Imagination and Postmodernity addresses the role of the imagination in philosophy today. By focusing on philosophy at the boundary of reason with constant reference to Kant s view of the boundary-limit, it is possible to advance a viable alternative to deconstructing the imagination. Patrick L. Bourgeois puts forth the claim that by refocusing the imagination in the postmodern conversation, a far-reaching contemporary position can be reached that reestablishes the position of the humanities as central against the anti-humanism of deconstruction. This work addresses some of the challenges and problems that emerge in conflicting positions within contemporary philosophy, including a concentration on the role of the imagination in the work of Paul Ricoeur in contrast and in opposition to its role in such postmodern thinkers as Derrida and Lyotard. This treatment requires going back to the role of the imagination in the period of Kant and his immediate followers in order to clarify the various ways of seeing the imagination then and now, for the role today is anticipated in the nineteenth century. Finally, this work, as a creative appropriation of the position of Paul Ricoeur, presents a role for the imagination today that is more encompassing than most thinkers allow for.

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 With new material by Badiou previously unpublished in English this volume is a valuable overview of his recent thinking.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.

Michel Foucault continues to be regarded as one of the most essential thinkers of the twentieth century. A brilliantly evocative writer and conceptual creator, his influence is clearly discernible today across nearly every discipline-philosophy and history, certainly, as well as literary and critical theory, religious and social studies, and the arts. This volume exploits Foucault's insistent blurring of the self-imposed limits formed by the disciplines, with each author in this volume discovering in Foucault's work a model useful for challenging not only these divisions but developing a more fundamental interrogation of modernism. Foucault himself saw the calling into question of modernism to be the permanent task of his life's work, thereby opening a path for rethinking the social. Understanding Foucault, Understanding Modernism shows, on the one hand, that literature and the arts play a fundamental structural role in Foucault's works, while, on the other hand, it shifts to the foreground what it presumes to be motivating Foucault: the interrogation of the problem of modernism. To that end, even his most explicitly historical or strictly epistemological and methodological enquiries directly engage the problem of modernism through the works of writers and artists from de Sade, Mallarme, Baudelaire to Artaud, Manet, Borges, Roussel, and Bataille. This volume, therefore, adopts a transdisciplinary approach, as a way to establish connections between Foucault's thought and the aesthetic problems that emerge out of those specific literary and artistic works, methods, and styles designated "modern." The aim of this volume is to provide a resource for students and scholars not only in the fields of literature and philosophy, but as well those interested in the intersections of art and intellectual history, religious studies, and critical theory.

This volume offers a much needed shift of focus in the study of emotion in the history of philosophy. Discussion has tended to focus on the moral relevance of emotions, and (except in ancient philosophy) the role of emotions in cognitive life has received little attention. Thirteen new essays investigate the continuities between medieval and early modern thinking about the emotions, and open up a contemporary debate on the relationship between emotions, cognition, and reason, and the way emotions figure in our own cognitive lives. A team of leading philosophers of the medieval, renaissance, and early modern periods explore these ideas from the point of view of four key themes: the situation of emotions within the human mind; the intentionality of emotions and their role in cognition; emotions and action; the role of emotion in self-understanding and the social situation of individuals.

It was not only in his histories that Voltaire thought, worried and wrote about history. In fact, many of Voltaire's most provocative and tantalising remarks on history lie outside the province of the so-called OEuvres historiques, in the vast expanses of his complete works, and historical events and historical figures elicit some of his most imaginative writing. Voltaire's propensity to write about history in works that are not histories sheds new light on his historiographical thought and temper. The historian that emerges from these pages is, by turns, a feverish, bed-ridden man haunted by the St Bartholomew massacre (an overwhelming preoccupation of Voltaire's, although it receives only cursory attention in the prose histories) an inspired poet mythologising Henri IV's epic adventures, a bawdy satirist amused by Joan of Arc, a raconteur nourished by historical anecdotes, even a doting uncle winking at his niece as he elaborates a philosophy of history. In all these forms and at all these times, an interest in history is integral and abiding. Far from being marginal or oblique, these works yield important insights into a pervasive Voltairean sense of history which finds in these different forms both the freedoms and the traditions - and indeed often the readers - denied to the OEuvres historiques. Moreover, innovative works like the Henriade and Candide, which fall into this category, prove as influential to historians as Voltaire's recognised histories. Voltaire's prodigious energy and versatility in fields other than history have probably harmed his reputation as a historian when, already in the eighteenth century, historians were increasingly expected to be specialists. This study shows that Voltaire's historiographical thought ranges across areas and texts artificially sundered by subsequent editorial compartmentalisations, and it reveals a restlessly complex, inventive writer confronting history in numerous different guises.

Exploring the political ideology of Republicanism under the Roman emperors of the first century AD, Sam Wilkinson puts forward the hypothesis that there was indeed opposition to the political structure and ideology of the rulers on the grounds of Republicanism. While some Romans wanted a return to the Republic, others wanted the emperor to ensure his reign was as close to Republican moral and political ideology as possible. Analysing the discourse of the period, the book charts how the view of law, morality and behaviour changed under the various Imperial regimes of the first century AD. Uniquely, this book explores how emperors could choose to set their regime in a more Republican or more Imperial manner, thus demonstrating it was possible for both the opposition and an emperor to be Republican. The book concludes by providing evidence of Republicanism in the first century AD which not only created opposition to the emperors, but also became part of the political debate in this period.

Modern Conspiracy attempts to sketch a new conception of conspiracy theory. Where many commentators have sought to characterize conspiracy theory in terms of the collapse of objectivity and Enlightenment reason, Fleming and Jane trace the important role of conspiracy in the formation of the modern world: the scientific revolution, social contract theory, political sovereignty, religious paranoia and mass communication media. Rather than see in conspiratorial thinking the imminent death of Enlightenment reason, and a regression to a new Dark Age, Modern Conspiracy contends that many characteristic features of conspiracies tap very deeply into the history of the Enlightenment itself: among other things, its vociferous critique of established authorities, and a conception of political sovereignty fuelled by fear of counter-plots. Drawing out the roots of modern conspiratorial thinking leads us to truths less salacious and scandalous than the claims of conspiracy theorists themselves yet ultimately far more salutary: about mass communication; about individual and crowd psychology; and about our conception of and relation to knowledge.Perhaps, ultimately, what conspiracy theory affords us is a renewed opportunity to reflect on our very relationship to the truth itself.

It is widely believed in philosophy of science that nobody can claim that any verdict of science is forced upon us by the effects of a physical world upon our sense organs and instruments. The Quine-Duhem problem supposedly allows us to resist any conclusion. Views on language aside, Quine is supposed to have shown this decisively. But it is just false. In many scientific examples, there is simply no room to doubt that a particular hypothesis is responsible for a refutation or established by the observations. Fault Tracing shows how to play independently established hypotheses against each other to determine whether an arbitrary hypothesis needs to be altered in the light of (apparently) refuting evidence. It analyses real examples from natural science, as well as simpler cases. It argues that, when scientific theories have a structure that prevents them from using this method, the theory looks wrong, and is subject to serious criticism. This is a new, and potentially far-reaching, theory of empirical justification.

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.

On the basis of the Thomist and Pietist tradition, Christian August Crusius (1715-1775) elaborated a philosophically challenging and influential alternative to the philosophy of Christian Wolff. For the first time, this edited collection offers a rigorous overview of the work of the Leipzig-based philosopher and theologian.

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.

The concept of resistance has always been central to the reception of Hegel's philosophy. The prevalent image of Hegel's system, which continues to influence the scholarship to this day, is that of an absolutist, monist metaphysics which overcomes all resistance, sublating or assimilating all differences into a single organic 'Whole'. For that reason, the reception of Hegel has always been marked by the question of how to resist Hegel: how to think that which remains outside of or other to the totalizing system of dialectics. In recent years the work of scholars such as Catherine Malabou, Slavoj Zizek, Rebecca Comay and Frank Ruda has brought considerable nuance to this debate. A new reading of Hegel has emerged which challenges the idea that there is no place for difference, otherness or resistance in Hegel, both by refusing to reduce Hegel's complex philosophy to a straightforward systematic narrative and by highlighting particular moments within Hegel's philosophy which seem to counteract the traditional understanding of dialectics. This book brings together established and new voices in this field in order to show that the notion of resistance is central to this revaluation of Hegel.

This book is mainly concerned with elaborating an account of the unique theoretical essence and activities of philosophy. What manner of civilization should modern humans forge? On what developmental path should a nation embark? What lifestyle should each individual choose? These are the most fundamental issues of our time. Profoundly implicit in the choices outlined above is a deeper question: What are the criteria of choice? An examination of these criteria is a reflection on the premises constituting thought, or a critique of the premises underlying thought. Using a "critique of the premises underlying thought" as the basic idea and hermeneutic principle in philosophy will open a wider theoretical space for contemporary philosophy so as to avoid the predicament of being "pseudo-scientific" or "pseudo-artistic." It will also present contemporary philosophy with a realistic path of development for the task of reflecting on the criteria of choice. This book seeks to formulate concrete philosophical arguments for a critique of the basic beliefs, logic, modes, concepts, and philosophical ideas which constitute thought, with the aim of demonstrating the vigorous self-critique and inexhaustible theoretical space found in philosophical development. This book provides a new principle of interpretation for understanding philosophy and, in turn, uses this principle to develop a critique of the premises underlying thought, thereby furthering the contemporary development of philosophy. This book encompasses a critique of the premises underlying thought, which mainly includes the basic beliefs, logic, modes, concepts, and philosophical ideas constituting thought. Such a critique should comprise five aspects: First, the basic beliefs constituting thought propose a critique of the identity of thought and being; second, the basic logic constituting thought refers to a critique of the formal, intensional, and practical logic of thought; third, the basic modes constituting thought denote a critique of the basic modes by which humans comprehend the world, including commonsense, religion, art, and science; fourth, the basic concepts constituting thought entail a critique centering on being, the world, history, truth, value, and other basic concepts; and finally, the philosophical ideas constituting thought indicate a critique of philosophy itself. A critique aligned on these five aspects will provide a general philosophical overview of the premise critique of thought.

What makes individuals what they are? How should they judge their social and political interaction with the world? What makes them authentic or inauthentic? This original and provocative study explores the concept of "authenticity" and its relevance for radical politics. Weaving together close readings of three 20th century thinkers: Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers and Jean-Paul Sartre with the concept of authenticity, Stephen Eric Bronner illuminates the phenomenological foundations for self-awareness that underpin our sense of identity and solidarity. He claims that different expressions of the existential tradition compete with one another in determining how authenticity might be experienced, but all of them ultimately rest on self-referential judgments. The author's own new framework for a political ethic at once serves as a corrective and an alternative. Wonderfully rich, insightful, and nuanced, Stephen Eric Bronner has produced another bookshelf staple that speaks to crucial issues in politics, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. Existentialism, Authenticity, Solidarity will appeal to scholars, students and readers from the general public alike.

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.

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. ‘Where you arrive does not matter so much as what sort of person you are when you arrive there.’ Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4BC–AD 65) is one of the most eminent Roman philosophers. Instrumental in guiding the Roman Empire under Emperor Nero, Seneca influenced him from a young age with his Stoic principles. Later in life, Seneca wrote Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium, or Letters from a Stoic, detailing these principles in full, sharing the many traditional themes of Stoic philosophy, such as the contempt of death, the value of friendship and virtue as the supreme good. Using Gummere’s translation from the early twentieth century, this selection of Seneca’s letters shows his belief in the ethical ideas of Stoicism and continues to provide practical, personal counsel for readers seeking guidance in the turbulent twenty-first century.

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.