Questions of whether anything exceeds reasonable sense and meaning have persisted throughout the history of philosophy. These questions have even continued in postmodern thought as well as in liberatory philosophies in which many kinds of events and lineages are experienced and seen as beyond philosophy. In this cowritten text, distinguished philosophers Nancy Tuana and Charles Scott pay particular attention to lineages and their dynamism as they develop the idea of things beyond philosophy, beyond norms. This is not a history of philosophy or a critical study of a particular philosopher but a way to engage experience around dimensions of events that are beyond measuring, counting, meaning, and value. These attunements, they assert, are vitally important for the ways people orient themselves in the world and comport themselves in it. Tuana and Scott build on the alternatives to normative ethics that they find in the work of Nietzsche, Foucault, and Anzaldúa. They urge attunement to the world as a way to speak about what is impossible to give voice to, to live in the spaces between speech and the unspeakable, and to conceptualize and articulate the boundaries of rational sensibility.

Questions of whether anything exceeds reasonable sense and meaning have persisted throughout the history of philosophy. These questions have even continued in postmodern thought as well as in liberatory philosophies in which many kinds of events and lineages are experienced and seen as beyond philosophy. In this cowritten text, distinguished philosophers Nancy Tuana and Charles Scott pay particular attention to lineages and their dynamism as they develop the idea of things beyond philosophy, beyond norms. This is not a history of philosophy or a critical study of a particular philosopher but a way to engage experience around dimensions of events that are beyond measuring, counting, meaning, and value. These attunements, they assert, are vitally important for the ways people orient themselves in the world and comport themselves in it. Tuana and Scott build on the alternatives to normative ethics that they find in the work of Nietzsche, Foucault, and Anzaldua. They urge attunement to the world as a way to speak about what is impossible to give voice to, to live in the spaces between speech and the unspeakable, and to conceptualize and articulate the boundaries of rational sensibility.

..". remarkable account of the impact of postmodern philosophy on the question of ethics and politics... commendable also for its balanced view of Heidegger s relationship to politics and ethics.... an excellent account of Heidegger s philosophical understanding of technology..." Choice

This book takes as its point of departure the question of ethics: that values and their pursuit in the West often perpetuate their own worst enemies. At issue are the dangers in the structures and movements of images, values, and ways of knowing that are most intimately a part of our lives."

Companion to Heidegger s Contributions to Philosophy

Edited by Charles E. Scott, Susan Schoenbohm, Daniela Vallega-Neu, and Alejandro Vallega

A key to unlocking one of Heidegger s most difficult and important works.

The publication of the first English translation of Martin Heidegger s Beitrage zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) marked a significant event for Heidegger studies. Considered by scholars to be his most important work after Being and Time, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning) elaborates what Heidegger calls "being-historical-thinking," a project in which he undertakes to reshape what it means both to think and to be. Contributions is an indispensable book for scholars and students of Heidegger, but it is also one of his most difficult because of its aphoristic style and unusual language. In this Companion 14 eminent Heidegger scholars share strategies for reading and understanding this challenging work. Overall approaches for becoming familiar with Heidegger s unique language and thinking are included, along with detailed readings of key sections of the work. Experienced readers and those coming to the text for the first time will find the Companion an invaluable guide to this pivotal text in Heidegger s philosophical corpus.

Contributors include Walter A. Brogan, David Crownfield, Parvis Emad, Gunter Figal, Kenneth Maly, William McNeill, Richard Polt, John Sallis, Susan Schoenbohm, Charles E. Scott, Dennis J. Schmidt, Alejandro Vallega, Daniela Vallega-Neu, and Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann.

Charles E. Scott is Professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University. He is author of The Question of Ethics, On the Advantages and Disadvantages of Ethics and Politics (both Indiana University Press), and The Time of Memory.

Susan Schoenbohm has taught philosophy at Vanderbilt University, The University of the South, and Pennsylvania State University. She has published several articles on Heidegger, contemporary Continental thought, ancient Greek thought, and ancient Asian thought.

Daniela Vallega-Neu teaches philosophy at California State University, Stanislaus. She is author of Die Notwendigkeit der Grundung in Zeitalter der Deconstruction.

Alejandro Vallega teaches philosophy at California State University, Stanislaus.

Studies in Continental Thought John Sallis, general editor
July 2001
288 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
cloth 0-253-33946-4 $44.95 L / 34.00
paper 0-253-21465-3 $22.95 s / 17.50
"

Living with Indifference is about the dimension of life that is utterly neutral, without care, feeling, or personality. In this provocative work that is anything but indifferent, Charles E. Scott explores the ways people have spoken and thought about indifference. Exploring topics such as time, chance, beauty, imagination, violence, and virtue, Scott shows how affirming indifference can be beneficial, and how destructive consequences can occur when we deny it. Scott s preoccupation with indifference issues a demand for focused attention in connection with personal values, ethics, and beliefs. This elegantly argued book speaks to the positive value of diversity and a world that is open to human passion."

"Like Foucault and Levinas before him, though in very different ways, Scott makes an oblique incision into phenomenology... it is] the kind of book to which people dazed by the specters of nihilism will be referred by those in the know." David Wood

..". refreshing and original." Edward S. Casey

In The Lives of Things, Charles E. Scott reconsiders our relationships with ordinary, everyday things and our capacity to engage them in their particularity. He takes up the Greek notion of phusis, or physicality, as a way to point out limitations in refined and commonplace views of nature and the body as well as a device to highlight the often overlooked lives of things that people encounter. Scott explores questions of unity, purpose, coherence, universality, and experiences of wonder and astonishment in connection with scientific fact and knowledge. He develops these themes with lightness and wit, ultimately articulating a new interpretation of the appearances of things that are beyond the reach of language and thought."

..". stimulating and insightful... a thoroughly researched and timely contribution to the secondary literature of ethics... " Library Journal

"His important new work establishes Scott... as one of the foremost interpreters of the Continental philosophical tradition of the US.... Necessary for anyone working in ethics or the Continental tradition." Choice

..". a provocative discourse on the consequences of the ethical in the thought of Nietzsche, Foucault, and Heidegger." The Journal of Religion

Charles E. Scott's challenging book advances the broad claim that ethics as a way of judging and thinking has come into question as philosophers have confronted suffering and conflicts that arise from our traditional systems of value."

Philosophers from the US, Canada, France, the Netherlands, and Germany interpret figures in the history of Western thought from a broad, continental perspective, addressing hermeneutical thought, Heidegger and the Greeks, and the question of nature in German Idealism. Emphasis is placed on the question of origins in its various guises within the context of Western philosophy. Some topics include philosophical hermeneutics and the question of community; Heidegger's interpretation of Plato in the Sophist lectures; and dire forces of nature in Novalis, Schelling, and Hegel.