In a "return" to Edmund Husserl and Sigmund Freud, Intimacy and the Anxieties of Cinematic Flesh explores how we can engage these foundational thinkers of phenomenology and psychoanalysis in an original approach to film. The idea of the intimate spectator caught up in anxiety is developed to investigate a range of topics central to these critical approaches and cinema, including: flesh as a disruptive state formed in the relationships of intimacy and anxiety; time and the formation of cinema's enduring objects; space and things; the sensual, the "real" and the unconscious; wildness, disruption, and resistance; and the nightmare, reading "phantasy" across the critical fields. Along with Husserl and Freud, other key thinkers discussed include Edith Stein, Roman Ingarden, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Mikel Dufrenne in phenomenology; Melanie Klein, Ernest Jones, Julia Kristeva, and Rosine Lefort in psychoanalysis. Framing these issues and critical approaches is the question: how might Husserlian phenomenology and Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalysis, so often seen as contradistinctive, be explored through their potential commonalities rather than differences? In addressing such a question, this book postulates a new approach to film through this phenomenological/psychoanalytic reconceptualization. A wide range of films are examined not simply as exemplars, but to test the idea that cinema itself can be a version of critical thinking.

Greek Heroes in and out of Hades is a study on heroism and mortality from Homer to Plato. In a collection of thirty enjoyable essays, Stamatia Dova combines intertextual research and thought-provoking analysis to shed new light on concepts of the hero in the Iliad and the Odyssey, Bacchylides 5, Plato's Symposium, and Euripides' Alcestis. Through systematic readings of a wide range of seemingly unrelated texts, the author offers a cohesive picture of heroic character in a variety of literary genres. Her characterization of Achilles, Odysseus, and Heracles is artfully supported by a comprehensive overview of the theme of descent to the underworld in Homer, Bacchylides, and Euripides. Aimed at the specialist as well as the general reader, Greek Heroes in and out of Hades brings innovative Classical scholarship and insightful literary criticism to a wide audience.

This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.

The seventeenth century witnesses the demise of two core doctrines in the theory of perception: naive realism about color, sound, and other sensible qualities and the empirical theory, drawn from Alhacen and Roger Bacon, which underwrote it. This created a problem for seventeenth century philosophers: how is that we use qualities such as color, feel, and sound to locate objects in the world, even though these qualities are not real? Ejecting such sensible qualities from the mind-independent world at once makes for a cleaner ontology, since bodies can now be understood in purely geometrical terms, and spawns a variety of fascinating complications for the philosophy of perception. If sensible qualities are not part of the mind-independent world, just what are they, and what role, if any, do they play in our cognitive economy? We seemingly have to use color to visually experience objects. Do we do so by inferring size, shape, and motion from color? Or is it a purely automatic operation, accomplished by divine decree? This volume traces the debate over perceptual experience in early modern France, covering such figures as Antoine Arnauld, Robert Desgabets, and Pierre-Sylvain Regis alongside their better-known countrymen Rene Descartes and Nicolas Malebranche.

The first collection of its kind, The Continental Philosophy of Film Reader is the essential anthology of writings by continental philosophers on cinema, representing the last century of film-making and thinking about film, as well as all of the major schools of Continental thought: phenomenology and existentialism, Marxism and critical theory, semiotics and hermeneutics, psychoanalysis, and postmodernism. Included here are not only the classic texts in continental philosophy of film, from Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" to extracts of Deleuze's Cinema and Barthes's Mythologies, but also the earliest works of Continental philosophy of film, from thinkers such as Georg Lukacs, and little-read gems by philosophical giants such as Sartre and Beauvoir. The book demonstrates both the philosophical significance of these thinkers' ideas about film, as well their influence on filmmakers in Europe and across the globe. In addition, however, this wide-ranging collection also teaches us how important film is to the last century of European philosophical thought. Almost every major continental European thinker of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has had something to say-sometimes, quite a lot to say-about cinema: as an art form, as a social or political phenomenon, as a linguistic device and conveyor of information, as a projection of our fears and desires, as a site for oppression and resistance, or as a model on the basis of which some of us, at least, learn how to live. Purpose built for classroom use, with pedagogical features introducing and contextualizing the extracts, this reader is an indispensable tool for students and researchers in philosophy of film, film studies and the history of cinema.

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.

Speculative realism is one of the most talked-about movements in recent Continental philosophy. It has been discussed widely amongst the younger generation of Continental philosophers seeking new philosophical approaches and promises to form the cornerstone of future debates in the field. This book introduces the contexts out of which speculative realism has emerged and provides an overview of the major contributors and latest developments. It guides the reader through the important questions asked by realism (what can I know? what is reality?), examining philosophy's perennial questions in new ways. The book begins with the speculative realist's critique of 'correlationism', the view that we can never reach what is real beneath our language systems, our means for perception, or our finite manner of being-in-the-world. It goes on to critically review the work of the movement's most important thinkers, including Quentin Meillassoux, Ray Brassier, and Graham Harman, but also other important writers such as Jane Bennett and Catherine Malabou whose writings delineate alternative approaches to the real. It interrogates the crucial questions these thinkers have raised and concludes with a look toward the future of speculative realism, especially as it relates to the reality of time.

For centuries, philosophers have addressed the ontological question of whether God exists. Most recently, philosophers have begun to explore the axiological question of what value impact, if any, God's existence has (or would have) on our world. This book brings together four prestigious philosophers, Michael Almeida, Travis Dumsday, Perry Hendricks and Graham Oppy, to present different views on the axiological question about God. Each contributor expresses a position on axiology, which is then met with responses from the remaining contributors. This structure makes for genuine discussion and developed exploration of the key issues at stake, and shows that the axiological question is more complicated than it first appears. Chapters explore a range of relevant issues, including the relationship between Judeo-Christian theism and non-naturalist alternatives such as pantheism, polytheism, and animism/panpsychism. Further chapters consider the attitudes and emotions of atheists within the theism conversation, and develop and evaluate the best arguments for doxastic pro-theism and doxastic anti-theism. Of interest to those working on philosophy of religion, theism and ethics, this book presents lively accounts of an important topic in an exciting and collaborative way, offered by renowned experts in this area.

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.

Anaximander, the sixth century BCE philosopher of Miletus, is often credited as being the instigator of both science and philosophy. The first recorded philosopher to posit the idea of the boundless cosmos, he was also the first to attempt to explain the origins of the world and humankind in rational terms. Anaximander's philosophy encompasses theories of justice, cosmogony, geometry, cosmology, zoology and meteorology. "Anaximander: A Re-assessment" draws together these wide-ranging threads into a single, coherent picture of the man, his worldview and his legacy to the history of thought. Arguing that Anaximander's statements are both apodeictic and based on observation of the world around him, Andrew Gregory examines how Anaximander's theories can all be construed in such a way that they are consistent with and supportive of each other. This includes the tenet that the philosophical elements of Anaximander's thought (his account of the" apeiron," the extant fragment) can be harmonised to support his views on the natural world. The work further explores how these theories relate to early Greek thought and in particular conceptions of theogony and meterology in Hesiod and Homer.

In Nietzsche's Search for Philosophy: On the Middle Writings Keith Ansell-Pearson makes a novel and thought-provoking contribution to our appreciation of Nietzsche's neglected middle writings. These are the texts Human, All Too Human (1878-80), Dawn (1881), and The Gay Science (1882). There is a truth in the observation of Havelock Ellis that the works Nietzsche produced between 1878 and 1882 represent the maturity of his genius. In this study he explores key aspects of Nietzsche's philosophical activity in his middle writings, including his conceptions of philosophy, his commitment to various enlightenments, his critique of fanaticism, his search for the heroic-idyllic, his philosophy of modesty and his conception of ethics, and his search for joy and happiness. The book will appeal to readers across philosophy and the humanities, especially to those with an interest in Nietzsche and anyone who has a concern with the fate of philosophy in the modern world.

The Dictionary of Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Dutch Philosophers covers the 200-year period of the Dutch Republic, when its people experienced a Golden Age in the arts, in sea trade and in philosophy that left a lasting impression on European culture. The Dutch witnessed nothing less than a philosophical revolution, driven to a large extent by the migres from France, Finland, Portugal, Britain, Switzerland, Germany and elsewhere, who provided the Golden Age with its thinkers. As a result of the unique position held by the Netherlands during the period, this dictionary constitutes an anthology of European thought at large. Included are all foreign thinkers (such as Rene Descartes and Pierre Bayle) who exercised a major influence on the philosophical life of the Dutch Republic and who developed their ideas through interaction with other philosophers residing there. Among these resident philosophers, as well as all the well-known figures such as Benedict Spinoza, many lesser-known ones are included. Each entry includes a bibliography listing the subject's major and minor philosophical writings and giving guidance to further reading. A system of cross-references makes it easy for the reader to pursue connections and influences. In addition, the dictionary features entries on Dutch universities, city academies, publishing houses and journals. This work will be of interest to all students and scholars of the period.

Dynamic Reading examines the reception history of Epicurean philosophy through a series of eleven case studies, which range chronologically from the latter days of the Roman Republic to late twentieth-century France and America. Rather than attempting to separate an original Epicureanism from its later readings and misreadings, this collection studies the philosophy together with its subsequent reception, focusing in particular on the ways in which it has provided terms and conceptual tools for defining how we read and respond to texts, artwork, and the world more generally. Whether it helps us to characterize the "swerviness" of literary influence, the transformative effects of philosophy, or the "events" that shape history, Epicureanism has been a dynamic force in the intellectual history of the West. These essays seek to capture some of that dynamism.

Peter C. Hodgson explores Hegel's bold vision of history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom. Following an introductory chapter on the textual sources, the key categories, and the modes of writing history that Hegel distinguishes, Hodgson presents a new interpretation of Hegel's conception of freedom. Freedom is not simply a human production, but takes shape through the interweaving of the divine idea and human passions, and such freedom defines the purpose of historical events in the midst of apparent chaos. Freedom is also a process that unfolds through stages of historical/cultural development and is oriented to an end that occurs within history (the 'kingdom of freedom'). The purpose and the process of history are tragic, however, because history is also a 'slaughterhouse' that shatters even the finest human creations and requires a constant rebuilding. Hegel's God is not a supreme being or 'large entity' but the 'true infinite' that encompasses the finite. History manifests the rule of God ('providence'), and it functions as the justification of God ('theodicy'). But the God who rules in and is justified by history is a crucified God who takes the suffering, anguish, and evil of the world into and upon godself, accomplishing reconciliation in the midst of ongoing estrangement and inescapable death. Shapes of Freedom addresses these themes in the context of present-day questions about what they mean and whether they still have validity.

The early modern philosopher Anne Conway offers a remarkable synthesis of ideas from differing philosophical traditions that deserve our attention today. Exploring all of the major aspects of Conway’s thought, this book presents a valuable guide to her contribution to the history of philosophy. Through a close reading of her central text, Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy (1690), it considers her intellectual context and addresses some of the outstanding interpretive issues concerning her philosophy. Contrasting her position with that of contemporaries such as Henry More, Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont and George Keith, it examines her critique of the prominent philosophical schools of the time, including Cartesian dualism and Hobbesian materialism. From her accounts of dualism, time and God to the often overlooked elements of her work such as her theory of freedom and salvation, The Philosophy of Anne Conway illuminates the ideas and legacy of an important early-modern woman philosopher.

This book provides a new interpretation of the ethical theory of G.W.F. Hegel. The aim is not only to give a new interpretation for specialists in German Idealism, but also to provide an analysis that makes Hegel's ethics accessible for all scholars working in ethical and political philosophy. While Hegel's political philosophy has received a good deal of attention in the literature, the core of his ethics has eluded careful exposition, in large part because it is contained in his claims about conscience. This book shows that, contrary to accepted wisdom, conscience is the central concept for understanding Hegel's view of practical reason and therefore for understanding his ethics as a whole. The argument combines careful exegesis of key passages in Hegel's texts with detailed treatments of problems in contemporary ethics and reconstructions of Hegel's answers to those problems. The main goals are to render comprehensible Hegel's notoriously difficult texts by framing arguments with debates in contemporary ethics, and to show that Hegel still has much to teach us about the issues that matter to us most. Central topics covered in the book are the connection of self-consciousness and agency, the relation of motivating and justifying reasons, moral deliberation and the holism of moral reasoning, mutual recognition, and the rationality of social institutions.