Belief and credal commitment sometimes seem to make less and less sense in the West. A kind of 'cultural amnesia' has taken hold, where formal religious adherence begins to seem almost unthinkable. This is especially so for the idea of divine revelation. Robyn Horner argues this means we need to re-evaluate how theology proceeds, focusing not so much on beliefs but on experience. Exploring ways in which the experiential might open human beings up to divine possibility, the author turns to phenomenology (especially in the French philosophical tradition) because it seeks to examine unrestrictedly what is given through involved encounter. Bringing phenomenology and poststructuralism together, Horner develops the idea of revelation as an 'event' wherein God interrupts and exceeds human experience, affecting and transforming it. This striking concept, named but largely unexplored by theology, articulates a notion of supernatural revelation which now starts to appear both coherent and plausible.

CONTENTS An Editor's Introduction INTRODUCTORY CHRONOLOGICAL OVERVIEW HEIDEGGER'S ACADEMIC CAREER 1909-1930 A. Background (1889-1930) B. Lehrveranstaltungen/University Education and Teaching (1909-1930) C. Heidegger's Early Occasional Writings: A Chronological Bibliography PART I: STUDENT YEARS 1. Curricula Vitae 2. Two Essays for The Academician o Authority and Freedom (1910) o On a Philosophical Orientation for Academics (1911) 3. The Problem of Reality in Modern Philosophy (1912) 4. Recent Research in Logic (October-December 1912) 5. Meakirch's Triduum: A Three-day Meditation on the War (January 1915) 6. Question and Judgment (July 1915) 7. The Concept of Time in the Science of History (July 1915) 8. The Doctrine of Categories and Meaning in Duns Scotus (1915): Supplements o Author's Notice (1917) o Conclusion: The Problem of Categories (1916) 9. On Schleiermacher's Second Speech "On the Essence of Religion" (1917) PART II: EARLY FREIBURG PERIOD 10. Letter to Engelbert Krebs on his Philosophical Conversion (1919) 11. Letter to Karl Lowith on his Philosophical Identity (1921) 12. Vita, with an Accompanying Letter to Georg Misch (June 1922) 13. Critical Comments on Karl Jaspers' Psychology of Worldviews (1920) 14. Phenomenological Interpretations with Respect to Aristotle: Indication of the Hermeneutical Situation (1922) PART III: THE MARBURG PERIOD 15. The Problem of Sin in Luther (February 1924) 16. The Concept of Time (July 1924) 17. Being-There and Being-True According to Aristotle (December 1924) 18. Wilhelm Dilthey's Research and the Current Struggle for a Historical Worldview (Kassel Lectures, April 1925) 19. On the Essence of Truth, Pentecost Monday (May 24, 1926) 20. Letter Exchange with Karl Lowith on Being and Time (August 1927) 21. "Phenomenology," Draft B (of the Encyclopaedia Britannica Article), with Heidegger's Letter to Husserl (October 1927) 22. "Heidegger, Martin": Lexicon Article Attributed to Rudolf Bultmann (1927-1928) APPENDICES: SUPPLEMENTS BY HEIDEGGER'S CONTEMPORARIES Appendix I: Academic Evaluations of Heidegger by his Teachers and Peers A. Evaluation of Martin Heidegger's Dissertation by Arthur Schneider (July 1913) B. Evaluation of Dr. Heidegger's Habilitation by Heinrich Rickert (July 1915) C. Nomination for Associate Professor at Gottingen (November 1922) D. Nomination for Associate Professor at Marburg (December 1922) E. Nomination for Professor at Marburg (August 1925) F. Nomination for Husserl's Chair at Freiburg (February 1928) Appendix II: Husserl and Heidegger A. Their Correspondence to and about Each Other (1914-1934) B. "For Edmund Husserl on his Seventieth Birthday" (April 8, 1929) Appendix III: Karl Lowith's Impressions of Husserl and Heidegger, 1926-1927 Annotated Glossary Bibliography of GA-Editions of the Lecture Courses Select Secondary Bibliography

Includes summary but substantial accounts of the thought of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Jaspers, Marcel, Heidegger and Sartre, and a concluding essay that attempts to interpret the whole Existentialist movement.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203046676

"Hugh Pyper's contribution to the study of Kierkegaard is exceptional This is a book to read and re-read many times, and will be welcomed by students, teachers, and researchers at all levels." - George Pattison, University of Oxford "Kierkegaard had an intimate familiarity with the Biblical writings and the Bible is everywhere written into his authorship. Hugh Pyper's book aims to make this point manifest. He argues provocatively and persuasively that Kierkegaard's philosophical and ethical thought is the result of his confrontation with Biblical texts and that the entire authorship points toward the scandalous but life-enhancing good news proclaimed in the Bible." - Niels Jorgen Cappelorn, Sen Kierkegaard Research Centre Foundation, Copenhagen "Hugh Pyper has been taking notes on Kierkegaard for decades. Rigorously argued and elegantly written, this is a book that both the Kierkegaard scholar and novice will want to absorb." - Gordon Marino, St Olaf College, Minnesota "Pyper's offering is often as imaginative, profound and, at times, as refreshingly bizarre as Kierkegaard himself." - Liverpool Hope Theological Book Review In contrast to the popular image of Kierkegaard as the gloomy Dane, these essays argue that joy is at the heart of Kierkegaards enterprise. He is in the true sense an evangelist, seeking to bring the joy of the truth of Christianity to those who persist in misunderstanding it as either a moral code or as one philosophical option. A central tenet of this book is that Kierkegaards most original thought arises from his struggle with biblical passages that he found puzzling or offensive. The seminal psychology of belief and doubt in his work is born out of his attempt to comprehend the exceptional experiences of biblical characters. His understanding of his own authorship is also founded on biblical models. The Joy of Kierkegaard contains previously unpublished work as well as making available in a convenient form scattered published essays. Described by George Pattison, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford University, as fiercely original and, often pointedly, humorous, the essays draw on the expertise of a biblical scholar to convey the joy to be found in reading Kierkegaard, as well as the joy which underpins Kierkegaards profound explorations of spiritual alienation.

"Hugh Pyper's contribution to the study of Kierkegaard is exceptional This is a book to read and re-read many times, and will be welcomed by students, teachers, and researchers at all levels." - George Pattison, University of Oxford "Kierkegaard had an intimate familiarity with the Biblical writings and the Bible is everywhere written into his authorship. Hugh Pyper's book aims to make this point manifest. He argues provocatively and persuasively that Kierkegaard's philosophical and ethical thought is the result of his confrontation with Biblical texts and that the entire authorship points toward the scandalous but life-enhancing good news proclaimed in the Bible." - Niels Jorgen Cappelorn, Sen Kierkegaard Research Centre Foundation, Copenhagen "Hugh Pyper has been taking notes on Kierkegaard for decades. Rigorously argued and elegantly written, this is a book that both the Kierkegaard scholar and novice will want to absorb." - Gordon Marino, St Olaf College, Minnesota "Pyper's offering is often as imaginative, profound and, at times, as refreshingly bizarre as Kierkegaard himself." - Liverpool Hope Theological Book Review In contrast to the popular image of Kierkegaard as the gloomy Dane, these essays argue that joy is at the heart of Kierkegaards enterprise. He is in the true sense an evangelist, seeking to bring the joy of the truth of Christianity to those who persist in misunderstanding it as either a moral code or as one philosophical option. A central tenet of this book is that Kierkegaards most original thought arises from his struggle with biblical passages that he found puzzling or offensive. The seminal psychology of belief and doubt in his work is born out of his attempt to comprehend the exceptional experiences of biblical characters. His understanding of his own authorship is also founded on biblical models. The Joy of Kierkegaard contains previously unpublished work as well as making available in a convenient form scattered published essays. Described by George Pattison, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford University, as fiercely original and, often pointedly, humorous, the essays draw on the expertise of a biblical scholar to convey the joy to be found in reading Kierkegaard, as well as the joy which underpins Kierkegaards profound explorations of spiritual alienation.

'Not to be born is undoubtedly the best plan of all. Unfortunately it is within no one's reach.' In The Trouble With Being Born, E. M. Cioran grapples with the major questions of human existence: birth, death, God, the passing of time, how to relate to others and how to make ourselves get out of bed in the morning. In a series of interlinking aphorisms which are at once pessimistic, poetic and extremely funny, Cioran finds a kind of joy in his own despair, revelling in the absurdity and futility of our existence, and our inability to live in the world. Translated by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and critic Richard Howard, The Trouble With Being Born is a provocative, illuminating testament to a singular mind.

"The Philosophy of Heidegger" is a readable and reliable overview of Heidegger's thought, suitable both for beginners and advanced students. A striking and refreshing feature of the work is how free it is from the jargon and standard idioms of academic philosophical writing. Written in straightforward English, with many illustrations and concrete examples, this book provides a very accessible introduction to such key Heideggerian notions as in/authenticity, falling, throwness, moods, temporality, earth, world, enframing, etc. Organized under clear, no-nonsense headings, Watt's exposition avoids complicated involvement with the secondary literature, or with wider philosophical debates, which gives his writing a fresh, immediate character. Ranging widely across Heidegger's numerous writings, this book displays an impressively thorough knowledge of his corpus, navigating the difficult relationship between earlier and later Heidegger texts, and giving the reader a strong sense of the basic motives and overall continuity of Heidegger's thought.

"Experience" is a thoroughly political category, a social and historical product not authored by any individual. At the same time, "the personal is political," and one's own lived experience is an important epistemic resource. In Anaesthetics of Existence Cressida J. Heyes reconciles these two positions, drawing on examples of things that happen to us but are nonetheless excluded from experience. If for Foucault an "aesthetics of existence" was a project of making one's life a work of art, Heyes's "anaesthetics of existence" describes antiprojects that are tacitly excluded from life-but should be brought back in. Drawing on critical phenomenology, genealogy, and feminist theory, Heyes shows how and why experience has edges, and she analyzes phenomena that press against those edges. Essays on sexual violence against unconscious victims, the temporality of drug use, and childbirth as a limit-experience build a politics of experience while showcasing Heyes's much-needed new philosophical method.

The contextual contributions to meaning are at the core of the debate about the semantics/pragmatics distinction, one of the liveliest topics in current philosophy of language and linguistics. The controversy between semantic minimalists and contextualists regarding context and semantic content is a conspicuous example of the debate's relevance. This collection of essays, written by leading philosophers as well as talented young researchers, offers new approaches to the ongoing discussion about the status of lexical meaning and the role of context dependence in linguistic theorizing. It covers a broad range of issues in semantics and pragmatics such as presuppositions, reference, lexical meaning, discourse relations and information structure, negation, and metaphors. The book is an essential reading for philosophers, linguists, and graduate students of philosophy of language and linguistics.

Phenomenology and the Late Twentieth-Century American Long Poem reads major figures including Charles Olson, Lyn Hejinian, Nathaniel Mackey, Susan Howe and Rachel Blau DuPlessis within a new approach to the long poem tradition. Through a series of contextualised close readings, it explores the ways in which American poets developed their poetic forms by engaging with a variety of European phenomenologists, including Hannah Arendt, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. Consolidating recent materials on the role of Continental Philosophy in American poetics, this book explores the theoretical and historical contexts in which avant-garde poets have developed radically new methods of making poems long. Matthew Carbery offers a timely commentary on a number of major works of American poetry whilst providing ground-breaking research into the wider philosophical context of late twentieth-century poetic experimentation.

We need a new philosophy of the earth. Geological time used to refer to slow and gradual processes, but today we are watching land sink into the sea and forests transform into deserts. We can even see the creation of new geological strata made of plastic, chicken bones, and other waste that could remain in the fossil record for millennia or longer. Crafting a philosophy of geology that rewrites natural and human history from the broader perspective of movement, Thomas Nail provides a new materialist, kinetic ethics of the earth that speaks to this moment. Climate change and other ecological disruptions challenge us to reconsider the deep history of minerals, atmosphere, plants, and animals and to take a more process-oriented perspective that sees humanity as part of the larger cosmic and terrestrial drama of mobility and flow. Building on his earlier work on the philosophy of movement, Nail argues that we should shift our biocentric emphasis from conservation to expenditure, flux, and planetary diversity. Theory of the Earth urges us to rethink our ethical relationship to one another, the planet, and the cosmos at large.

Since Heidegger, it has become something of an unquestioned presupposition to analyse the structure and essence of selfhood from the perspective of being-in-the-world. However, in this original work, Steven DeLay, using a wide breadth of philosophical sources, articulates a view of selfhood which emphasizes humanity's ineluctable experience before-God. The work presents an original view of the relationship between philosophy and theology, namely that there is no distinction between the two.

Biko Mandela Gray and Ryan J. Johnson study the relationship between Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and Black Thought from Frederick Douglass to Angela Davis.This staging of an elongated dialectical parallelism between Hegel's classic text and major 19th- and 20th-century Black thinkers explodes the western canon of philosophy. Gray and Johnson show that Hegel's abstract dialectic is transformed and critiqued when put into conversation with the lived dialectics of Black Thought: from Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs through to Malcolm X and Angela Davis.While Hegel articulates the dynamic logics that we see in these Black thinkers, when they are placed in parallel and considered together, the whiteness, both explicit and implicit, of Hegelianism itself is revealed. Forcing Hegelianism into the embodied history of Black Thought reveals a phenomenology of America whose spirit is Black.

This book proposes another unique basis for the origins of religion from disturbances in brain function. It proposes the novel idea that near-death and out-of-body experiences (ND/OBE) engendered "a sense of the divine" in ancient man. As the author points out, key aspects of ND/OBE are thematic of all later established religions. These include journeys to heaven, sightings of brightly-lit godlike figures, and dead people now alive. Thus, ND/OBE could be the originating source of these spiritual motifs. To this, the author adds a fourth factor: various brain influences contribute to or modulate ND/OBE. Such cognate neurological disorders include REM-sleep intrusions, sleep paralysis, narcolepsy, and the Guillain-Barre syndrome. Errors due to aberrant switching between key neural control centers disrupt critical state-boundaries between consciousness and dreaming. This may induce NDE. Thus, in this state, subjects temporarily fail to understand where they are, undergo loss of self, and detached from the world. They imagine a "union with Gods." Here, then, is the biological basis of ineffability. Ancient humans gained beliefs about the "supernatural" through day-to-day existence. This book argues that near death experiences and cognate neurological conditions, some genetically-determined, could have facilitated, even augmented such beliefs. Hence, in configuring another realm of "spiritual" experience beyond the known environment, these neurological possibilities offer effective traction.

CONTENTS David Vessey: Who was Gadamer's Husserl? Daniel Dahlstrom: The Intentionality of Passive Experience: Husserl and a Contemporary Debate Ulrich Melle: The Enigma of Expression: Husserl's Doctrines of Sign and Expression in the Manuscripts for the Revision of the VIth Logical Investigation John Noras: A Reconsideration of Husserl's Notion of Transcendental Reflection from a Merleau-Pontian Perspective Rochus Sowa: Essences and Eidetic Laws in Edmund Husserl's Descriptive Eidetics Kevin Aho: Logos and the Poverty of Animals: Rethinking Heidegger's Humanism Joeseph Schear: Judgment and Ontology in Heidgger's Phenomenology Ivo De Gennaro: Why Being Itself and not just Being? Joe Sachs: An Informal Talk about Forms Texts and Documents Gerhard Kruger: The Origin of Philosophical Self-Consciousness (1933) Oskar Becker: The Diairetic Generation of Platonic Ideal Numbers (1934) Jacob Klein: Plato's Republic (1967) Dorion Cairns: Some Applications of Husserl's Theory of Sense-Transfer In Review James Despres: Walter Brogan, Heidegger and Aristotle: The Twofoldness of Being

This book is an investigation of the role of creative labor and the five senses in Rainer Maria Rilke's prose works, including his "Primal Sound" essay, the Stories of God, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, and his monograph on Auguste Rodin. It is about several protagonists' quest to achieve creative labor by reconnecting spirit or the unconscious to the hand. There are many difficulties in the way, however, illustrated by Rilke's essays, tales, and monographs. In the process of overcoming these impediments, the five senses are expanded and refined. Rilke's characters undergo a transformation that not only allows them to do true creative labor, but also brings them into a new relationship with themselves, the world around them and other people. Nicholas Carroll Reynolds received his PhD at the University of Oregon, USA. He has authored several articles on philosophy and literature, and has worked as an editor and translator. He is currently employed at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, USA, where he teaches in the German, Philosophy, and First Year Experience programs, as well as in Trinity's Study abroad program in Berlin, Germany.

In From Spinoza to Levinas, Ze'ev Levy discusses the pivotal ideas of the most influential Jewish thinkers in modern times including Spinoza, Mendelssohn, and Levinas. Levy accounts for the political foundation of the philosophies of Spinoza and Mendelssohn and the role of hermeneutics in the writings of Spinoza and Maimonides. He traces the history of modern philosophical and biblical hermeneutics and considers issues pertaining to death and dying in light of traditional Jewish and contemporary concepts of the body and soul. Finally, Levy focuses on the thought of Emmanuel Levinas, arguably one of the most important Jewish philosophers in the second half of the twentieth century. By articulating and responding to contemporary ethical and political challenges and dilemmas, Levy succeeds in contributing to the rich legacy of Jewish thought.

CONTENTS John J. Drummond: Moral Self-Identity and Identifying with Others Claudio Majolino: Husserl and the Vicissitudes of the Improper Rajiv Kaushik: Affectivity and Religious Experience: Husserl's "God" in the Unpublished Manuscripts Javier Carreno: On the Temporality of Images according to Husserl Filip Mattens: Body or Eye: A Matter of Sense and Organ Renaud Barbaras: Life and Phenomenality Sylvain Camilleri: A Phenomenology of Death in the Second Person Pierre Adler: Situating Frege's Look into Language Gian-Carlo Rota: Lectures on Being and Time (1998) Gottlob Frege: On the Correspondence of Leibniz and Huygens with Papin (1881) Dermot Moran and Lukas Steinacher: Introduction to Husserl's Letter to Levy-Bruhl Edmund Husserl: Letter to Lucien Levy-Bruhl (1935)

This volume aims to contextualize the development and reception of Husserl's transcendental-phenomenological idealism by placing him in dialogue with his most important interlocutors - his mentors, peers, and students. Husserl's "turn" to idealism and the ensuing reaction to Ideas I resulted in a schism between the early members of the phenomenological movement. The division between the realist and the transcendental phenomenologists is often portrayed as a sharp one, with the realists naively and dogmatically rejecting all of Husserl's written work after the Logical Investigations. However, this understanding of the trajectory of the phenomenological movement ignores the extensive and intricate contours of the idealism-realism debate. In addition to helping us better interpret Husserl's attempts to defend his idealism, reconsidering the idealism-realism debate elucidates the relationship and differences between Husserl's phenomenology and the broader landscape of early 20th century German philosophy, particularly the Munich phenomenologists and the Neo-Kantians. The contributions to this volume reconsider many of the early interpretations and critiques of Husserl, inviting readers to assess the merits of the arguments put forward by his critics while also shedding new light on their so-called "misunderstandings" of his idealism. This text should be of interest to researchers working in the history of phenomenology and Husserlian studies.

Existentialisms arise when the foundations of being, such as meaning, morals, and purpose come under assault. In the first-wave of existentialism, writings typified by Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche concerned the increasingly apparent inability of religion, and religious tradition, to support a foundation of being. Second-wave existentialism, personified philosophically by Sartre, Camus, and de Beauvoir, developed in response to similar realizations about the overly optimistic Enlightenment vision of reason and the common good. The third-wave of existentialism, a new existentialism, developed in response to advances in the neurosciences that threaten the last vestiges of an immaterial soul or self. Given the increasing explanatory and therapeutic power of neuroscience, the mind no longer stands apart from the world to serve as a foundation of meaning. This produces foundational anxiety. In Neuroexistentialism, a group of contributors that includes some of the world's leading philosophers, neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, and legal scholars, explores the anxiety caused by third-wave existentialism and possible responses to it. Together, these essays tackle our neuroexistentialist predicament, and explore what the mind sciences can tell us about morality, love, emotion, autonomy, consciousness, selfhood, free will, moral responsibility, law, the nature of criminal punishment, meaning in life, and purpose.

This textbook introduces you to existentialist philosophical theory and its cultural influence. The first part of the book offers an introductory overview of the 19th century historical roots of existentialist thought and chapters on all the key players: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Camus. The second part presents a thematic approach, with chapters on Christian and Jewish existentialism, existentialism in America, existential psychology and existentialism in the cinema. Ideal for undergraduate and classroom use, this engaging and accessible textbook includes pedagogical features, such as study questions, chapter summaries, key definitions and further reading.

Phenomenology: The Basics is a concise and engaging introduction to one of the dominant philosophical movements of the 20th century. This lively and lucid book provides an introduction to the essential phenomenological concepts that are crucial for understanding great thinkers such as Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. Written by a leading expert in the field, Dan Zahavi examines and explains key questions such as: What is a phenomenological analysis? What are the methodological foundations of phenomenology? What does phenomenology have to say about embodiment and intersubjectivity? How is phenomenology distinguished from, and related to, other fields in philosophy? How do ideas from classic phenomenology relate to ongoing debates in psychology and qualitative research? With a glossary of key terms and suggestions for further reading, the book considers key philosophical arguments around phenomenology, making this an ideal starting point for anyone seeking a concise and accessible introduction to the rich and complex study of phenomenology.

This volume examines the complex dialogue between German Idealism and phenomenology, two of the most important movements in Western philosophy. Twenty-four newly authored chapters by an international group of well-known scholars examine the shared concerns of these two movements; explore how phenomenologists engage with, challenge, and critique central concepts in German Idealism; and argue for the continuing significance of these ideas in contemporary philosophy and other disciplines. Chapters cover not only the work of major figures such as Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, but a wide range of philosophers who build on the phenomenological tradition, including Fanon, Gadamer, and Levinas. These essays highlight key themes of the nature of subjectivity, the role of intersubjectivity, the implications for ethics and aesthetics, the impact of time and history, and our capacities for knowledge and understanding. Key features: * Critically engages two of the major philosophical movements of the last 250 years * Draws on the insights of those movements to address contemporary issues in ethics, theory of knowledge, and political philosophy * Expands the range of idealist and phenomenological themes by considering them in the context of gender, postcolonial theory, and environmental concerns, as well as their global reach * Includes new contributions from prominent, international scholars in these fields This Handbook is essential reading for all scholars and advanced students of phenomenology and German Idealism. With chapters on Beauvoir, Sartre, Scheler, Schutz, Stein, and Ricoeur, The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Phenomenology is also ideal for scholars researching these important figures in the history of philosophy.