In Beckett, Literature and the Ethics of Alterity Weller argues through an analysis of the interrelated topics of translation, comedy, and gender that to read Beckett in this way is to miss the strangely 'anethical' nature of his work, as opposed to the notion that the literary event constitutes the affirmation of an alterity.

Today's leading theories of meaning, chiefly those of Michael Dummett and Donald Davidson, depend crucially upon Gottlob Frege's distinctions between sense and reference, sense and utterance-force, and sense and tone. But while the notions of reference, sense, and force have dominated the discussion, the subtle workings of tone have received scant attention. Long overdue, this is the first comprehensive study of tone. Careful analysis of the more than two dozen varieties identified by Frege and Dummett reveals serious weaknesses in their explanatory framework. The author sketches a broader conception in terms of speakers correctly making things out to be a certain way, a formulation that avoids the demonstrated shortcomings of Fregean truth-conditional accounts while capturing the representational character of meaning as this applies right across the language-not only to words and sentences, but to discreet linguistic components such as word-order, mood of the verb, and patterns of intonation and stress.

Pluralist democratic systems, according to Philipe Braud, do not do what they claim to do, but rather, serve to channel, diffuse, or reconcile society's conflicts. As one reviewer of the original French edition notes, the book can be seen as part of a long tradition in European political thought that "sees democracy as a front for capitalism." Braud asserts that pluralist democracy is credible only because of the complete failure of communism. There is no government by the people; "the rule of law" is a tautology. What fundamental changes occur happen because of the forces of economics, culture, and labor, and in response to political direction. The efficacy of democracy comes from its ability to manage social emotions, specifically by addressing anguish with promises of security and identity: by meeting the need to be wooed and seduced by constant personalization of politics, offering the illusion of choice; by transposing the frustrations of gender, age, and class inequalities into the political domain; by providing pleasure in the game of politics; and by promising greed, power, and its prerequisites. Pluralist democracies know best how to manage these emotions, and how to use them without suffocating them. A powerful and disturbing vision of pluralist democracy that will be of great interest to students and scholars of contemporary political thought.

It is usually assumed that Wittgenstein's philosophical development is determined either by one dramatic or one subtle change of mind. This book challenges the one-change view. Wittgenstein had many changes of mind and they are so substantial that he can be understood as holding several different philosophies in the late twenties and early thirties. Early in 1929, Wittgenstein envisages a complementary (phenomenological) symbolism in order to carry out the Tractarian task of giving the limits of language and thought. The symbolism failed and he then developed a comprehensive notion of 'grammar' that, he hoped, would fulfill the task. This notion of 'grammar' leads in 1930-1 to the calculus conception of language, which is still defended in the Big Typescript (1932-3). As a complementary tool of the calculus conception, Wittgenstein invents the genetic method, which aims at dissolving philosophical puzzles by the understanding of how they come about. After the Big Typescript, Wittgenstein assimilates an anthropological perspective and puts the genetic method at the center of the stage of his philosophy. The use of the genetic method (associated with an anthropological perspective) develops gradually, taking various forms of application: in the Blue Book, in the versions of the Brown Book (1934-6), and in the Philosophical Investigations.

The question of what characterizes feelings of being alive is a puzzling and controversial one. Are we dealing with a unique affective phenomenon or can it be integrated into existing classifications of emotions and moods? What might be the natural basis for such feelings? What could be considered their specifically human dimension? These issues are addressed by researchers from various disciplines, including philosophy of mind and emotions, psychology, and history of art. This volume contains original papers on the topic of feelings of being alive by Fiorella Battaglia, Eva-Maria Engelen, Joerg Fingerhut, Thomas Fuchs, Alice Holzhey-Kunz, Matthias Jung, Tanja Klemm, Riccardo Manzotti, Sabine Marienberg, Matthew Ratcliffe, Arbogast Schmitt, Jan Slaby, and Achim Stephan.

The digital age we now live in is fundamentally changing how we relate to our perceptions and images. Daniel O'Shiel provides the first comprehensive phenomenology of virtual technology in order to show how the previously well-established experiential lines and structures between three basic categories of phenomenal experience - our everyday perceptions of reality; our everyday fantasies of irreality; and our everyday engagements with external images, not least digital ones - are becoming blurred, inverted or are even collapsing in a new era where a specific type of virtuality is coming to the fore. O'Shiel examines in depth just what this means for the phenomenology behind it, as well as the concrete practical consequences going forward. The work is divided into two main parts. In the first O'Shiel fully investigates the phenomenological natures of perception and imagination through close textual analyses of the relevant works by Edmund Husserl, Eugen Fink and Jean-Paul Sartre. In each phenomenologist perception and imagination are ultimately seen as different in kind, although the dividing line differs, especially with reference to a middle category of 'image-consciousness' (Bildbewusstsein). This first part argues for basic phenomenological differences between perceptions; physical and external images; and more mental imagery, while also allowing for a more general gradation between them. The second part then applies these theoretical findings to some of the most influential 'virtual technologies' today - social media; online gaming; and some virtual, augmented and mixed reality technologies - in order to show how previously clear categories of real and irreal, present and absent, genuine and fake, and even true and false, are becoming less so.

"Deleuze, Whitehead, Bergson: Rhizomatic Connections" is the first book length collection of essays exploring the relations between the work of Gilles Deleuze, Alfred North Whitehead and Henri Bergson. With contributions by established international scholars from cultural studies, philosophy and theology, "Deleuze, Whitehead, Bergson" examines the articulation between their concepts, methods and modes of doing philosophy and how their thought relates to different disciplines. Organized thematically, each essay examines the section themes in the context of the contrasts, differences and conjunctions--the rhizomatic connections--between their shared concepts. "Deleuze, Whitehead, Bergson" will make a significant impact upon and contribution to the scholarship on these philosophers, challenging many of the preconceptions, the "images of thought," through which they are all too often read and interpreted.

It is widely held in contemporary moral philosophy that moral agency must be explained in terms of some more basic account of human nature. This book presents a fundamental challenge to this view. Specifically, it argues that sympathy, understood as an immediate and unthinking response to another's suffering, plays a constitutive role in our conception of what it is to be human, and specifically in that conception of human life on which anything we might call a moral life depends.

Usually Husserl's analysis of time-constitution is thought of in terms of three phases that are roughly bound up with the central publications, the Lectures, the Bernau Manuscripts and the C-Manuscripts. Today, after the publication of the central texts incorporating the last two phases, the discussion of Husserl's analysis of time-constitution has entered a new phase. This is true for the interpretation of the latter two texts but it also affects out reading of the Lectures. Today, in the aftermath of the recent publication of the C-Manuscipts, it seems more likely that the seemingly separated first two phases are more close to each other than expected. The new and broader context allows for more thorough interpretation of the whole enterprise of time-constitution.

By publishing this collection of contributions of the best international experts in this field, entailing some refreshing approaches of new coming researchers, this collection gives an overview of the most contemporary interpretations of this fundamental phenomenological theme.

This volume brings together distinguished Wittgenstein scholars and renowned philosophers of language in order to examine what Wittgenstein has to say about language and to assess its significance for contemporary philosophy.

The book shows that Heidegger's Aristotle interpretation of the 1920s is integral to his thinking as an attempt to lead metaphysics back to its own presuppositions, and that his reflection on art in the 1930s necessitates a revision of this interpretation itself. It argues that it is only in tracing this movement of Heidegger's Aristotle interpretation that we can adequately engage with the historical significance of his thinking, and with the fate of metaphysics and aesthetics in the present age.

Knowing that we are finite, how can we live to the fullest? Philosopher George Santayana suggested 'spirituality' enables us to enjoy what we have. This book clarifies and extends Santayana's account of spirituality, while suggesting how the detachment of spirituality can relieve human suffering, enrich our lives, and make us better human beings.

Kant, in the Critique of pure reason, only dedicates a few pages to the principle of Anticipations of Perception and only a few critical studies are outspokenly dedicated to this issue in recent critical literature. But if one considers the history of post-Kantian philosophy, one can immediately perceive the great importance of the new definition of the relationship between reality and negation, which Kant's principle proposes. Critical philosophy is here radically opposed to the pre-critical metaphysical tradition: "Reality" no longer appears as absolutely positive being, which excludes all negativity from itself, and "negation" is not reduced to being a simple removal, the mere absence of being. Instead, reality and negation behave as an equally positive something in respect to one another such that negation is itself a reality that is actively opposed to another reality. Such a definition of the relation between reality and negation became indispensible for post-Kantian Philosophy and represents a central aspect of Kantian-inspired philosophy in respect to Leibnizian metaphysics. The present work therefore departs from the hypothesis that the essential philosophical importance of the Anticipations of Perception can only be fully measured by exploring its impact in the Post-Kantian debate.

This collection of essays by scholars from Europe, Asia, North America, and Latin America offers new perspectives of the phenomenological investigation of experiential life on the basis of Husserl's phenomenology. Not only well-known works of Husserl are interpreted from new angles, but also the latest volumes of the Husserliana are closely examined. In a variety of ways, the contributors explore the emergence of reason in experience that is disclosed in the very regions that are traditionally considered to be "irrational" or "pre-rational." The leading idea of such explorations is Husserl's view that perception, affectivity, and volition are regarded as the three aspects of reason. Without affectivity, which is supposedly irrational, no rationality can be established in the spheres of representation and volition, whereas volitional and representational acts consistently structure the process of affective experience. In such a framework, it is also shown that theoretical and practical reason are inseparably intertwined. Thus, the papers collected here can be regarded as a collaborative phenomenological investigation into the entanglement and mutual dependency of the supposedly "rational" and the "irrational" as well as that of the "practical" and the "theoretical."

This lecture, given by Michel Foucault at the College de France, launches an inquiry into the notion of parresia and continues his rereading of ancient philosophy. Through the study of this notion of truth-telling, of speaking out freely, Foucault re-examines Greek citizenship, showing how the courage of the truth forms the forgotten ethical basis of Athenian democracy. The figure of the philosopher king, the condemnation of writing, and Socrates' rejection of political involvement are some of the many topics of ancient philosophy revisited here.

Meaning Diminished examines the complex relationship between semantic analysis and metaphysical inquiry. Kenneth A. Taylor argues that we should expect linguistic and conceptual analysis of natural language to yield far less metaphysical insight into what there is - and the nature of what there is - than many philosophers have imagined. Taking a strong stand against the so-called linguistic turn in philosophy, Taylor contends that philosophers as diverse as Kant, with his Transcendental Idealism, Frege, with his aspirational Platonism, Carnap with his distinction between internal and external questions, and Strawson, with his descriptive metaphysics, have placed too much confidence in the ability of linguistic and conceptual analysis to achieve deep insight into matters of ultimate metaphysics. He urges philosophers who seek such insight to turn away from the interrogation of language and concepts and back to the more direct interrogation of reality itself. In doing so, he maps out the way forward toward a metaphysically modest semantics, in which semantics carries less weighty metaphysical burdens, and toward a revisionary and naturalistic metaphysics, untethered to the a priori analysis of ordinary language.

The human body is not simply a physical, anatomical, or physiological object; in an important sense we are our bodies. In this collection, Sartre scholars and others engage with the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre's brilliant but neglected descriptions of our experience of human bodies. The authors bring a wide variety of perspectives to bear on Sartre's thinking about the body, and, alongside in-depth scholarly historical and critical investigations, bring him into dialogue with feminists, sociologists, psychologists and historians, addressing such questions as: Why have philosophers found it so difficult to conceptualize the relationship between consciousness and the body? Do men and women experience their own bodies in fundamentally different ways? What is pain? What is sexual desire? What is it like to live as a racially marked body in a racist society? How do society and culture shape our bodies, and can we re-shape them?

What does it mean for ethics to say, as Wittgenstein did, that philosophy "leaves everything as it is"? Though clearly absorbed with ethical questions throughout his life and work, Wittgenstein's remarks about the subject do not easily lend themselves to summation or theorizing. Although many moral philosophers cite the influence or inspiration of Wittgenstein, there is little agreement about precisely what it means to do ethics in the light of Wittgenstein. Ethics after Wittgenstein brings together an international cohort of leading scholars in the field to address this problem. The chapters advance a conception of philosophical ethics characterized by an attention to detail, meaning and importance which itself makes ethical demands on its practitioners. Working in conversation with literature and film, engaging deeply with anthropology and critical theory, and addressing contemporary problems from racialized sexual violence against women to the Islamic State, these contributors reclaim Wittgenstein's legacy as an indispensable resource for contemporary ethics.

While the relationship between Kant and other major figures in early analytic philosophy, such as Russell, G. E. Moore, and Rudolf Carnap, has been the subject of full length studies, no such work yet exists on the relationship between Kant and Frege. The Origins of Analytic Philosophy Kant and Frege addresses this gap in our understanding of the origins of early analytic philosophy. Its concern is to chart the nature and significance of Frege's break with Kant over the question of whether arithmetic is a synthetic a priori or an analytic a priori science. In rejecting Kant's claim that arithmetic is an a priori synthetic science, Frege returns to a conception of the scope and power of pure reason that shows important similarities to the philosophical outlook of Kant's great predecessor and philosophical opponent Gottfried Leibniz.Delbert Reed shows how, in his attempts to establish the foundations of arithmetic on analytic principles, Frege developed many of the tools, concerns and problems that would dominate the development of analytic philosophy in the 20th century.

An important contribution to the burgeoning field of the ethics of recognition, this book examines the contradictions inherent in the very concept of intimacy. Working with a wide variety of philosophical and literary sources, it warns against measuring our relationships against ideal standards, since there is no consummate form of intimacy. After analyzing ten major ways that we aim to establish intimacy with one another, including gift-giving, touching, and fetishes, the book concludes that each fails on its own terms, since intimacy wants something that is impossible. The very concept of intimacy is a superlative one; it aims not just for closeness, but for a closeness beyond closeness. Nevertheless, far from a pessimistic diagnosis of the human condition, this is a meditation on how to live intimately in a world in which intimacy is impossible. Rather than contenting itself with a deconstructive approach, it proposes to treat intimacy dialectically. For all its contradictions, it shows intimacy is central to how we understand ourselves and our relations to others.

This Dictionary offers points of entry into Derrida's complex and extensive works.
This Dictionary offers points of entry into Derrida's complex and extensive works.
From 'aporia' to 'yes', the Dictionary suggests ways into Derrida that show what is at stake in his work.
Demonstrates that Derrida is not just about philosophy, but also about politics and pop music.
Explains why deconstruction matters, and how Derrida can change the way you think.
The A-Z entries are framed by essays on the inherent interdisciplinarity of Derrida's work and on Derrida's relationship to a range of other thinkers.

This volume brings out the varieties of forms of philosophical skepticism that have continued to preoccupy philosophers for the past of couple of centuries, as well as the specific varieties of philosophical response that these have engendered - above all, in the work of those who have sought to take their cue from Kant, Wittgenstein, or Cavell - and to illuminate how these philosophical approaches are related to and bear upon one another. The philosophers brought together in this volume are united by the thought that a proper appreciation of the depth of the skeptical challenge must reveal it to be deeply disquieting, in the sense that skepticism threatens not just some set of theoretical commitments, but also-and fundamentally-our very sense of self, world, and other. Second, that skepticism is the proper starting point for any serious attempt to make sense of what philosophy is, and to gauge the prospects of philosophical progress.

Does scepticism threaten our common sense picture of the world? Does it really undermine our deep-rooted certainties? Answers to these questions are offered through a comparative study of the epistemological work of two key figures in the history of analytic philosophy, G. E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Creative force or creative shaping?

This unprecedented effort to plumb the workings of the ontopoiesis of life by disentangling its primordial forces and shaping devices as they enter into the originary matrixes of life yields fascinating insights.

Prepared by the investigation of the first two matrixes (the womb of life' and sharing-in-life', Analecta Husserliana Volume 74) the present collection of essays focuses upon the third and crowning creative matrix, Imaginatio Creatrix here proves itself to be the source and driving force which brings us to the origins of the human mind - human life.
Studies by: Elof Axel Carlson, A-T. Tymieniecka, N. Milkov, Eldon C. Wait, K. Rokstad, M. Golaszewska, M. Kule, W. Kim Rogers, Piotr Mroz, R. Pinilla Burgos, A. Carrillo Canan, G.R. Ronsivalle, J.E. Smith, A. Pawliszyn, A. Rizzacasa, L. Galzigna and M. Galzigna, Jiro Watanabe, M. Jakubczak, K. Tarnowski, M. Durst, W. Pawliszyn, R.A. Kurenkova, Carmen Cozma, E. Supinska-Polit, I.S. Fiut, Gerald Nyenhuis, Osvaldo Rossi, R.D. Sweeney, and D. Ulicka. "