How Non-being Haunts Being reveals how the human world is not reducible to "what is." Human life is an open expanse of "what was" and "what will be," "what might be" and "what should be." It is a world of desires, dreams, fictions, historical figures, planned events, spatial and temporal distances, in a word, absent presences and present absences. Corey Anton draws upon and integrates thinkers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Henri Bergson, Kenneth Burke, Terrence Deacon, Lynn Margulis, R. D. Laing, Gregory Bateson, Douglas Harding, and E. M. Cioran. He discloses the moral possibilities liberated through death acceptance by showing how living beings, who are of space not merely in it, are fundamentally on loan to themselves. A heady multidisciplinary work, How Non-being Haunts Being explores how absence, incompleteness, and negation saturate life, language, thought, and culture. It details how meaning and moral agency depend upon forms of non-being, and it argues that death acceptance in no way inevitably slides into nihilism. Thoroughgoing death acceptance, in fact, opens opportunities for deeper levels of self-understanding and for greater compassion regarding our common fate. Sure to provoke thought and to stimulate much conversation, it offers countless insights into the human condition.

How Non-being Haunts Being reveals how the human world is not reducible to "what is." Human life is an open expanse of "what was" and "what will be," "what might be" and "what should be." It is a world of desires, dreams, fictions, historical figures, planned events, spatial and temporal distances, in a word, absent presences and present absences. Corey Anton draws upon and integrates thinkers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Henri Bergson, Kenneth Burke, Terrence Deacon, Lynn Margulis, R. D. Laing, Gregory Bateson, Douglas Harding, and E. M. Cioran. He discloses the moral possibilities liberated through death acceptance by showing how living beings, who are of space not merely in it, are fundamentally on loan to themselves. A heady multidisciplinary work, How Non-being Haunts Being explores how absence, incompleteness, and negation saturate life, language, thought, and culture. It details how meaning and moral agency depend upon forms of non-being, and it argues that death acceptance in no way inevitably slides into nihilism. Thoroughgoing death acceptance, in fact, opens opportunities for deeper levels of self-understanding and for greater compassion regarding our common fate. Sure to provoke thought and to stimulate much conversation, it offers countless insights into the human condition.

This book brings together a number of prominent scholars to explore a relatively under-studied area of Marshall McLuhan's thought: his idea of formal cause and the role that formal cause plays in the emergence of new technologies and in structuring societal relations. Aiming to open a new way of understanding McLuhan's thought in this area, and to provide methodological grounding for future media ecology research, the book runs the gamut, from contributions that directly support McLuhan's arguments to those that see in them the germs of future developments in emergent dynamics and complexity theory.

"In this volume, Corey Anton and Lance Strate have carefully crafted a collection of comparisons of Korzybski's thoughts to other key philosophers and their ideas. Media, semiotics, imagination, rational thought, cultural studies, and cyberculture are only a sample of the many stimulating topics that come to life in this book...With freshness and vision, this edited collection takes us on a thought-provoking journey connecting us to the essence of Korzybski's contribution. I found it to be a thoroughly enjoyable read."
-Karen Lollar Ph.D.
Chair, Communication Arts and Sciences Metropolitan State University of Denver
Author of The Talk Within: Its Central Role in Communication (2012)
"The collection of essays contained within this book represent a gallant and exquisite attempt to backtrack, as well as to sidetrack and track ahead, and show how Alfred Korzybski's enterprise is indeed aligned not only with various strains and traditions in academic thought and scholarship, but with the work of a host of significant theorists from across the disciplines. As such Corey Anton, Lance Strate, and their contributors have done a great service to Korzybski's legacy, and to the continuation and expansion of general semantics as both an applied and a theoretical system. They have positioned Korzybski and his work as a locus, rather than an outlier."
-Thom Gencarelli, Manhattan College
"Corey Anton and Lance Strate have assembled a 'wild variety' of 16 erudite essays demonstrating the past, present and continuing influence and relevance of Korzybskian general semantics. Academic specialists from diverse fields explore the "connections, intersections, and divergences" between general semantics and assorted topics ranging from phenomenology to psychotherapy to philosophy; from Heinlein to Hayakawa to Heidegger; from matters of time and temporality to the nature of human happiness. "Korzybski And ..." is a collection not to be missed, an example of time-binding at its finest."
-Jacqueline Rudig, IGS Past Vice-President

In this highly readable and well-arranged compilation-including his much-celebrated "The Practice of Reading Good Books" and award-winning "Playing with Bateson"-Corey Anton brings together some of his most accessible and well-received essays. The collection, in addition to advancing and integrating the fields of media ecology and general semantics, will be of great interest to people who are concerned over the changing role of reading and literacy in contemporary life. A stimulating and provocative book having wide relevance to scholars and students in the areas of semiotics, rhetorical theory, orality/literacy studies, philosophy of communication, pedagogical theory, and communication theory, Communication Uncovered offers countless insights and broad-based orientations regarding the nature of language, linguistic and communicative habits, communication technologies, and symbolic practices more generally. This is a "must have" resource for anyone interested in multidisciplinary communication theory.

In this highly readable and well-arranged compilation-including his much-celebrated "The Practice of Reading Good Books" and award-winning "Playing with Bateson"-Corey Anton brings together some of his most accessible and well-received essays. The collection, in addition to advancing and integrating the fields of media ecology and general semantics, will be of great interest to people who are concerned over the changing role of reading and literacy in contemporary life. A stimulating and provocative book having wide relevance to scholars and students in the areas of semiotics, rhetorical theory, orality/literacy studies, philosophy of communication, pedagogical theory, and communication theory, Communication Uncovered offers countless insights and broad-based orientations regarding the nature of language, linguistic and communicative habits, communication technologies, and symbolic practices more generally. This is a "must have" resource for anyone interested in multidisciplinary communication theory.

"Sources of Significance "confronts consumer capitalism and religious fundamentalism as symptoms of death denial and degenerated cultural heroisms. Advancing and synthesizing the ideas of Ernest Becker, Kenneth Burke, Hans Jonas, Erving Goffman, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and Epictetus, this multidisciplinary work offers a sustained response and corrective. It outlines heroisms worth wanting and reveals the forms of gratitude, courage, and purpose that emerge as people come to terms with the meaning of mortality. Corey Anton opens a contemporary dialogue spanning theism, atheism, agnosticism, and spiritualist humanism by re-examining basic topics such as language, self-esteem, ambiguity, guilt, ritual, sacrifice, and transcendence. Acknowledging the growing need for theologies that are compatible with modern science, Anton shows how today's consumerist lifestyles distort and trivialize the need for self-worth, and he argues that each person faces the genuinely heroic tasks of contributing to the world's beauty, harmony, and resources; of forgiving the cosmos for self-conscious finitude; and of gratefully accepting the ambiguity of life's gifts.