"Continuum's Guides for the Perplexed" are clear, concise and accessible introductions to thinkers, writers and subjects that students and readers can find especially challenging. Concentrating specifically on what it is that makes the subject difficult to fathom, these books explain and explore key themes and ideas, guiding the reader towards a thorough understanding of demanding material. Gilles Deleuze is undoubtedly one of the seminal figures in modern Continental thought. However, his philosophy makes considerable demands on the student; his major works make for challenging reading and require engagement with some difficult concepts and complex systems of thought. "Deleuze: A Guide for the Perplexed" is the ideal text for anyone who needs to get to grips with Deleuzian thought, offering a thorough, yet approachable account of the central themes in his work. The text is organised around major themes in Deleuze's oeuvre: sense; univocity; intuition; singularity; difference. His ideas related to language, politics, ethics and consciousness are explored in detail and - most importantly - clarified. The book also locates Deleuze in the context of his philosophical influences and antecedents and highlights the implications of his ideas for a range of disciplines from politics to film theory. Throughout, close attention is paid to Deleuze's most influential publications, including the landmark texts "The Logic of Sense and Difference and Repetition".

Levinas's ethical metaphysics is essentially a meditation on what makes ethical agency possible - that which enables us to act in the interest of another, to put the well-being of another before our own. This line of questioning found its inception in and drew its inspiration from the mass atrocities that occurred during the Second World War. The Holocaust , like the Cambodian genocide, or those in Rwanda and Srebrenica, exemplifies what have come to be known as the 'never again' situations. After these events, we looked back each time, with varying degrees of incomprehension, horror, anger and shame, asking ourselves how we could possibly have let it all happen again. And yet, atrocity crimes are still rampant. After Rwanda (1994) and Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992-1995), came Kosovo (1999) and Darfur (2003). In our present-day world , hate crimes motivated by racial, sexual, or other prejudice, and mass hate such as genocide and terror, are on the rise (think, for example, of Burma, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka and North Korea). A critical revaluation of the conditions of possibility of ethical agency is therefore more necessary than ever. This volume is committed to the possibility of 'never again'. It is dedicated to all the victims - living and dead - of what Levinas calls the 'sober, Cain-like coldness' at the root of all crime against humanity , as much as every singular crime against another human being .

Pluriverse, the final work of the American poet and philosopher Benjamin Paul Blood, was published posthumously in 1920. After an experience of the anaesthetic nitrous oxide during a dental operation, Blood came to the conclusion that his mind had been opened, that he had undergone a mystical experience, and that he had come to a realisation of the true nature of reality. This title is the fullest exposition of Blood's esoteric Christian philosophy-cum-theology, which, though deemed wildly eccentric by commentators both during his lifetime and later in the twentieth century, was nonetheless one of the most influential sources for American mystical-empiricism. In particular, Blood's thought was a major inspiration for William James, and can be seen to prefigure the latter's concept of Sciousness directly.

Do we really need philosophy? The present collection of jargon-free essays aims at answering the question of why philosophy matters. Each essay considers the central question (Why Philosophy?) from different angles: the unavoidability of doing philosophy, the practical consequences of philosophy, philosophy as a therapy for the whole person, the benefits of philosophy for improving public policy, etc.

This combination of historiography and theory offers the growing Anglophone readership interested in the ideas of Gilbert Simondon a thorough and unprecedented survey of the French philosopher's entire oeuvre. The publication, which breaks new ground in its thoroughness and breadth of analysis, systematically traces the interconnections between Simondon's philosophy of science and technology on the one hand, and his political philosophy on the other. The author sets Simondon's ideas in the context of the epistemology of the late 1950s and the 1960s in France, the milieu that shaped a generation of key French thinkers such as Deleuze, Foucault and Derrida. This volume explores Simondon's sources, which were as eclectic as they were influential: from the philosophy of Bergson to the cybernetics of Wiener, from the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty to the epistemology of Canguilhem, and from Bachelard's philosophy of science to the positivist sociology and anthropology of luminaries such as Durkheim and Leroi-Gourhan. It also tackles aspects of Simondon's philosophy that relate to Heidegger and Elull in their concern with the ontological relationship between technology and society and discusses key scholars of Simondon such as Barthelemy, Combes, Stiegler, and Virno, as well as the work of contemporary protagonists in the philosophical debate on the relevance of technique. The author's intimate knowledge of Simondon's language allows him to resolve many of th e semantic errors and misinterpretations that have plagued reactions to Simondon's many philosophical neologisms, often drawn from his scientific studies.

Heidegger, History and the Holocaust is an important contribution to the longstanding debate concerning Martin Heidegger's association with National Socialism. Although a difficult topic, this ambitious new work moves the entire debate on the Heidegger controversy forward. Following Being and Time Heidegger expands on his notion of authenticity and related notions such as historicity and discusses the possibility of an authentic Dasein of a people along structurally consistent lines to his account of authenticity in Being and Time. O'Brien argues that the same difficulties which appear to hamstring the early account of authenticity further affect the notion of an authentic Dasein of a people; Heidegger's political myopia in the thirties can thus be attributed to an underlying failure to come to terms with some of the difficulties discussed in this study. O'Brien concedes that Heidegger's philosophy is influenced by its historical period and context but argues that, however inflammatory, Heidegger's rhetoric cannot be simply reduced to crude Nazi jingoism. This book is a genuinely philosophical approach to the Heidegger controversy and a much-needed re-examination of his ideas and influences.

George Berkeley was considered "the most engaging and useful man in Ireland in the eighteenth century." This hyperbolic statement refers both to Berkeley's life and thought; in fact, he always considered himself a pioneer called to think and do new things. He was an empiricist well versed in the sciences, an amateur of the mechanical arts, as well as a metaphysician; he was the author of many completely different discoveries, as well as a very active Christian, a zealous bishop and the apostle of the Bermuda project. The essays collected in this volume, written by some leading scholars, aim to reconstruct the complexity of Berkeley's figure, without selecting "major" works, nor searching for "coherence" at any cost. They will focus on different aspects of Berkeley's thought, showing their intersections; they will explore the important contributions he gave to various scientific disciplines, as well as to the eighteenth-century philosophical and theological debate. They will highlight the wide influence that his presently most neglected or puzzling books had at the time; they will refuse any anachronistical trial of Berkeley's thought, judged from a contemporary point of view.

Edward Carpenter: In Appreciation, first published in 1931, presents a collection of tributes to and reminiscences about the renowned socialist poet, pioneering gay rights activist, environmentalist and political thinker. Embroiled in controversy with prominent figures of all political persuasions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Carpenter's vision of sexual freedom, democracy and an end to commercialism was maintained with integrity over the course of his whole life. These portraits and anecdotes testify to a man of both determination and warmth, whose writings, though inspirational for many up to the 1960s, are seldom read today.

Many scholars have struggled with Irigaray's focus on sexuate difference, in particular with her claim that it is "ontological," wondering if this implies a problematically naive or essentialist account of sexuate difference. As a result, the ethical vision which Irigaray elaborates has not been taken up in a robust way in the fields of philosophy, feminism, or psychoanalysis. By tracing the notion of relation throughout Irigaray's work, this book identifies a rigorous philosophical continuity between the three self-identified "phases" in Irigaray's thought (despite some critics' concerns that there is a discontinuity between these phases) and clarifies the relational ontology that underlies Irigaray's conceptualization of sexuate difference - one that always already implies an ethical project. The text demonstrates that an understanding of Irigaray's Heideggerian inheritance - especially prominent in her later texts - is essential to grasping the sense of the idea that sexuate difference is ontological - it concerns Being, rather than beings. This book further develops potential applications of this ontological notion of a "relational limit" for the fields of philosophy, feminism, and psychotherapy.

In this study, the author shows new entry points to the dialogue between Kant and Heidegger. Schalow takes up the question: "Why should a philosopher like Kant, for whom language seemed to be almost inconsequential, become the crucial counter point for a thinker like Heidegger to develop a novel way to understand and express the most perennial of all philosophical concepts, namely, 'being' as such?" This approach allows for addressing issues which are normally relegated to the periphery of the exchange between Heidegger and Kant, including spatiality and embodiment, nature and art, religion and politics.

These essays span a period of fourteen years. The earliest was written in 1960, the latest in 1983. They all represent various attempts to understand the motives and the central concepts of Husserl's transcen dental phenomenology, and to locate the latter in the background of other varieties of transcendental philosophy. Implicitly, they also con tain a defense of transcendental philosophy, and make attempts to respond to the more familiar criticisms against it. It is hoped that they will contribute to a better understanding not only of Husserl's transcen dental phenomenology but also of transcendental philosophy in gener al. The ordering of the essays is not chronological. They are rather divided thematically into three groups. The first group of six essays is concerned with relating Husserlian phenomenology to more contem porary analytic concerns: in fact, the opening essay on Husserl and Frege establishes a certain continuity of concern with my last published book with that title. Of these, Essay 2 was written for an American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division symposium in which the other symposiast was John Searle. The discussion in that symposium concentrated chiefly on the relation between intentionality and causali ty - which led me to write Essay 6, later read as the Gurwitsch Memo rial Lecture at the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philos ophy meetings in 1982 at Penn State."

This volume marks a phase of accomplishment in the work of the World Phenomenology Institute in unfolding a dialogue between Occidental phenomenology and the Oriental/Chinese classic philosophy. Going beyond the stage of reception, the Oriental scholars show in this collection of studies their perspicacity and philosophical skills in comparing the concepts, ideas, the vision of classic phenomenology and Chinese philosophy toward uncovering their common intuitions. This in-depth probing aims at reviving Occidental thinking, reaching to its intuitive sources, as well as providing Chinese thinking with a precise apparatus of expression toward its rejuvenation in a new significance. Studies by Korean and Chinese phenomenologists: Nam-In Lee, Inhui Park, Benjamin I. Schwartz, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Sitansu Ray, Zhang Xian, Zhang Qingxiong, Tsung-I Dow, Ashok K. Gangadean, Yushiro Takei, Louise Sunderarajan, Gregory Tropea, James Sellmann, Tyong Bok Rhie, Sang-Ki Kim, Daniel Zelinski, Qingjie Wang, Calvin O. Schrag, Jung-Sun Han.

This book is a study of the impact of globalization on our political institutions and concepts. It begins with an analysis of the global economy, as this is the most powerful of the engines of globalization, then proceeds to examine the impact of the currents of globalization on national sovereignty, national identity, the structure of government, the role of government, and on the lives of individual human beings. It concludes by sketching several issues which globalization presents to political philosophy.

Although influential in his own day, Karl Leonhard Reinhold's contribution to late 18th and early 19th century thought has long been overshadowed by the towering presence of Immanuel Kant, the thinker whose ideas he helped to interpret and disseminate. Today, however, a more nuanced understanding of Reinhold's contribution to post-Kantian thought is emerging. Apart from his exposition of Kant's critical philosophy, which played a significant role in the development of German idealism, Reinhold's role in the intellectual movement of Enlightenment and his contributions to early linguistic philosophy are now receiving scholarly attention. In the English-speaking world, where few translations of his work have been attempted, Reinhold has mostly been overlooked. This imbalance is corrected in the present work: the first translation into English of Reinhold's major work of philosophy, the New Theory of the Human Capacity for Representation (1789). The translators provide an overview of the main currents of thought which informed Reinhold's philosophical project, as well as notes on his reading of Kant and other important thinkers of Reinhold's day. A glossary of key terms, a bibliography of scholarly work on Reinhold and suggestions for further reading are also included.

Walter Benjamin's work represents one of the most radical and controversial responses to the problems of 20th century culture and society. This new interpretation analyzes some of the central enigmatic features of his writing, arguing that they result from the co-presence of religious skepticism and the desire for a religious foundation of social life. Margarete Kohlenbach focuses on the structure of self-reference as an expression of Benjamin's skeptical religiosity and examines its significance in his writing on language, literature and the cinema, as well as history, politics and modern technology.

This volume makes a significant contribution to both the study of Derrida and of modernist studies. The contributors argue, first, that deconstruction is not "modern"; neither is it "postmodern" nor simply "modernist." They also posit that deconstruction is intimately connected with literature, not because deconstruction would be a literary way of doing philosophy, but because literature stands out as a "modern" notion. The contributors investigate the nature and depth of Derrida's affinities with writers such as Joyce, Kafka, Antonin Artaud, Georges Bataille, Paul Celan, Maurice Blanchot, Theodor Adorno, Samuel Beckett, and Walter Benjamin, among others. With its strong connection between philosophy and literary modernism, this highly original volume advances modernist literary study and the relationship of literature and philosophy.

The Derrida Dictionary is a comprehensive and accessible guide to the world of Jacques Derrida, the founder of deconstruction and one of the most important and influential European thinkers of the twentieth century. Meticulously researched and extensively cross-referenced, this unique book covers all his major works, ideas and influences and provides a firm grounding in the central themes of Derrida's thought. Students will discover a wealth of useful information, analysis and criticism. A-Z entries include clear definitions of all the key terms used in Derrida's writings and detailed synopses of his key works. The Dictionary also includes entries on Derrida's major philosophical influences and those he engaged with, such as Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Freud, Heidegger, Foucault, Lacan and Levinas. It covers everything that is essential to a sound understanding of Derrida's philosophy, offering clear and accessible explanations of often complex terminology. The Derrida Dictionary is the ideal resource for anyone reading or studying Derrida, deconstruction or modern European philosophy more generally.

Many contemporary philosophers assume that, before one can discuss prayer, the question of whether there is a God or not must be settled. In this title, first published in 1965, D. Z. Phillips argues that to understand prayer is to understand what is meant by the reality of God. Beginning by placing the problem of prayer within a philosophical context, Phillips goes on to discuss such topics as prayer and the concept of talking, prayer and dependence, superstition and the concept of community. This is a fascinating reissue that will be of particular value to students with an interest in the philosophy of religion, prayer and religious studies more generally.

James F. Sheridan Allegheny College As we come to the end of the century, an attentive student of con temporary European philosophy will no doubt be startled by a volume titled Husserl in Contemporary Context. Such philosophers are most likely to believe that Hussed has now been declared II classical" rather than a contemporary thinker or, worse, simply old fashioned. Access to Hussed today will most likely come through the allegedly definitive critiques of his work by Heidegger and Derrida and to a lesser extent through the readings of his work by Levinas and Merleau Ponty although Merleau-Ponty himself has been declared old fashioned by some postmodems. Hence, if by II contemporary" one understands the problematic set by the work of the late Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault, et. al., Hussed's work seems strange indeed in such a contemporary context, seems better understood as the last gasp of philosophy dominated by metaphysics and thus fit only for inclusion in courses in the history of philosophy."

This volume is a collection of phenomenological investigations of the political domain. Its aim is to present recent examinations of political matters and to foster a renewal of this sort of inquiry in phenomenology generally. Although it has often gone unrecognized, investigations of this sort have been a part of the phenomenological project since its inception. Two phases can be identified: the first governed primarily by the methods of realistic and constitutive phenomenology, and the second under the guidance of existential and hermeneutical approaches. Standard accounts of the history of phenomenology begin, of course, with the publication of Husserl's Logische Untersuchungen (1900-1901) in which for the first time he publicly developed and applied his distinctively descriptive approach-the so-called method of eidetic analysis with its unique emphasis on the concept of evidence understood as intention fulfillment-to the fields of logical and mathematical systems. But those around him in Gottingen quickly saw the innovative character of this method and began employing it in a wide variety of other areas of research: literature, sociology, ethics, action theory, and even theology, for example.

Husserl's Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy (1913) is one of the key texts of twentieth century philosophy. It is the first of Husserl's published works to present his distinctive version of transcendental philosophy and to put forward the ambitious claim that phenomenology is the fundamental science of philosophy. In Ideas, Husserl introduces for the first time the conceptual arsenal of his mature phenomenology: the principle of all principles, the phenomenological epoche and reduction, pure consciousness, and the noema. All these difficult notions have been influential and controversial in subsequent philosophy, both analytic and Continental. In this commentary, thirteen leading scholars of Husserlian phenomenology set out to clarify and defend Husserl's views, connecting them to the vast corpus of his published and unpublished writings, and discussing the main available interpretations in the existing scholarship. The result is a detailed and comprehensive account of the most original form of transcendental philosophy since Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.

In this third volume of a monumental four book survey of Phenome- nology world-wide fifty years after the death of its chief founder, Edmund Husserl, we have a collection of studies which, in the first place, consider Husserl's legacy in the postmodern world. The extent of our indebtedness to the Master is shown in explora- tions of the archeology of knowledge, hermeneutics, and critical studies of language by A. Ales Bello, P. Pefialver, P. Million, V. Martinez Guzman, H. Rodriguez Pifiero, Y. Vlaisavlevich, and others. There follow calls for renewing the critique of reason by C. Schrag, F. Bosio, and J. Lerin Riera and discussion by D. Laskey, K. G6rniak-Kocikowska, M. R. Barral, Y. Park, and N. Delle Site on A-T. Tymieniecka's phe- nomenology of life, which proposes a total reorientation of phenome- nology by introducing a conception of the human condition in which the human creative act is the Archimedean point for philosophy.

This anthology focuses on the extraordinary contributions Wittgenstein made to several areas in the philosophy of psychology - contributions that extend to psychology, psychiatry, sociology and anthropology. To bring them a richly-deserved attention from across the language barrier, Daniele Moyal-Sharrock has translated papers by eminent French Wittgensteinians. They here join ranks with more familiar renowned specialists on Wittgenstein's philosophical psychology. While revealing differences in approach and interests, this coming together of some of the best minds on the subject discloses a surprising degree of consensus, and gives us the clearest picture yet of Wittgenstein as a philosopher of psychology.