Translated here into English for the first time, F. W. J. Schelling's 1842 lectures on the Philosophy of Mythology are an early example of interdisciplinary thinking. In seeking to show the development of the concept of the divine Godhead in and through various mythological systems (particularly of ancient Greece, Egypt, and the Near East), Schelling develops the idea that many philosophical concepts are born of religious-mythological notions. In so doing, he brings together the essential relatedness of the development of philosophical systems, human language, history, ancient art forms, and religious thought. Along the way, he engages in analyses of modern philosophical views about the origins of philosophy's conceptual abstractions, as well as literary and philological analyses of ancient literature and poetry.

Offering a new translation of the third and most sustained version of Schelling's magnum opus, Schelling forges a great heroic poem, a genealogy of time. Anticipating Heidegger, as well as contemporary debates about postmodernity and the limits of dialectical thinking, this book struggles with the question of time as the relationship between poetry and philosophy. Thinking in the wake of Hegel, although trying to think beyond his grasp, this extraordinary work is a poetic and philosophical address of difference, of thinking's relationship to its inscrutable ground.

For more than a century readers have found Herman Melville's writing rich with philosophical ideas, yet there has been relatively little written about what, exactly, is philosophically significant about his work and why philosophers are so attracted to Melville in particular. This volume addresses this silence through a series of essays that: (1) examine various philosophical contexts for Melville's work, (2) take seriously Melville's writings as philosophy, and (3) consider how modern philosophers have used Melville and the implications of appropriating Melville for contemporary thought. Melville among the Philosophers is ultimately an intervention across literary studies and philosophy that carves new paths into the work of one of America's most celebrated authors, a man who continues to enchant and challenge readers well into the twenty-first century.

Recognizing the importance of the Kyoto School and its influence on philosophy, politics, religion, and Asian studies, Japanese and Continental Philosophy initiates a conversation between Japanese and Western philosophers. The essays in this cross-cultural volume put Kyoto School thinkers in conversation with German Idealism, Nietzsche, phenomenology, and other figures and schools of the continental tradition such as Levinas and Irigaray. Set in the context of global philosophy, this volume offers critical, innovative, and productive dialogue between some of the most influential philosophical figures from East and West.

Although previously considered a way-station on the road to Hegel, F. W. J. von Schelling is today enjoying a renaissance among Continental philosophers and others. The 14 essays in this engaging volume bring Schelling in tune with such luminaries as Heidegger, Derrida, Bataille, Foucault, Deleuze, Levinas, and Irigaray and situate him squarely in the center of current themes and discussions in such topics as ethical alterity (the other), deep ecology and the question of nature, the relation of aesthetics to nature, the crisis of truth, the possibility of non-dialectical philosophy, and the possibility of a philosophical religion. Established scholars and newer voices cast light on Schelling and German Idealism.

Contributors are Patrick Burke, Theodore D. George, Eiko Hanaoka, David Farrell Krell, Joseph P. Lawrence, Benjamin S. Pryor, Stephen David Ross, Marcia Sa Cavalcante Schuback, F. Scott Scribner, Fiona Steinkamp, Martin Wallen, Peter Warnek, Jason M. Wirth, and Slavoj Zizek."

In Nietzche and Other Buddhas, author Jason M. Wirth brings major East Asian Buddhist thinkers into radical dialogue with key Continental philosophers through a series of exercises that pursue what is traditionally called comparative or intercultural philosophy as he reflects on what makes such exercises possible and intelligible. The primary questions he asks are: How does this particular engagement and confrontation challenge and radicalize what is sometimes called comparative or intercultural philosophy? How does this task reconsider what is meant by philosophy? The confrontations that Wirth sets up between Dogen, Hakuin, Linji, Shinran, Nietzsche, and Deleuze ask readers to think more philosophically and globally about the nature of philosophy in general and comparative philosophy in particular. He opens up a new and challenging space of thought in and between the cutting edges of Western Continental philosophy and East Asian Buddhist practice.

In Nietzche and Other Buddhas, author Jason M. Wirth brings major East Asian Buddhist thinkers into radical dialogue with key Continental philosophers through a series of exercises that pursue what is traditionally called comparative or intercultural philosophy as he reflects on what makes such exercises possible and intelligible. The primary questions he asks are: How does this particular engagement and confrontation challenge and radicalize what is sometimes called comparative or intercultural philosophy? How does this task reconsider what is meant by philosophy? The confrontations that Wirth sets up between Dogen, Hakuin, Linji, Shinran, Nietzsche, and Deleuze ask readers to think more philosophically and globally about the nature of philosophy in general and comparative philosophy in particular. He opens up a new and challenging space of thought in and between the cutting edges of Western Continental philosophy and East Asian Buddhist practice.

Commiserating with Devastated Things seeks to understand the place Milan Kundera calls "the universe of the novel." Working through Kundera's oeuvre as well as the continental philosophical tradition, Wirth argues that Kundera transforms-not applies-philosophical reflection within literature. Reading between Kundera's work and his self-avowed tradition, from Kafka to Hermann Broch, Wirth asks what it might mean to insist that philosophy does not have a monopoly on wisdom, that the novel has its own modes of wisdom that challenge philosophy's.

For more than a century readers have found Herman Melville’s writing rich with philosophical ideas, yet there has been relatively little written about what, exactly, is philosophically significant about his work and why philosophers are so attracted to Melville in particular. This volume addresses this silence through a series of essays that: (1) examine various philosophical contexts for Melville’s work, (2) take seriously Melville’s writings as philosophy, and (3) consider how modern philosophers have used Melville and the implications of appropriating Melville for contemporary thought. Melville among the Philosophers is ultimately an intervention across literary studies and philosophy that carves new paths into the work of one of America’s most celebrated authors, a man who continues to enchant and challenge readers well into the twenty-first century.

In this edited collection of essays, ten experts in film philosophy explore the importance of transcendence for understanding cinema as an art form. They analyze the role of transcendence for some of the most innovative film directors: David Cronenberg, Karl Theodor Dreyer, Federico Fellini, Werner Herzog, Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, Terrence Malick, Yasujiro Ozu, and Martin Scorsese. Meanwhile they apply concepts of transcendence from continental philosophers like Alain Badiou, Gilles Deleuze, Martin Heidegger, Michel Henry, Edmund Husserl, Karl Jaspers, Søren Kierkegaard, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Each of the ten chapters results in a different perspective about what transcendence means and how it is essential to film as an art medium. Several common threads emerge among the chapters. The contributors find that the limitations of human existence are frequently made evident in moments of transcendence, so as to bring characters to the margins of their assumed world. At other times, transcendence goes immanent, so as to emerge in experiences of the surprising nearness of being, as though for a radical intensification of life. Film can also exhibit “ciphers of transcendence” whereby symbolic events open us to greater realizations about our place in the world. Lastly, the contributors observe that transcendence occurs in film, not simply from isolated moments forced into a storyline, but in a manner rooted within an ontological rhythm peculiar to the film itself.