Since Hegel, philosophers have declared repeatedly that metaphysics is at an end, a pronouncement that has sparked much contemporary philosophical debate. What exactly does the end, or closure, of metaphysics mean, and what are the implications of this view? John Sallis characterizes the end of metaphysics as a limit, or horizon, both enclosing metaphysical thought and opening the field of thinking beyond it. He elaborates five areas in which the boundaries of thinking are extended: imagination as an opening power, the radicalizing of phenomenology's injunction to attend to the things themselves, Heidegger's shift of thinking toward an opening or clearing, archaic closure through a return to Plato and Heraclitus, and the nonidentity that takes place in the act of delimitation. This last question is developed in relation to Husserl's project of a pure phenomenology, to the debate between hermeneutics and deconstruction, and to the secluding of ground announced in Schelling's thought.

Ethicality and Imagination is the astounding conclusion to John Sallis's landmark trilogy launched with Force of Imagination and Logic of Imagination. In this new work, Sallis embarks on an unforgettable voyage spanning the cosmos and delving deep into what makes us human. If the first two works consider the question of being and thinking, respectively, the third and culminating volume takes up the question of action. In a series of highly original and always provocative meditations, Sallis articulates the way humans are rooted in their abodes yet not determined by them. Ethicality and Imagination develops a new approach to the relation of the imagination to literature, ethics, political thought, and recent discoveries in astrophysics. It represents a brilliant conclusion to one of the most exciting works of thinking in the Continental school in recent decades.

On Beauty and Measure features renowned philosopher John Sallis' commentaries on Plato's dialogues the Symposium and the Statesman. Drawn from two lecture courses delivered by Sallis, they represent his longest and most sustained engagement to date with either work. Brilliantly original, Sallis's close readings of Plato's dialogues are grounded in the original passages and also illuminate the overarching themes that drive the dialogues.

This volume of the Collected Writings of John Sallis presents his lecture courses on Kant. Each course was devoted respectively to one of Kant's three Critiques, and so the book as a whole treats the entirety of the Kantian critical project. Sallis displays here, as he does in all his lecture courses, an uncanny ability to open up dense philosophical texts. The matters Kant deals with—in theoretical, practical, and aesthetic philosophy—are difficult in themselves, and Kant's writings might at times seem so convoluted as to magnify the difficulty. Sallis patiently and successfully lays out the issues and the critical approach to them, such that the reader is led step by step into the very core of Kant's spirit of critique. This volume makes Kant accessible to students, while the most advanced scholars will also profit from it.

John Sallis's thought is oriented to two overarching tasks: to bring to light the elemental in nature and to show how the imagination operates at the very center of human experience. He undertakes these tasks by analyzing a broad range of phenomena, including perception, the body, the natural world, art, space, and the cosmos. In every case, Sallis develops an original form of discourse attuned to the specific phenomenon and enacts a thorough reflection on discourse itself in its relation to voice, dialogue, poetry, and translation. Sallis's systematic investigations are complemented by his extensive interpretations of canonical figures in the history of philosophy such as Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Schelling, and Hegel and by his engagement with the most original thinkers in the areas of phenomenology, hermeneutics, and deconstruction.

John Sallis's thought is oriented to two overarching tasks: to bring to light the elemental in nature and to show how the imagination operates at the very center of human experience. He undertakes these tasks by analyzing a broad range of phenomena, including perception, the body, the natural world, art, space, and the cosmos. In every case, Sallis develops an original form of discourse attuned to the specific phenomenon and enacts a thorough reflection on discourse itself in its relation to voice, dialogue, poetry, and translation. Sallis's systematic investigations are complemented by his extensive interpretations of canonical figures in the history of philosophy such as Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Schelling, and Hegel and by his engagement with the most original thinkers in the areas of phenomenology, hermeneutics, and deconstruction.

Broaching an understanding of nature in Platonic thought, John Sallis goes beyond modern conceptions and provides a strategy to have recourse to the profound sense of nature operative in ancient Greek philosophy. In a rigorous and textually based account, Sallis traces the complex development of the Greek concept of nature. Beginning with the mythical vision embodied in the figure of the goddess Artemis, he reanimates the sense of nature that informs the fragmentary discourses of Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Empedocles and shows how Plato takes up pre-Socratic conceptions critically while also being transformed. Through Sallis's close reading of the Theaetetus and the Phaedo, he recovers the profound and comprehensive concept of nature in Plato's thought.

John Sallis dismantles the traditional conception of nature in this book of imagination and the cosmos. In the thought of Emerson, Hegel, and Schelling, Sallis discerns the seeds of an understanding of nature that goes against the modern technological assault on natural things and opens a space for a revitalized approach to the world. He identifies two fundamental reorientations that philosophical thought is called on to address today: the turn to the elemental in nature and the turn from nature to the cosmos at large. He traces the elusive course of the imagination, as if coming from nowhere, and describes the way in which it bears on the relation of humans to nature. Sallis's account demonstrates that a renewal of our understanding of nature is one of the prime imperatives we demand from philosophy today.

Broaching an understanding of nature in Platonic thought, John Sallis goes beyond modern conceptions and provides a strategy to have recourse to the profound sense of nature operative in ancient Greek philosophy. In a rigorous and textually based account, Sallis traces the complex development of the Greek concept of nature. Beginning with the mythical vision embodied in the figure of the goddess Artemis, he reanimates the sense of nature that informs the fragmentary discourses of Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Empedocles and shows how Plato takes up pre-Socratic conceptions critically while also being transformed. Through Sallis's close reading of the Theaetetus and the Phaedo, he recovers the profound and comprehensive concept of nature in Plato's thought.

The essays collected in this volume take a new look at the role of language in the thought of Martin Heidegger to reassess its significance for contemporary philosophy. They consider such topics as Heidegger's engagement with the Greeks, expression in language, poetry, the language of art and politics, and the question of truth. Heidegger left his unique stamp on language, giving it its own force and shape, especially with reference to concepts such as Dasein, understanding, and attunement, which have a distinctive place in his philosophy. -- Indiana University Press

Nietzsche's Voices, a much-anticipated volume of the Collected Writings of John Sallis, presents his two-semester lecture course on Nietzsche offered in the Philosophy Department of Duquesne University during the school year 1971–72. "Nietzsche is easy to read; his is apparently the easiest of all the great philosophies. Yet the easy intelligibility is deceptive. Nietzsche's writings make us believe we have understood when in fact we have not. His philosophy is actually the exact opposite of easy," says Sallis. With this warning always in mind, Sallis first discusses Nietzsche's life and the relevance of the ancient Greeks to his thought and then analyzes Nietzsche's views on truth, history, morality, and the death of God. The entire second half of the book is devoted to Nietzsche's main work, the tragic, comedic, poetic Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Nietzsche's Voices offers a sensitive and brilliant introduction to the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche, as presented by one of today's most significant philosophers.

This excellent work... deserves the serious consideration of all who are interested in contemporary philosophy as well as those who concern themselves with ancient philosophy, especially Plato." —Review of Metaphysics In Chorology, John Sallis takes up one of the most enigmatic discourses in the history of philosophy. Plato's discourse on the chora—the chorology—forms the pivotal moment in the Timaeus. The implications of the chorology are momentous and communicate with many of the most decisive issues in contemporary philosophical discussions.

In Platonic Legacies John Sallis addresses certain archaic or exorbitant moments in Platonism. His concern is to expose such moments as those expressed in the Platonic phrase "beyond being" and in the enigmatic word chora. Thus he ventures to renew chorology and to bring it to bear, most directly, on Platonic political discourse and Plotinian hyperontology. More broadly, he shows what profound significance these most archaic moments of Platonism, which remained largely unheeded in the history of philosophy, have for contemporary discussions of spacings, of utopian politics, of the nature of nature, and of the relation between philosophy and tragedy. Thus addressing Platonism in its bearing on contemporary philosophy, Platonic Legacies engages, in turn, a series of philosophers ranging from Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Arendt to certain contemporary American Continental philosophers. These engagements focus on the way in which these recent and contemporary philosophers take up the Platonic legacies in their own thought and on the way in which the exposure of an archaic Platonism can redirect or supplement what they have accomplished.

On Beauty and Measure features renowned philosopher John Sallis' commentaries on Plato's dialogues the Symposium and the Statesman. Drawn from two lecture courses delivered by Sallis, they represent his longest and most sustained engagement to date with either work. Brilliantly original, Sallis's close readings of Plato's dialogues are grounded in the original passages and also illuminate the overarching themes that drive the dialogues.

Ethicality and Imagination is the astounding conclusion to John Sallis's landmark trilogy launched with Force of Imagination and Logic of Imagination. In this new work, Sallis embarks on an unforgettable voyage spanning the cosmos and delving deep into what makes us human. If the first two works consider the question of being and thinking, respectively, the third and culminating volume takes up the question of action. In a series of highly original and always provocative meditations, Sallis articulates the way humans are rooted in their abodes yet not determined by them. Ethicality and Imagination develops a new approach to the relation of the imagination to literature, ethics, political thought, and recent discoveries in astrophysics. It represents a brilliant conclusion to one of the most exciting works of thinking in the Continental school in recent decades.

Nietzsche's Voices, a much-anticipated volume of the Collected Writings of John Sallis, presents his two-semester lecture course on Nietzsche offered in the Philosophy Department of Duquesne University during the school year 1971–72. "Nietzsche is easy to read; his is apparently the easiest of all the great philosophies. Yet the easy intelligibility is deceptive. Nietzsche's writings make us believe we have understood when in fact we have not. His philosophy is actually the exact opposite of easy," says Sallis. With this warning always in mind, Sallis first discusses Nietzsche's life and the relevance of the ancient Greeks to his thought and then analyzes Nietzsche's views on truth, history, morality, and the death of God. The entire second half of the book is devoted to Nietzsche's main work, the tragic, comedic, poetic Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Nietzsche's Voices offers a sensitive and brilliant introduction to the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche, as presented by one of today's most significant philosophers.

This volume of the Collected Writings of John Sallis presents his lecture courses on Kant. Each course was devoted respectively to one of Kant's three Critiques, and so the book as a whole treats the entirety of the Kantian critical project. Sallis displays here, as he does in all his lecture courses, an uncanny ability to open up dense philosophical texts. The matters Kant deals with—in theoretical, practical, and aesthetic philosophy—are difficult in themselves, and Kant's writings might at times seem so convoluted as to magnify the difficulty. Sallis patiently and successfully lays out the issues and the critical approach to them, such that the reader is led step by step into the very core of Kant's spirit of critique. This volume makes Kant accessible to students, while the most advanced scholars will also profit from it.

Force of Imagination
The Sense of the Elemental
John Sallis

A bold and original investigation into how imagination shapes thought and feeling.

"This is a bold new direction for the author, one that he takes in an arresting and convincing manner.... a powerful, original approach to what others call ecology but what Sallis shows to be a question of the status of the earth in philosophical thinking at this historical moment." Edward S. Casey

In this major original work, John Sallis probes the very nature of imagination and reveals how the force of imagination extends into all spheres of human life. While drawing critically on the entire history of philosophy, Sallis s work takes up a vantage point determined by the contemporary deconstruction of the classical opposition between sensible and intelligible. Thus, in reinterrogating the nature of imagination, Force of Imagination carries out a radical turn to the sensible and to the elemental in nature. Liberated from subjectivity, imagination is shown to play a decisive role both in drawing together the moments of our experience of sensible things and in opening experience to the encompassing light, atmosphere, earth, and sky. Set within this elemental expanse, the human sense of time, of self, and of the other proves to be inextricably linked to imagination and to nature. By showing how imagination is formative for the very opening upon things and elements, this work points to the revealing power of poetic imagination and casts a new light on the nature of art.

John Sallis is Liberal Arts Professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University. His previous books include Being and Logos: Reading the Platonic Dialogues; Shades Of Painting at the Limit; Stone; Chorology: On Beginning in Plato s Timaeus (all published by Indiana University Press), Crossings: Nietzsche and the Space of Tragedy and Double Truth.

Studies in Continental Thought John Sallis, editor

Contents
Prolusions
On (Not Simply) Beginning
Remembrance
Duplicity of the Image
Spacing the Image
Tractive Imagination
The Elemental
Temporalities
Proprieties
Poetic Imagination"

John Sallis dismantles the traditional conception of nature in this book of imagination and the cosmos. In the thought of Emerson, Hegel, and Schelling, Sallis discerns the seeds of an understanding of nature that goes against the modern technological assault on natural things and opens a space for a revitalized approach to the world. He identifies two fundamental reorientations that philosophical thought is called on to address today: the turn to the elemental in nature and the turn from nature to the cosmos at large. He traces the elusive course of the imagination, as if coming from nowhere, and describes the way in which it bears on the relation of humans to nature. Sallis's account demonstrates that a renewal of our understanding of nature is one of the prime imperatives we demand from philosophy today.

"Being and Logos" is . . . a philosophical adventure of rare inspiration. . . . Its power to illuminate the text . . . , its ecumenicity of inspiration, its methodological rigor, its originality, and its philosophical profundity—all together make it one of the few philosophical interpretations that the philosopher will want to re-read along with the dialogues themselves. A superadded gift is the author's prose, which is a model of lucidity and grace." —International Philosophical Quarterly "Being and Logos is highly recommended for those who wish to learn how a thoughtful scholar approaches Platonic dialogues as well as for those who wish to consider a serious discussion of some basic themes in the dialogues." —The Academic Reviewer

This volume of the collected writings of John Sallis presents a two-semester lecture course on Maurice Merleau-Ponty given at Duquesne University from 1970 to 1971. Devoted primarily to a close reading of the French philosopher's magnum opus, Phenomenology of Perception, the course begins with a detailed analysis of The Structure of Behavior. The central topics considered in the lectures include the functions of the phenomenological body; beyond realism and idealism; the structures of the lived world; spatiality, temporality, language, sexuality; and perception and knowledge. Sallis illuminates Merleau-Ponty's first two works and offers a thread to follow through developments in his later essays. Merleau-Ponty's notion of the primacy of perception and his claim that "the end of a philosophy is the account of its beginning" are woven throughout the lectures. For Sallis's part, these lectures are foundational for his extended engagement with Merleau-Ponty's The Visible and the Invisible, which was published in Sallis's Phenomenology and the Return to Beginnings.