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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Western philosophy
This is the first English translation of a compelling and highly
original reading of Epicurus by Jean-Marie Guyau. This book has
long been recognized as one of the best and most concerted attempts
to explore one of the most important, yet controversial ancient
philosophers whose thought, Guyau claims, remains vital to modern
and contemporary culture. Throughout the text we are introduced to
the origins of the philosophy of pleasure in Ancient Greece, with
Guyau clearly demonstrating how this idea persists through the
history of philosophy and how it is an essential trait in the
Western tradition. With an introduction by Keith Ansell-Pearson and
Federico Testa, which contextualizes the work of Guyau within the
canon of French thought, and notes on both further reading and on
Epicurean scholarship more generally, this translation also acts as
a critical introduction to the philosophy of Guyau and Epicurus.
The German poet and mystic Novalis once identified philosophy as a
form of homesickness. More than two centuries later, as modernity's
displacements continue to intensify, we feel Novalis's homesickness
more than ever. Yet nowhere has a longing for home flourished more
than in contemporary environmental thinking, and particularly in
eco-phenomenology. If only we can reestablish our sense of material
enmeshment in nature, so the logic goes, we might reverse the
degradation we humans have wrought-and in saving the earth we can
once again dwell in the nearness of our own being. Unsettling
Nature opens with a meditation on the trouble with such ecological
homecoming narratives, which bear a close resemblance to narratives
of settler colonial homemaking. Taylor Eggan demonstrates that the
Heideggerian strain of eco-phenomenology-along with its well-trod
categories of home, dwelling, and world-produces uncanny effects in
settler colonial contexts. He reads instances of nature's
defamiliarization not merely as psychological phenomena but also as
symptoms of the repressed consciousness of coloniality. The book at
once critiques Heidegger's phenomenology and brings it forward
through chapters on Willa Cather, D. H. Lawrence, Olive Schreiner,
Doris Lessing, and J. M. Coetzee. Suggesting that alienation may in
fact be "natural" to the human condition and hence something worth
embracing instead of repressing, Unsettling Nature concludes with a
speculative proposal to transform eco-phenomenology into
"exo-phenomenology"-an experiential mode that engages deeply with
the alterity of others and with the self as its own Other.
When our smartphones distract us, much more is at stake than a
momentary lapse of attention. Our use of smartphones can interfere
with the building-blocks of meaningfulness and the actions that
shape our self-identity. By analyzing social interactions and
evolving experiences, Roholt reveals the mechanisms of
smartphone-distraction that impact our meaningful projects and
activities. Roholt's conception of meaning in life draws from a
disparate group of philosophers - Susan Wolf, John Dewey, Hubert
Dreyfus, Martin Heidegger, and Albert Borgmann. Central to Roholt's
argument are what Borgmann calls focal practices: dinners with
friends, running, a college seminar, attending sporting events. As
a recurring example, Roholt develops the classification of musical
instruments as focal things, contending that musical performance
can be fruitfully understood as a focal practice. Through this
exploration of what generates meaning in life, Roholt makes us
rethink the place we allow smartphones to occupy in the everyday.
But he remains cautiously optimistic. This thoughtful, needed
interrogation of smartphones shows how we can establish a positive
role for technologies within our lives.
This study illuminates the complex interplay between Deleuze and
Guattari's philosophy and architecture. Presenting their
wide-ranging impact on late 20th- and 21st-century architecture,
each chapter focuses on a core Deleuzian/Guattarian philosophical
concept and one key work of architecture which evokes, contorts, or
extends it. Challenging the idea that a concept or theory defines
and then produces the physical work and not vice versa, Chris L.
Smith positions the relationship between Deleuze and Guattari's
philosophy and the field of architecture as one that is mutually
substantiating and constitutive. In this framework, modes of
architectural production and experimentation become inextricable
from the conceptual territories defined by these two key thinkers,
producing a rigorous discussion of theoretical, practical, and
experimental engagements with their ideas.
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