Connecting aesthetic experience with our experience of nature or with other cultural artifacts, Aesthetics as Phenomenology focuses on what art means for cognition, recognition, and affect--how art changes our everyday disposition or behavior. Gunter Figal engages in a penetrating analysis of the moment at which, in our contemplation of a work of art, reaction and thought confront each other. For those trained in the visual arts and for more casual viewers, Figal unmasks art as a decentering experience that opens further possibilities for understanding our lives and our world."

The essays collected in this volume take a new look at the role of language in the thought of Martin Heidegger to reassess its significance for contemporary philosophy. They consider such topics as Heidegger's engagement with the Greeks, expression in language, poetry, the language of art and politics, and the question of truth. Heidegger left his unique stamp on language, giving it its own force and shape, especially with reference to concepts such as Dasein, understanding, and attunement, which have a distinctive place in his philosophy. -- Indiana University Press

In this book, Emmanuel Alloa offers a handrail for venturing into the complexities of the work of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-61). Through a comprehensive analysis of the three main phases of Merleau-Ponty's thinking and a thorough knowledge of his many unpublished manuscripts, the author traces how Merleau-Ponty's philosophy evolved and exposes the remarkable coherence that structures it from within. Alloa teases out the continuity of a motive that traverses the entire oeuvre as a common thread. Merleau-Ponty struggled incessantly against any kind of ideology of transparency, whether of the world, of the self, of knowledge, or of the self's relation to others. Already translated into several languages, Alloa's innovative reading of this crucially important thinker shows why the issues Merleau-Ponty raised are, more than ever, those of our time.

The first complete account of the ideas and writings of a major figure in twentieth-century intellectual life Walter Kaufmann (1921-1980) was a charismatic philosopher, critic, translator, and poet who fled Nazi Germany at the age of eighteen, emigrating alone to the United States. He single-handedly rehabilitated Nietzsche's reputation after World War II and was enormously influential in introducing postwar American readers to existentialism. Stanley Corngold provides the first in-depth study of Kaufmann's thought, showing how he speaks to many issues that concern us today. Kaufmann was astonishingly prolific until his untimely death at age fifty-nine, writing some dozen major books, all marked by breathtaking erudition and a provocative essayistic style. Corngold introduces Kaufmann to a new generation of readers, vividly portraying the intellectual life of one of the twentieth century's most engaging and neglected thinkers.

This book is a phenomenological approach to film sound and film as a whole, bringing all sensory impressions together within the body as a sense of movement. This includes embodied listening, felt sound and the audiovisual chord as a dynamic knot of visual and auditory movements. From this perspective, auditory spaces in film can be used as a pivot between an inner and an external world.

Phenomenology is about subjective aspects of the mind, such as the conscious states associated with vision and touch, and the conscious states associated with emotions and moods, such as feelings of elation or sadness. These states have a distinctive first-person 'feel' to them, called their phenomenal character. In this respect they are often taken to be radically different from mental states and processes associated with thought. This is the first book to fully question this orthodoxy and explore the prospects of cognitive phenomenology, applying phenomenology to the study of thought and cognition. Does cognition have its own phenomenal character? Can introspection tell us either way? If consciousness flows in an unbroken 'stream' as William James argued, how might a punctuated sequence of thoughts fit into it? Elijah Chudnoff begins with a clarification of the nature of the debate about cognitive phenomenology and the network of concepts and theses that are involved in it. He then examines the following topics: introspection and knowledge of our own thoughts phenomenal contrast arguments the value of consciousness the temporal structure of experience the holistic character of experience and the interdependence of sensory and cognitive states the relationship between phenomenal character and mental representation. Including chapter summaries, annotated further reading, and a glossary, this book is essential reading for anyone seeking a clear and informative introduction to and assessment of cognitive phenomenology, whether philosophy student or advanced researcher. It will also be valuable reading for those in related subjects such as philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology and epistemology.

This book is a comparative study of the Anglican Bishop Joseph Butler's and Neo-Confucianist Wang Yangming's ethical enterprise. It first analyses, within their respective historical context, the two thinkers' overarching worldviews and their seminal conception of conscience / liang-chih as a person's supreme moral guide. The English bishop and the Chinese philosopher-military general are then brought into dialogue by way of a comparing and contrasting of their distinct religious-philosophical traditions. In addition, Butler and Wang will be placed in a hypothetical encounter to explore how they, and by proxy Christianity and Confucianism, would critically appraise each other's spiritual and sociopolitical endeavor. The end purpose of this study is to enhance our perception of the intriguing similarities and complex differences that exist between these two Axial Age civilizations. The author argues that dissonances notwithstanding, Butler and Wang share core values, consonances that could and should set the tone for an amiable Christian-Confucian co-existence.

If philosophy has limits, what lies beyond them? One answer is literature. In this study, rather than seeing literature as a source of illustrations of philosophical themes, the author considers both philosophy and literature as sometimes competing but often complementary ways of making sense of and conveying the character of ethical experience. She does so through an analysis of ideas about language, experience and ethics in the philosophy of Nietzsche, and of the way in which these themes are worked out and elaborated in the writings of Robert Musil and the Turkish novelist Oguz Atay.

This book explores the oeuvre of Michael Weinstein, one of the greatest political philosophers in contemporary American and continental thought. The essays are divided between inspirational pieces that illuminate the links between Weinstein and authors within the canon of political theory and reflective pieces that use Weinstein's substantial writings to push the literature forward. The collection as a whole is intended not only to argue for a reengagement with both existential-phenomenology and vitalism, but also to suggest that Weinstein belongs in the canon of poststructural political thought.

Divided into two parts, experts begin by looking to the past to the philosophical roots of Weinstein's critical vitalism. By linking Weinstein to thinkers such as Thoreau, Stirner, and James, the authors provide the foundation for Weinstein as straddling both the American and continental philosophical traditions. In the second part, they push Weinstein's work forward in considering the breadth of Weinstein's influence. From Pathak's examination of lived v. perceived authenticity to Kroker's exploration of the demise of American posthumanity and Oprisko's blending of philosophy with physics to argue for a social string theory, Weinstein's influence pushes boundaries and refuses to accept any status quo.

Original and insightful, this book is a valuable and major contribution to the fields of continental and American philosophy, existentialism, phenomenology, social theory, political theory, anarchist theory, and vitalism.

Biological and Cultural Bases of Human Inference addresses the interface between social science and cognitive science. In this volume, Viale and colleagues explore which human social cognitive powers evolve naturally and which are influenced by culture. Updating the debate between innatism and culturalism regarding human cognitive abilities, this book represents a much-needed articulation of these diverse bases of cognition. Chapters throughout the book provide social science and philosophical reflections, in addition to the perspective of evolutionary theory and the central assumptions of cognitive science. The overall approach of the text is based on three complementary levels: adult performance, cognitive development, and cultural history and prehistory. Scholars from several disciplines contribute to this volume, including researchers in cognitive, developmental, social and evolutionary psychology, neuropsychology, cognitive anthropology, epistemology, and philosophy of mind. This contemporary, important collection appeals to researchers in the fields of cognitive, social, developmental, and evolutionary psychology and will prove valuable to researchers in the decision sciences.

This volume explores the role and status of phenomena such as feelings, values, willing, and action in the domain of perception and (social) cognition, as well as the way in which they are related. In its exploration, the book takes Husserl's lifelong project Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins (1909-1930) as its point of departure, and investigates these phenomena with Husserl but also beyond Husserl. Divided into two parts, the volume brings together essays that address the topics from different phenomenological, philosophical, and psychological perspectives. They discuss Husserl's position in dialogue with historical and recent philosophical and psychological debates and develop phenomenological accounts and descriptions with the help of Geiger, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Plessner, Sartre, Scheler, Schopenhauer, and Reinach.

This study takes up Thoreau's work as an early and prophetic diagnosis of the modern crisis of relationships between the individual and society. Thus Adorno's formulation of "a melancholy of science" finds its predecessor in Thoreau's famous dictum from the early pages of Walden that we live our lives in quiet desperation. The author reads Thoreau's Journal as an attempt to refute tendencies towards the narrowing of life to being understood merely in techno-economic categories which threaten the quality of the development of both the individual and the community. Thus in literary scholarship it is essential to find strategies which will critically contribute to understanding and transforming what Auerbach called "ways of life" and what Barthes referred to as "living-together".

Two German philosophers working during the Weimar Republic in Germany, between the two World Wars, produced seminal texts that continue to resonate almost 100 years later. Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Heidegger, a Jewish thinker and a philosopher who at one time was studying to become a Roman Catholic Priest, each in their own, particular way include in their writings powerful philosophies of art that, if approached phenomenologically and ethically, provide keys to understanding their radically divergent trajectories, both biographically and for their philosophical heritage. Simon provides a close reading of some of their essential texts. The Star of Redemption for Rosenzweig and Being and Time and The Origin of the Work of Art for HeideggerGAaoin order to draw attention to how their philosophies of art can be understood to provide significant ethical directives.

From Nietzsche's pronouncement that 'God is dead' to Camus' argument that suicide is the fundamental question of philosophy, the concept of death plays an important role in existential phenomenology, reaching from Kierkegaard to Heidegger and Marcel.

This book explores the phenomenology of death and offers a unique way into the phenomenological tradition. Paul Fairfield examines the following key topics:

• the modern denial of death
• Heidegger's important concept of 'being-toward-death' and its centrality in phenomenological ideas, such as authenticity and existence
• the philosophical significance of death rituals: what explains the imperative toward ritual around death, and what is its purpose and meaning?
• death in an age of secularism
• the philosophy and ethics of suicide
• death as a mystery rather than a philosophical problem to be solved
• the relationship between hope and death.

"

Death: A Philosophical Inquiry" is essential reading for students of phenomenology and existentialism and will also be of interest to students in related fields such as religion and anthropology and also those in medical humanities.

Our sensory relationships with the social and biological world have altered appreciably as a result of recent developments in internet and other mobile communication technologies. We now look at a screen, we touch either the screen or a keyboard in response to what we see and, somehow, an element of our sensory presence is transmitted elsewhere. It is often claimed that this change in the way we perceive the world and each other is without precedent, and is solely the result of twenty-first-century life and technologies. This book argues otherwise. The author analyses the evolving portrayals of 'haptic' sensations - that is, sensations that are at once tactile and visual - in the theories and prose of the writer-philosophers Georges Bataille (1897-1962), Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003) and Michel Serres (1930-). In exploring haptic perception in the works of Bataille, Blanchot and Serres, the author examines haptic theories postulated by Alois Riegl, Laura U. Marks, Mark Paterson and Jean-Luc Nancy.

This volume explores the work and thought of Edith Stein (1891-1942). It discusses in detail, and from new perspectives, the traditional areas of her thinking, including her ideas about women/feminism, theology, and metaphysics. In addition, it introduces readers to new and/or understudied areas of her thought, including her views on history, and her social and political philosophy. The guiding thread that connects all the essays in this book is the emphasis on new approaches and novel applications of her philosophy. The contributions both extend the interdisciplinary implications of Stein's thinking for our contemporary world and apply her insights to questions of theatre, public history and biographical representation, education, politics, autism, theological debates, feminism, sexuality studies and literature. The volume brings together for the first time leading scholars in five language-groups, including English, German, Italian, French and Spanish-speaking authors, thereby reflecting an international and cosmopolitan approach to Stein studies.

In art and literature, animals appear not only as an allegoric representation but as a reference which troubles the border between humanity and animality. The aim of this book is to challenge traditional ways of confronting animality with humanity and to consider how the Darwinian turn has modified this relationship in postmodern narratives. The subject of animality in culture, ethics, philosophy, art and literature is explored and reevaluated, and a host of questions regarding the conditions of co-existence of humans and animals is asked: Should discourse ethics now include entities that initially seemed mute and were excluded from discussions? Does the modern animal rights movement need a theology, and vice versa, is there a theology that needs animals? Are animals in literature just metaphors of human characters, or do they reveal something more profound, a direction of human desires, or a fantasy of transgressing humanity? This book provides answers and thus gives a new impetus to a so far largely overlooked field.

Intentionality is one of the central problems of modern philosophy. How can a thought, action or belief be about something? Sachs draws on the work of Wilfrid Sellars, C I Lewis and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to build a new theory of intentionality that solves many of the problems faced by traditional conceptions.

Reinterpreting Sartre's main methodologies and removing Hegelian dialectics from his notion of violence, this book demolishes the supposed hostile intersubjective relations that characterizes all concrete relations. Furthering this stance, it reconstructs an interpretation of the "violent Sartre" and crafts an alternative response: one that rejects terrorist tactics, preemptive war and Western hegemony through democratization. Based on the latest debate on Sartre's works on ethics and politics, this project examines the relevancy and new importance they hold for contemporary concerns -- the reactionary nature of terrorism, the extremity of counter-violence, and limitations of democratization efforts -- all claiming to be justified in the name of "freedom" and "liberation." While it is the concern over the "terrorist'" nature of his writings that dominates the current debate, this project starts from the premise that it is as important to ask why violence is unjustified when it can put an end to a situation that disparages humanity. In arguing for the need for moral limitations to all violent struggles, and the need for seeing others as ends-for-themselves, it proceeds to outline a response based on existential humanist ethics that can reaffirm our moral compass.

This book is presented by two authors who worked in close cooperation. The first part is written by Ewa Binczyk and discusses various postulates that have been formulated in response to the problem of the unwanted side-effects of the practical success of technoscience which derive from two theoretical perspectives: the study of risk and science and technology studies (STS), inspired by actor-network theory (ANT). In the second part of the book Tomasz Stepien analyses and characterizes the nano-domain as an example of the development of techno-sciences. Generally, in the case of nanotechnology this book calibrates reciprocally to each other the indeed familiar but also slightly different theoretical approaches established in the philosophy of science and technology.

The main topic of the volume encompasses three areas of phenomenological research: person, subject, and organism. These three topics are interrelated in various ways. On the one hand, the question is Husserlian phenomenology of personhood and subjectivity, and on the other hand, it is a broader problem including epistemological, ontological and biological approaches. Those great traditional and contemporary themes of subjectivitiy and intersubjectivity, concepts of person, community and interpersonality, questions of humanity, value and biological status of human beings all became part of Edmund Husserl's focus. The contributors intend to show that a number of inspiring and unexplored questions arose from these thematic areas, questions which are related to various specific and interconnected fields of study.

This book is a collection of essays, weaving together cognitive psychology, psycho-linguistics, developmental psychology, modern philosophy and behavioural sciences. It raises the question: how does grammar relate to our remarkable ability to cooperate for future needs? The author investigates the interconnections between the mechanisms governing cooperation and reciprocal altruism on the one hand and the capacity to generate an infinite range of expressions from a finite set of syntactically structured elements on the other. Based on these premises, the specific character of cognitive explanations, possible architectures of mind, non-formal grammar and tacit knowledge are explored. Furthermore the author deals with the role of conceptual representations in explaining grammar, the modular structure of mind and the evolutionary origins of human language ability and moral authority.

From Nietzsche's pronouncement that 'God is dead' to Camus' argument that suicide is the fundamental question of philosophy, the concept of death plays an important role in existential phenomenology, reaching from Kierkegaard to Heidegger and Marcel.

This book explores the phenomenology of death and offers a unique way into the phenomenological tradition. Paul Fairfield examines the following key topics:

• the modern denial of death
• Heidegger's important concept of 'being-toward-death' and its centrality in phenomenological ideas, such as authenticity and existence
• the philosophical significance of death rituals: what explains the imperative toward ritual around death, and what is its purpose and meaning?
• death in an age of secularism
• the philosophy and ethics of suicide
• death as a mystery rather than a philosophical problem to be solved
• the relationship between hope and death.

"

Death: A Philosophical Inquiry" is essential reading for students of phenomenology and existentialism and will also be of interest to students in related fields such as religion and anthropology and also those in medical humanities.