation and transformation more than one of mere opposition. We asked twelve authors to explore these fascinating new facets of empiricisms. The plurality of their voices mirrors the multiple faces of the concept itself. Every contribution can be understood as a piece of a much larger puzzle. Together, they help us better understand the emergence of empiricism and the inventiveness of the scientific enterprise.

This book offers a clear, analytic, and innovative interpretation of Heidegger's late work. This period of Heidegger's philosophy remains largely unexplored by analytic philosophers, who consider it filled with inconsistencies and paradoxical ideas, particularly concerning the notions of Being and nothingness. This book takes seriously the claim that the late Heidegger endorses dialetheism - namely the position according to which some contradictions are true - and shows that the idea that Being is both an entity and not an entity is neither incoherent nor logically trivial. The author achieves this by presenting and defending the idea that reality has an inconsistent structure. In doing so, he takes one of the most discussed topics in current analytic metaphysics, grounding theory, into a completely unexplored area. Additionally, in order to make sense of Heidegger's concept of nothingness, the author introduces an original axiomatic mereological system that, having a paraconsistent logic as a base logic, can tolerate inconsistencies without falling into logical triviality. This is the first book to set forth a complete and detailed discussion of the late Heidegger in the framework of analytic metaphysics. It will be of interest to Heidegger scholars and analytic philosophers working on theories of grounding, mereology, dialetheism, and paraconsistent logic.

A comprehensive and accessible overview of, and introduction to, the work of one of the twentieth century's most influential philosophers, Martin Heidegger, by one of the world's foremost Heidegger scholars. Martin Heidegger's work is pivotal in the history of modern European philosophy. The New Heidegger presents a comprehensive and stimulating overview of, and introduction to, the work of one of the most influential and controversial philosophers of our time. Heidegger has had an extraordinary impact on contemporary philosophical and extra-philosophical life: on deconstruction, hermeneutics, ontology, technology and techno-science, art and architecture, politics, psychotherapy, and ecology. The New Heidegger takes a thematic approach to Heidegger's work, covering not only the seminal Being and Time, but also Heidegger's lesser-known works. Lively, clear and succinct, the book requires no prior knowledge of Heidegger and is an essential resource for anyone studying or teaching the work of this major modern philosopher.

This book defines the relationship between the thought of Adam Smith and that of the ancients---Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and the Stoics. Vivenza offers a complete survey of all Smith's writings with the aim of illustrating how classical arguments shaped opinions and scholarship in the eighteenth century.

Williamson explains, defends, and applies Kant's theory of emotion. Looking primarily to the Anthropology and the Metaphysics of Morals, she situates Kant's theory of affect within his theory of feeling and focuses on the importance of moral feelings and the moral evaluation of our emotions.