This is an original reading of Mikhail Bakhtin in the context of Western philosophical traditions and counter-traditions. The book portrays Bakhtin as a Modernist thinker torn between an ideological secularity and a profound religious sensibility, invariably concerned with questions of ethics and impelled to turn from philosophy to literature as another way of knowing.
Most major studies of Bakhtin highlight the fragmented and apparently discontinuous nature of his work. Erdinast-Vulcan emphasizes, instead, the underlying coherence of the Bakhtinian project, reading its inherent ambivalences as an intersection of philosophical, literary, and psychological insights into the dynamics of embodied subjectivity. Bakhtin's turn to literature and poetry, as well as the dissatisfactions that motivated it, align him with three other "exilic" Continental philosophers who were his contemporaries: Bergson, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas. Adopting Bakhtin's own open-ended approach to the human sciences, the book stages a series of philosophical encounters between these thinkers, highlighting their respective itineraries and impasses, and generating a Bakhtinian synergy of ideas.

This is an original reading of Mikhail Bakhtin in the context of Western philosophical traditions and counter-traditions. The book portrays Bakhtin as a Modernist thinker torn between an ideological secularity and a profound religious sensibility, invariably concerned with questions of ethics and impelled to turn from philosophy to literature as another way of knowing.
Most major studies of Bakhtin highlight the fragmented and apparently discontinuous nature of his work. Erdinast-Vulcan emphasizes, instead, the underlying coherence of the Bakhtinian project, reading its inherent ambivalences as an intersection of philosophical, literary, and psychological insights into the dynamics of embodied subjectivity. Bakhtin's turn to literature and poetry, as well as the dissatisfactions that motivated it, align him with three other "exilic" Continental philosophers who were his contemporaries: Bergson, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas. Adopting Bakhtin's own open-ended approach to the human sciences, the book stages a series of philosophical encounters between these thinkers, highlighting their respective itineraries and impasses, and generating a Bakhtinian synergy of ideas.

The Psychoanalysis of the Absurd offers an interdisciplinary study of Existentialism and Phenomenology and their importance to the clinical work of Contemporary Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. The concept of Absurdity, developed by Camus, has never been applied to the therapeutic situation or directly contrasted with its antithesis; the search for personal meaning. The book begins with narrative accounts of the historical development of Psychoanalysis, Existentialism and Phenomenology in 20th century Europe. The focus here is on fin de siecle Vienna and Paris between the Wars as the principal incubators of the two disciplines. Accompanied by composite case illustrations, Leffert then explores his own development of the Psychoanalysis of the Absurd, drawing on the work of Camus, Heidegger and Sartre. Absurdity is first discussed in relation to the Bio-Psycho-Social Self and Dasein is posited as a bridge concept, with personal meaning as the antithesis to Absurdity, before being discussed in relation to the world and how it impinges on self. A final chapter attempts to tie together particular issues raised by the book: Subjective well-being, Meaning, thrownness, Absurdity, Death and Death Anxiety and how we have become technologically enhanced human beings. Existential psychotherapy and psychoanalysis have, until now, largely gone their own way: the goal of this book is to fold them back into Contemporary Psychoanalysis. Establishing that the concept of Absurdity is of singular clinical importance to both diagnosis and therapeutic action, this book will be of great interest to clinicians, philosophers, and interdisciplinary scientists.

The Psychoanalysis of the Absurd offers an interdisciplinary study of Existentialism and Phenomenology and their importance to the clinical work of Contemporary Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. The concept of Absurdity, developed by Camus, has never been applied to the therapeutic situation or directly contrasted with its antithesis; the search for personal meaning. The book begins with narrative accounts of the historical development of Psychoanalysis, Existentialism and Phenomenology in 20th century Europe. The focus here is on fin de siecle Vienna and Paris between the Wars as the principal incubators of the two disciplines. Accompanied by composite case illustrations, Leffert then explores his own development of the Psychoanalysis of the Absurd, drawing on the work of Camus, Heidegger and Sartre. Absurdity is first discussed in relation to the Bio-Psycho-Social Self and Dasein is posited as a bridge concept, with personal meaning as the antithesis to Absurdity, before being discussed in relation to the world and how it impinges on self. A final chapter attempts to tie together particular issues raised by the book: Subjective well-being, Meaning, thrownness, Absurdity, Death and Death Anxiety and how we have become technologically enhanced human beings. Existential psychotherapy and psychoanalysis have, until now, largely gone their own way: the goal of this book is to fold them back into Contemporary Psychoanalysis. Establishing that the concept of Absurdity is of singular clinical importance to both diagnosis and therapeutic action, this book will be of great interest to clinicians, philosophers, and interdisciplinary scientists.

Who is Socrates? While most readers know him as the central figure in Plato's work, he is hard to characterize. In this book, S. Montgomery Ewegen opens this long-standing and difficult question once again. Reading Socrates against a number of Platonic texts, Ewegen sets out to understand the way of Socrates. Taking on the nuances and contours of the Socrates that emerges from the dramatic and philosophical contexts of Plato's works, Ewegen considers questions of withdrawal, retreat, powerlessness, poverty, concealment, and release and how they construct a new view of Socrates. For Ewegen, Socrates is a powerful but strange and uncanny figure. Ewegen's withdrawn Socrates forever evades rigid interpretation and must instead remain a deep and insoluble question.

This volume of new essays explores the relationship between the thought of Wittgenstein and the key figures of phenomenology: Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre. It is the first book to provide an overview of how Wittgenstein's philosophy in its different phases, including his own so-called phenomenological phase, relates to the variety of phenomenological approaches developed in continental Europe. In so doing, the volume seeks to throw light on both sides of the comparison, and to clarify more broadly the relations between analytic and phenomenological philosophy. However, rather than treating the interpretation of either phenomenological philosophy or Wittgenstein as an already settled issue, several chapters in the volume examine and question received views regarding them, and develop alternatives to such views. Wittgenstein and Phenomenology will be of interest to scholars working in philosophical methodology and metaphilosophy, the philosophy of mind, philosophy of language and logic, and ethics.

The turn of the twentieth century witnessed the birth of two distinct philosophical schools in Europe: analytic philosophy and phenomenology. The history of 20th-century philosophy is often written as an account of the development of one or both of these schools, as well as their overt or covert mutual hostility. What is often left out of this history, however, is the relationship between the two European schools and a third significant philosophical event: the birth and development of pragmatism, the indigenous philosophical movement of the United States. Through a careful analysis of seminal figures and central texts, this book explores the mutual intellectual influences, convergences, and differences between these three revolutionary philosophical traditions. The essays in this volume aim to show the central role that pragmatism played in the development of philosophical thought at the turn of the twentieth century, widen our understanding of a seminal point in the history of philosophy, and shed light on the ways in which these three schools of thought continue to shape the theoretical agenda of contemporary philosophy.

A battle over the politics (and philosophy) of time is a major part of what is at stake in the differences between three competing currents of contemporary philosophy: analytic philosophy, post-structuralist philosophy, and phenomenological philosophy. Avowed or tacit philosophies of time define representatives of each of these groups and also guard against their potential interlocutors. However, by bringing the temporal differences between these philosophical trajectories to the fore, and showing both their methodological presuppositions and their ethico-political implications, this book begins a long overdue dialogue on their respective strengths and weaknesses. It argues that there are systemic temporal problems (chronopathologies) that afflict each, but especially the post-structuralist tradition (focusing on Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida and their prophetic future politics) and the analytic tradition (focusing on John Rawls and philosophical methodology in general, particularly the tendency to oscillate between forms of atemporality and intuition-oriented "presentism"). What is required is a "middle-way" that does not treat the living-present and the pragmatic temporality associated with bodily coping as an epiphenomenon to be explained away as either a transcendental illusion (and as a reactive force that is ethically problematic), or as a subjective/psychological experience that is not ultimately real.

During its century-long unfolding, spreading in numerous directions, Husserlian phenomenology while loosening inner articulations, has nevertheless maintained a somewhat consistent profile. As we see in this collection, the numerous conceptions and theories advanced in the various phases of reinterpretations have remained identifiable with phenomenology.

What conveys this consistency in virtue of which innumerable types of inquiry-scientific, social, artistic, literary may consider themselves phenomenological?

Is it not the quintessence of the phenomenological quest, namely our seeking to reach the very foundations of reality at all its constitutive levels by pursuing its logos? Inquiring into the logos of the phenomenological quest we discover, indeed, all the main constitutive spheres of reality and of the human subject involved in it, and concurrently, the logos itself comes to light in the radiation of its force (Tymieniecka).

Who is Socrates? While most readers know him as the central figure in Plato's work, he is hard to characterize. In this book, S. Montgomery Ewegen opens this long-standing and difficult question once again. Reading Socrates against a number of Platonic texts, Ewegen sets out to understand the way of Socrates. Taking on the nuances and contours of the Socrates that emerges from the dramatic and philosophical contexts of Plato's works, Ewegen considers questions of withdrawal, retreat, powerlessness, poverty, concealment, and release and how they construct a new view of Socrates. For Ewegen, Socrates is a powerful but strange and uncanny figure. Ewegen's withdrawn Socrates forever evades rigid interpretation and must instead remain a deep and insoluble question.

Changing Art into Research: Soliloquy Methodology presents a research methodology that enables inquiry into one's personal experiences in an endeavour to reveal essential commonalities of human experience. Arts-informed research methods are becoming increasingly popular with scholars in Arts, Education and the Social Sciences, but there is often confusion about how to turn arts practice into rigorous inquiry. This book examines the theoretical perspectives needed to inform these research approaches, which are often missing in methods teaching and research. Soliloquy is a new methodology that interprets and applies Husserl's philosophical concept of Transcendental Phenomenology. It marries together the synthesizing powers of the unconscious mind with the analytical capacities of conscious cognition and articulation. It further explores the possibility that both cognitive and intuitive ways of knowing are valid and appropriate for academic inquiry, provided these methods are aligned through a philosophically consistent, theoretical framework. This book will be of great interest to academics and postgraduate students engaged in arts-based qualitative research and those doing an arts-based practice dissertation.

This book, first published in 1987, is a study of the development of Sartre's political thought from the late 1920s to the liberation of France in 1944, concentrating particularly upon his concept of freedom. It is argued that the evolution of Sartre's thinking can be regarded as constituting a series of problematics each of which has a corresponding notion of freedom, and these problematics are elucidated in turn.

This book, first published in 1987, is an extended examination of Merleau-Ponty's political philosophy. It describes and critically elucidates the main political themes to be found in his writings, and shows how his political ideas are related to his general phenomenological philosophy.

Classic Writings for a Phenomenology of Practice features examples of newly translated classic phenomenological texts that have been largely forgotten or misunderstood. The writings are unique in that they speak to the practice of doing phenomenological research for the purpose of gaining insights and better understandings regarding aspects of professional practice and ordinary life phenomena and events. Phenomenology does not have to be impenetrable philosophy, dealing with tedious technical issues. Instead, phenomenology may offer relevance, value, and enduring allure to readers and researchers who are engaged with the quotidian life experiences and events of students, patients, clients, friends, and other individuals. This phenomenological approach aims to stay as close as possible to the ordinary events of everyday life: seeing the first smile of a child, feeling compulsive, being humorous, having a conversation, experiencing childhood secrecy, encountering new things-topics that span a manifold of life experiences. In this collection of classic phenomenological writings, each author is thoughtfully introduced, and each text is followed by a conversational descant: a reflection on the phenomenological reflection. The presentation of these classic writings and their reflections aims to show us what it means to do phenomenology directly on the phenomena that we live-thus asking us to be attentive to the fascinating varieties and subtleties of primal lived experiences and consciousness in all its remarkable complexities. This book is relevant for scholars and students who are interested in human science research and the origins and practices of the phenomenological method.

In his late work Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Immanuel Kant struggles to answer a straightforward, yet surprisingly difficult, question: how is radical conversion-a complete reorientation of a person's most deeply held values-possible? In this book, Ryan S. Kemp and Christopher Iacovetti examine how this question gets taken up by Kant's philosophical heirs: Schelling, Fichte, Hegel and Kierkegaard. More than simply developing a novel account of each thinker's position, Kemp and Iacovetti trace how each philosopher formulates his theory in response to tensions in preceding views, culminating in Kierkegaard's claim that radical conversion lies outside a person's control. Kemp and Iacovetti close by examining some of the moral-psychological implications of Kierkegaard's account, particularly the question of how someone might responsibly relate to values that have, by their own admission, been acquired in contingent and accidental fashion.

At the time when existentialism was a dominant intellectual and cultural force, a number of commentators observed that some of the language of existential philosophy, not least its interpretation of human existence in terms of nothingness, evoked the language of so-called mystical writers. This book takes on this observation and explores the evidence for the influence of mysticism on the philosophy of existentialism. It begins by delving into definitions of mysticism and existentialism, and then traces the elements of mysticism present in German and French thought during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The book goes on to make original contributions to the study of figures including Kierkegaard, Buber, Heidegger, Beauvoir, Sartre, Marcel, Camus, Weil, Bataille, Berdyaev, and Tillich, linking their existentialist philosophy back to some of the key concerns of the mystical tradition. Providing a unique insight into how these two areas have overlapped and interacted, this study is vital reading for any academic with an interest in twentieth-century philosophy, theology and religious studies.

In this volume, Baz offers a wide-ranging discussion of Wittgenstein's remarks on aspect-perception, with special focus on Wittgenstein's method. Baz starts out with an interpretation of Wittgenstein's remarks on aspects and continues with attempts to characterize and defend Wittgenstein's approach to the understanding and dissolution of philosophical difficulties. Baz ends with attempts to articulate-under the inspiration of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology-certain dissatisfactions, both with Wittgenstein's remarks on aspect perception, and with his philosophical approach more generally. On the way, Baz explores connections between Wittgenstein's remarks on aspects and Kant's aesthetics. He examines ways in which the remarks on aspects may be brought to bear on contemporary philosophical work on perception. He discusses some of the implications of Wittgenstein's work on aspect perception for issues in moral philosophy and the philosophy of action.

The central task of phenomenology is to investigate the nature of consciousness and its relations to objects of various types. The present book introduces students and other readers to several foundational topics of phenomenological inquiry, and illustrates phenomenology's contemporary relevance. The main topics include consciousness, intentionality, perception, meaning, and knowledge. The book also contains critical assessments of Edmund Husserl's phenomenological method. It argues that knowledge is the most fundamental mode of consciousness, and that the central theses constitutive of Husserl's "transcendental idealism" are compatible with metaphysical realism regarding the objects of thought, perception, and knowledge. Helpful tools include introductions that help the reader segue from the previous chapter to the new one, chapter conclusions, and suggested reading lists of primary and some key secondary sources. Key Features: Elucidates and engages with contemporary work in analytic epistemology and philosophy of mind Provides clear prose explanations of the necessary distinctions and arguments required for understanding the subject Places knowledge at the center of phenomenological inquiry

Recognizing the interplay between biomedicine and indigenous medicine among the Mapuche in Southern Chile, this book explores notions of culture and personhood through the bodily experiences and medical choices of patients. Through case studies of patients in the context of medical pluralism, Kristensen argues that medical practices are powerful social symbol indicative of overarching socio-political processes. As certain types of extreme and violent experiences-known as olvidos-lack a framework that allows them to be expressed openly, they therefore surface as symptoms of an illness, often with no apparent organic pathology. In these contexts, indigenous medicine, thanks to its sensitivity to socio-political contexts, provides a space for articulation and management of collective experiences and suffering among patients in Southern Chile.

The emotions occupy a fundamental place in philosophy, going back to Aristotle. However, the phenomenology of the emotions has until recently remained a relatively neglected topic. The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Emotion is an outstanding guide and reference source to this important and fascinating topic. Comprising forty-nine chapters by a team of international contributors, this handbook covers the following topics: historical perspectives, including Brentano, Husserl, Sartre, Levinas and Arendt; contemporary debates, including existential feelings, situated affectivity, embodiment, art, morality and feminism; self-directed and individual emotions, including happiness, grief, self-esteem and shame; social emotions, including sympathy, aggresive emotions, collective emotions and political emotions; borderline cases of emotion, including solidarity, trust, pain, forgiveness and revenge. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy studying phenomenology, ethics, moral psychology and philosophy of psychology, The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Emotion is also suitable for those in related disciplines such as religion, sociology and anthropology.

These collected studies on the philosophy of the image offer the fundamental insight that images alone make the artificial presence of things possible. Images present things as exclusively visible, released from the laws of physics. Taking this idea as his point of departure, Wiesing provides an overview of the fundamental positions in contemporary image studies. He describes the use of images as signs from a phenomenological perspective, reconstructs Plato's concept of mimesis by way of the canon of images it presupposes, and demonstrates the special relevance of extreme types of images-- virtual reality, desktop windows, or abstract photography--for the philosophical labor of the concept of the image.