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Romano Guardini described Rainer Maria Rilke as the "poet who had
things of such importance to say about the end of our own age [and]
was also a prophet of things to come." The complexity of Rilke is,
then, "highly relevant to modern Man." Decades after Guardini's
assessment, the reader who rediscovers Rilke will find a depth of
mind and soul that display a profundity the post-modern reader only
thinks he possesses. In an expanded collection of Rilke's sonnets,
Rick Anthony Furtak not only makes this lyrical masterpiece
accessible to the English reader, but he proves himself a master of
sorts as well. His introduction that elaborates on Rilke's marriage
of vision and voice, intention and enigma, haunted companionship
and abandonment is a stand-alone marvel for the reader. Furtak's
praised translation of Sonnets to Orpheus (University of Chicago
Press, 2008) is surpassed in this much broader collection of verse
that also includes the original German text. It is Furtak's great
achievement that Rilke resonates with the contemporary reader, who
uncertain and searching wants to believe that the vision of
existence can mirror much more than his own consciousness. In his
feat of rendering Rilke in English, contextualizing the
philosophical meanings of verse, and presenting literary
romanticism, Furtak provides a formidable contribution to the
vindication of true poetic voice.
Love, Subjectivity, and Truth engages in a lively manner with the
overlapping areas of philosophy and literature, philosophy of
emotions, and existential thought. “Subjective truth,” a phrase
used in Proust's novel In Search of Lost Time, is rich with
existential connotations. It invokes Kierkegaard above all, but
significantly Nietzsche as well, and other philosophers who
thematize love, subjectivity, and truth. In Search of Lost Time is
especially concerned about what we can know about others through
love. Insofar as it conveys and analyzes experience, the novel is
capable not only of exploring existential issues but also of doing
something like phenomenology. What we know is shaped by our way of
knowing, just as the properties of visible, colored objects are
determined by the wavelengths of light our eyes can see. Nowhere
does the subjective basis of our awareness appear so evident as it
does when we view things through loving eyes. In Proust's novel we
find skeptical views about love expressed again and again. However,
we also note countercurrents, in which love is shown to provide a
unique sort of insight. At those times, love seems to be a
prerequisite of veridical apprehension. Love, Subjectivity, and
Truth investigates this tension as it is played out in Proust's
fiction.
The philosophical significance of Henry David Thoreau's life and
writings is far from settled. Although his best-known book, Walden,
is admired as a classic work of American literature, it has not yet
been widely recognized as an important philosophical text. In fact,
many members of the academic philosophical community in America
would be reluctant to classify Thoreau as a philosopher at all. The
purpose of this volume is to remedy this neglect, to explain
Thoreau's philosophical significance, and to argue that we can
still learn from his polemical conception of philosophy. Thoreau
sought to establish philosophy as a way of life, and to root our
philosophical, conceptual affairs in more practical or existential
concerns. His work provides us with a sustained meditation on the
appropriate conduct of life and the importance of leading our lives
with integrity, avoiding what he calls "quiet desperation." The
contributors to this volume approach Thoreau's writings from
different angles, collectively bringing to light what, in his own
distinctive and idiosyncratic way, this major American thinker has
meant to multiple areas of philosophical inquiry, and why he is
still relevant. They show how the imagination, according to
Thoreau, might be related to the disclosure of truth; they
illuminate the nuances of embodied consciousness and explore the
links between moral character and scientific knowledge. They
clarify Thoreau's project by locating it in relation to earlier
philosophical authors and traditions, noting the ways in which he
either anticipated or influenced a host of later thinkers. They
explore his aesthetic views, his naturalism, his theory of self,
his ethical principles, and his political stances. Most
importantly, they show how Thoreau returns philosophy to its roots
as the love of wisdom.
In this historically informed work in moral psychology, Rick
Anthony Furtak develops a conceptual account of the emotions that
addresses the conventional idea that reason and emotion stand in
sharp opposition. Furtak begins with a critical examination of the
ancient Stoic position that emotions should be avoided by rational
human beings. He argues that, on the contrary, emotions ought to be
understood as embodying a kind of authentic insight, which enables
us to attain a meaningful and truthful way of seeing the world.
Furtak's positive alternative to Stoicism draws heavily on the
writings of Soren Kierkegaard, particularly "Either/Or" and "Works
of Love," while also engaging a wide range of other relevant
philosophical, literary, and religious sources. He argues that a
morality of virtue and narrative awareness is necessary for
accurate emotional perception, and then attempts to define a
qualified value realism based upon a reverential trust in love as
the ground of life as we know it. The outcome of this inquiry into
the possibility of reliable emotion is an account of the ideal
state in which a person could trust himself or herself to be
rational in being passionate. Wisdom in Love makes an original
contribution to the philosophy of the emotions and provides a new
and compelling interpretation of Kierkegaard's work as a whole.
Soren Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript has provoked
a lively variety of divergent interpretations for a century and a
half. It has been both celebrated and condemned as the chief
inspiration for twentieth-century existential thought, as a
subversive parody of philosophical argument, as a critique of mass
society, as a forerunner of phenomenology and of postmodern
relativism, and as an appeal for a renewal of religious commitment.
These 2010 essays written by international Kierkegaard scholars
offer a plurality of critical approaches to this fundamental text
of existential philosophy. They cover hotly debated topics such as
the tension between the Socratic-philosophical and the
Christian-religious; the identity and personality of Kierkegaard's
pseudonym 'Johannes Climacus'; his conceptions of paradoxical faith
and of passionate understanding; his relation to his contemporaries
and to some of his more distant predecessors; and, last but not
least, his pertinence to our present-day concerns.
Soren Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript has provoked
a lively variety of divergent interpretations for a century and a
half. It has been both celebrated and condemned as the chief
inspiration for twentieth-century existential thought, as a
subversive parody of philosophical argument, as a critique of mass
society, as a forerunner of phenomenology and of postmodern
relativism, and as an appeal for a renewal of religious commitment.
These 2010 essays written by international Kierkegaard scholars
offer a plurality of critical approaches to this fundamental text
of existential philosophy. They cover hotly debated topics such as
the tension between the Socratic-philosophical and the
Christian-religious; the identity and personality of Kierkegaard's
pseudonym 'Johannes Climacus'; his conceptions of paradoxical faith
and of passionate understanding; his relation to his contemporaries
and to some of his more distant predecessors; and, last but not
least, his pertinence to our present-day concerns.
In this historically informed work in moral psychology, Rick
Anthony Furtak develops a conceptual account of the emotions that
addresses the conventional idea that reason and emotion stand in
sharp opposition. Furtak begins with a critical examination of the
ancient Stoic position that emotions should be avoided by rational
human beings. He argues that, on the contrary, emotions ought to be
understood as embodying a kind of authentic insight, which enables
us to attain a meaningful and truthful way of seeing the world.
Furtak's positive alternative to Stoicism draws heavily on the
writings of Soren Kierkegaard, particularly "Either/Or" and "Works
of Love," while also engaging a wide range of other relevant
philosophical, literary, and religious sources. He argues that a
morality of virtue and narrative awareness is necessary for
accurate emotional perception, and then attempts to define a
qualified value realism based upon a reverential trust in love as
the ground of life as we know it. The outcome of this inquiry into
the possibility of reliable emotion is an account of the ideal
state in which a person could trust himself or herself to be
rational in being passionate. Wisdom in Love makes an original
contribution to the philosophy of the emotions and provides a new
and compelling interpretation of Kierkegaard's work as a whole.
How do our emotions enable us to know? When Pascal noted that the
heart has its own reasons, he implied that our rational faculty
alone cannot grasp what is revealed in affective experience.
Knowing Emotions seeks to explain comprehensively why human
emotions are more than physiological disturbances, but experiences
capable of making us aware of significant truths that we could not
know by any other means. Recent philosophical and interdisciplinary
research on the emotions has been dominated by a renewal of the
debate over how best to characterize the intentionality of emotions
as well as their bodily character. Rick Anthony Furtak frames this
debate differently, however, arguing that intentionality and
feeling are not two discrete parts of affective experience, but
conceptually distinguishable aspects of a unified response. His
account captures how an emotion's phenomenal or 'felt' quality
(what it is like) relates to its intentional content (what it is
about). Knowing Emotions provides a solid introduction to the
philosophy of emotion before delving into the debates that surround
it. Furtak draws from a wide range of analytic and Continental
philosophers, including Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Kierkegaard, and
Nietzsche, among others, and bolsters his analysis with empirical
evidence from social psychology, neuroscience, and psychiatry.
Perhaps most importantly, Furtak investigates all varieties of
affective experience, from brief episodes to moods and emotional
dispositions, loves and other longstanding concerns, and overall
patterns of temperament and affective outlook. Ultimately, he
argues that we must reject the misguided aspiration to purify
ourselves of passion and attain an impersonal standpoint. Knowing
Emotions attempts to clarify what kind of truth may be revealed
through emotion, and what can be known - not despite, but precisely
by virtue of, each person's idiosyncratic perspective.
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