The future of deconstruction lies in the ability of its practitioners to mobilise the tropes and interests of Derrida's texts into new spaces and creative readings. In Deconstruction without Derrida, Martin McQuillan sets out to do just that, to continue the task of deconstructive reading both with and without Derrida. The book's principal theme is an attention to instances of deconstruction other than or beyond Derrida and thus imagining a future for deconstruction after Derrida. This future is both the present of deconstruction and its past. The readings presented in this book address the expanded field of deconstruction in the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, Helene Cixous, Paul de Man, Harold Bloom, J. Hillis Miller, Judith Butler, Gayatri Spivak and Catherine Malabou. They also, necessarily, address Derrida's own readings of this work. McQuillan accounts for an experience of otherness in deconstruction that is, has been and always will be beyond Derrida, just as deconstruction remains forever tied to Derrida by an invisible, indestructible thread.

Julia Kristeva has revolutionized the study of modernism by developing a theoretical approach that is uniquely attuned to the dynamic interplay between, on the one hand, linguistic and formal experimentation, and, on the other hand, subjective crisis and socio-political upheaval. Inspired by the contestatory spirit of the late 1960s in which she emerged as a theorist, Kristeva has defended the project of the European avant-gardes and has systematically attempted to reclaim their legacy in the new societal structures produced by a global, spectacle-dominated capitalism. Understanding Kristeva, Understanding Modernism brings together essays that take up the threads in Kristeva's analyses of the avant-garde, offering an appreciation of her overall contribution, the intellectual and political horizon within which she has produced her seminal works as well as of the blind spots that need to be acknowledged in any contemporary examination of her insights. As with other volumes in this series, this volume is structured in three parts. The first part provides new readings of key texts or central aspects in Kristeva's oeuvre. The second part takes up the task of showing the impact of Kristeva's thought on the appreciation of modernist concerns and strategies in a variety of fields: literature, philosophy, the visual arts, and dance. The third part is a glossary of some of Kristeva's key terms, with each entry written by an expert contributor.

Mary Midgley is one of the most influential moral philosophers of the twentieth century. Over the last 40 years, Midgley's writings on such central yet controversial topics as human nature, morality, science, animals, the environment, religion, and gender have shaped the landscape of contemporary philosophy. She is celebrated for the complexity, nuance, and sensibility with which she approaches some of the most challenging issues in philosophy without falling into the pitfalls of close-minded extremism. In turn, Midgley's sophisticated treatment of the interconnected and often muddled issues related to human nature has drawn interest from outside the philosophical world, stretching from scientists, artists, theologians, anthropologists, and journalists to the public more broadly. Mary Midgley: An Introduction systematically introduces readers to Midgley's collected thought on the most central and influential areas of her corpus. Through clear and lively engagement with Midgley's work, this volume offers readers accessible explanation, interpretation, and analysis of the concepts and perspectives for which she is best known, most notably her integrated understanding of human nature, her opposition to reductionism and scientism, and her influential conception of our relationship to animals and the wider world. These insights, supplemented by excerpts from original interviews with Midgley herself, provide readers of all backgrounds with an informed understanding and appreciation of Mary Midgley and the philosophical problems to which she has devoted her life's work.

In this work, Belliotti unravels the paradoxes of human existence. The purpose of this philosophical journey is to reveal paths for forging meaningful, significant, valuable, even important lives. By examining notions of The Absurd expressed within Search for the Holy Grail, The Seventh Seal, and The Big Lebowski, the author crafts a working definition of "absurdity." He then investigates the contributions of classical thinkers such as Shakespeare, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Tolstoy, Sartre, Camus, as well as philosophers such as Nagel, Feinberg, and Taylor. After arguing that human life is not inherently absurd, Belliotti examines the implications of mortality for human existence, the relationship between subjective and objective meaning, and the persuasiveness of several challenging contemporary renderings of meaningful human lives.

The Risk of Freedom presents an in-depth analysis of the philosophy of Jan Patocka, one of the most influential Central European thinkers of the twentieth century, examining both the phenomenological and ethical-political aspects of his work. In particular, Francesco Tava takes an original approach to the problem of freedom, which represents a recurring theme in Patocka's work, both in his early and later writings. Freedom is conceived of as a difficult and dangerous experience. In his deep analysis of this particular problem, Tava identifies the authentic ethical content of Patocka's work and clarifies its connections with phenomenology, history of philosophy, politics and dissidence. The Risk of Freedom retraces Patocka's philosophical journey and elucidates its more problematic and less evident traits, such as his original ethical conception, his political ideals and his direct commitment as a dissident.

Psychiatry or psychopathology finds itself in a state of imbalance. The reason: the impossibility to unite biological and psychological factors. Effectively, this leads to the psychic reality being largely ignored. And yet psychiatry as a human science will have to acknowledge the psychic reality: the human capacity to symbolise reality. This book demonstrates that phenomenology, hermeneutics and Lacanian psychoanalysis support this view, whilst also drawing on Cassirer's theory of symbolization. In the domain of psychopathology, this convergence and the conceptual space it brings offer an opportunity to create cross-fertilisation, enlarging the Lacanian clinical perspective. It will result in a philosophical conception of man as "animal symbolicum," an animal fallen prey to language. In sum, the book renders a contribution to Lacanian psychopathology, to the philosophy of psychiatry and to philosophical anthropology. It is of interest to psychiatrists, psychologists, psychoanalysts and philosophers alike.

French philosopher and Talmudic commentator Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) has received considerable attention for his influence on philosophical and religious thought. In this book, Victoria Tahmasebi-Birgani provides the first examination of the applicability of Emmanuel Levinas' work to social and political movements. Investigating his ethics of responsibility and his critique of the Western liberal imagination, Tahmasebi-Birgani advances the moral, political, and philosophical debates on the radical implications of Levinas' work.

Emmanuel Levinas and the Politics of Non-Violence is the first book to closely consider the affinity between Levinas' ethical vision and Mohandas Gandhi's radical yet non-violent political struggle. Situating Levinas' insights within a transnational, transcontinental, and global framework, Tahmasebi-Birgani highlights Levinas' continued relevance in an age in which violence is so often resorted to in the name of "justice" and "freedom."

The history of Continental philosophy is often conceived as being represented by two major schools: German idealism and phenomenology/existentialism. These two schools are frequently juxtaposed so as to highlight their purported radical differences. There is a commonly held view that an abrupt break occurred in the nineteenth century, resulting in a disdainful rejection of idealism in all its forms. This break is often located in the transition from Hegel to Kierkegaard. The history of philosophy in the first half of the nineteenth century has thus been read as a grand confrontation between the overambitious rationalistic system of Hegel and the devastating criticisms of it by Kierkegaard's philosophy of existence. This work aims to undermine this popular view of the radical break between idealism and existentialism by means of a series of detailed studies in specific episodes of European thought. As a whole, this book represents an important attempt to demonstrate the long shadow cast by Kant and Hegel over the subsequent history of European philosophy.

Heidegger and the Emergence of the Question of Being offers a new, updated and comprehensive introduction to Heidegger's development and his early confrontation with philosophical tradition, theology, neo-Kantianism, vitalism, hermeneutics, and phenomenology, up to the publication of Being and Time in 1927. The main thread is the genealogy of the question of the meaning of being. Alongside the most recent scholarly research, this book takes into account the documentary richness of Heidegger's first Freiburg (1919-1923) and Marburg (1923-1928) lectures, conferences, treatises and letters and addresses the thematic and methodological richness of this period of Heidegger's intellectual life, and offers a coherent and unified interpretation of his earlier work. This book conveys Heidegger's thought in a well-organized, impartial manner, without deviating too far from Heideggerian vocabulary. It will be invaluable for upper level undergraduates, graduate students of philosophy, studying phenomenology, continental and German philosophy.

"Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity "analyzes the transcendental relevance of intersubjectivity and argues that an intersubjective transformation of transcendental philosophy can already be found in phenomenology, especially in Husserl. Husserl eventually came to believe that an analysis of transcendental intersubjectivity was a "conditio sine qua non" for a phenomenological philosophy. Drawing on both published and unpublished manuscripts, Dan Zahavi examines Husserl's reasons for this conviction and delivers a detailed analysis of his radical and complex concept of intersubjectivity, showing that precisely his reflections on transcendental intersubjectivity are capable of clarifying the core-concepts of phenomenology, thus making possible a new understanding of Husserl's philosophy.
Against this background the book compares his view with the approaches to intersubjectivity found in Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty, and it then attempts to establish to what extent the phenomenological approach can contribute to the current discussion of intersubjectivity. This is achieved through a systematic confrontation with the language-pragmatical positions of Apel and Habermas.

This is a unique collection presenting work by Alain Badiou and commentaries on his philosophical theories. It includes three lectures by Badiou, on contemporary politics, the infinite, cinema and theatre and two extensive interviews with Badiou - one concerning the state of the contemporary situation and one wide ranging interview on all facets of his work and engagements. It also includes six interventions on aspects of Badiou's work by established scholars in the field, addressing his concept of history, Lacan, Cinema, poetry, and feminism; and four original essays by young and established scholars in Australia and New Zealand addressing the key concerns of Badiou's 2015 visit to the Antipodal region and the work he presented there. With new material by Badiou previously unpublished in English this volume is a valuable overview of his recent thinking. Critical responses by distinguished and gifted Badiou scholars writing outside of the European context make this text essential reading for anyone interested in the development and contemporary reception of Badiou's thought.

What is the meaning of life? Does anything really matter? In the past few decades these questions, perennially associated with philosophy in the popular consciousness, have rightly retaken their place as central topics in the academy. In this major contribution, Nicholas Waghorn provides a sustained and rigorous elucidation of what it would take for lives to have significance. Bracketing issues about ways our lives could have more or less meaning, the focus is rather on the idea of ultimate meaning, the issue of whether a life can attain meaning that cannot be called into question. Waghorn sheds light on this most fundamental of existential problems through a detailed yet comprehensive examination of the notion of nothing, embracing classic and cutting-edge literature from both the analytic and Continental traditions. Central figures such as Heidegger, Carnap, Wittgenstein, Nozick and Nagel are drawn upon to anchor the discussion in some of the most influential discussion of recent philosophical history. In the process of relating our ideas concerning nothing to the problem of life's meaning, Waghorn's book touches upon a number of fundamental themes, including reflexivity and its relation to our conceptual limits, whether religion has any role to play in the question of life's meaning, and the nature and constraints of philosophical methodology. A number of major philosophical traditions are addressed, including phenomenology, poststructuralism, and classical and paraconsistent logics. In addition to providing the most thorough current discussion of ultimate meaning, it will serve to introduce readers to philosophical debates concerning the notion of nothing, and the appendix engaging religion will be of value to both philosophers and theologians.

Hegel's critique of Early German Romanticism and its theory of irony resonates to the core of his own philosophy in the same way that Plato's polemics with the Sophists have repercussions that go to the centre of his thought. The Anti-Romantic examines Hegel's critique of Fr. Schlegel, Novalis and Schleiermacher. Hegel rarely mentions these thinkers by name and the texts dealing with them often exist on the periphery of his oeuvre. Nonetheless, individually, they represent embodiments of specific forms of irony: Schlegel, a form of critical individuality; Novalis, a form of sentimental nihilism; Schleiermacher, a monstrous hybrid of the other two. The strength of Hegel's polemical approach to these authors shows how irony itself represents for him a persistent threat to his own idea of systematic Science. This is so, we discover, because Romantic irony is more than a rival ideology; it is an actual form of discourse, one whose performative objectivity interferes with the objectivity of Hegel's own logos. Thus, Hegel's critique of irony allows us to reciprocally uncover a Hegelian theory of scientific discourse. Far from seeing irony as a form of consciousness overcome by Spirit, Hegel sees it as having become a pressing feature of his own contemporary world, as witnessed in the popularity of his Berlin rival, Schleiermacher. Finally, to the extent that ironic discourse seems, for Hegel, to imply a certain world beyond his own notion of modernity, we are left with the hypothesis that Hegel's critique of irony may be viewed as a critique of post-modernity.

This text examines the many transformations in Husserl's phenomenology that his discoveries of the nature of appearing lead to. It offers a comprehensive look at the Logical Investigations' delimitation of the phenomenological field, and continues with Husserl's account of our consciousness of time. This volume examines Husserl's turn to transcendental idealism and the problems this raises for our recognition of other subjects. It details Husserl's account of embodiment and takes largely from his manuscripts, both published and unpublished, dealing with his theory of instincts, his considerations of mortality and the teleological character of our existence. This book appeals to students and researchers and presents a genetic account of our selfhood, one that unifies Husserl's different claims about who and what we are.

This book provides the first detailed study in English of the religious philosophy of Vasilii Rozanov, one of the most influential and controversial thinkers of Russia's Silver Age. It examines his subversion of traditional Russian Orthodoxy, including his reverence for the Creation, his focus on the family, and his worship of sex.Rozanov is one of the towering figures of Russian culture, a major influence on thinkers and writers such as Bakhtin, Maiakovskii, and Mandelshtam, as well as many European writers. He critiqued Orthodox theology, and wrote extensively on philosophy, literature, and politics, and helped reform marriage and divorce laws.His enormous contribution to Russian thought has been largely neglected, and much of his work has been misunderstood. Ure addresses this by examining the basis of Rozanov's religious philosophy, the Creation of the Earth and the Book of Genesis.>

It is widely agreed that there is such a thing as sensory phenomenology and imagistic phenomenology. The central concern of the cognitive phenomenology debate is whether there is a distinctive "cognitive phenomenology"--that is, a kind of phenomenology that has cognitive or conceptual character in some sense that needs to be precisely determined. This volume presents new work by leading philosophers in the field, and addresses the question of whether conscious thought has cognitive phenomenology. It also includes a number of essays which consider whether cognitive phenomenology is part of conscious perception and conscious emotion.
Three broad themes run through the volume. First, some authors focus on the question of how the notion of cognitive phenomenology ought to be understood. How should the notion of cognitive phenomenology be defined? Are there different kinds of cognitive phenomenology? A second theme concerns the existence of cognitive phenomenology. Some contributors defend the existence of a distinctive cognitive phenomenology, whereas others deny it. The arguments for and against the existence of cognitive phenomenology raise questions concerning the nature of first-person knowledge of thought, the relationship between consciousness and intentionality, and the scope of the explanatory gap. A third theme concerns the implications of the cognitive phenomenology debate. What are the implications of the debate for accounts of our introspective access to conscious thought and for accounts of the very nature of conscious thought? Cognitive Phenomenology brings the debate to the forefront of philosophy, and provides a state-of-the-art account of the issues at stake.

In this highly readable and well-arranged compilation-including his much-celebrated "The Practice of Reading Good Books" and award-winning "Playing with Bateson"-Corey Anton brings together some of his most accessible and well-received essays. The collection, in addition to advancing and integrating the fields of media ecology and general semantics, will be of great interest to people who are concerned over the changing role of reading and literacy in contemporary life. A stimulating and provocative book having wide relevance to scholars and students in the areas of semiotics, rhetorical theory, orality/literacy studies, philosophy of communication, pedagogical theory, and communication theory, Communication Uncovered offers countless insights and broad-based orientations regarding the nature of language, linguistic and communicative habits, communication technologies, and symbolic practices more generally. This is a "must have" resource for anyone interested in multidisciplinary communication theory.

Prolegomena to a Carnal Hermeneutics introduces the importance of body politics from both Eastern and Western perspectives. Hwa Yol Jung begins with Giambattista Vico's anti-Cartesianism as the birth of the discipline. He then explores the homecoming of Greek mousike (performing arts), which included oral poetry, dance, drama, and music; Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogical body politics; the making of body politics in Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Levinas, and Luce Irigaray; Marshall McLuhan's transversal and embodied philosophy of communication; and transversal geophilosophy. This tour de force will be an engaging read for anyone interested in the above thinkers, as well as for students and scholars of comparative philosophy, communication theory, environmental philosophy, political philosophy, or continental philosophy

Concepts seem to work best when created in that interspace between theory and praxis, between philosophy, art, and science. Deleuze himself has generated many concepts in this encounter between philosophy and non-philosophy (art, literature, film, botany, etc): his ideas of affects and percepts, of becoming, the stutter, movement-image and time-image, the rhizome, to name but a few. In the case of this volume, the "other" is the "other" to English language/culture (and its philosophy): what happens, if instead of "other disciplines," we take other cultures, other languages, other philosophies? Does not the focus on English as a hegemonic language of academic discourse deny us a plethora of possibilities, of possible Denkfiguren, of possible concepts? This collection is a kind of travelogue. The journey does not follow a particular trajectory-some countries are not on the map; some are visited twice. So, there is no claim to completeness involved here-it is rather an invitation to answer to the call ... there is much to explore!

Most human action has a technical dimension. This book examines four components of this technical dimension. First, in all actions, various individual, organizational or institutional agents combine actional capabilities with tools, institutions, infrastructure and other elements by means of which they act. Second, the deployment of capabilities and means is permeated by ethical aspirations and hesitancies. Third, all domains of action are affected by these ethical dilemmas. Fourth, the dimensions of the technicity of action are typical of human life in general, and not just a regional or culturally specific phenomenon. In this study, an interdisciplinary approach is adopted to encompass the broad anthropological scope of this study and combine this bigger picture with detailed attention to the socio-historical particularities of action as it plays out in different contexts. Hermeneutics (the philosophical inquiry into the human phenomena of meaning, understanding and interpretation) and social science (as the study of all human affairs) are the two main disciplinary orientations of this book. This study clarifies the technical dimension of the entire spectrum of human action ranging from daily routine to the extreme of violent protest.