This posthumously published work by Lawrence Krader surveys the study of myths from ancient times (in classical Greece and Rome, Egypt, Babylon, Akkad, Sumer, China), in the Biblical traditions, of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and Australia, and from Northeastern and Central Asia. It also covers the various approaches to the study of myth in Europe in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and Enlightenment, and the Romantic movement in the late eighteenth and early to mid-nineteenth century; it discusses evolutionist, structuralist, hermeneutic, and linguistic approaches. The book covers on the one hand the treatment of myth from the inside, that is from the experience of those committed to the myth, and on the other the perspective of those ethnologists, philosophers and other students of myth who are outsiders. Krader takes up the theme of esoteric and exoteric myths as he rejects some of the assumptions and approaches to the study of myth from the past while singling out others for approval and inclusion in his general theory of myth. The book includes a discussion of myth in science and in infinitesimal mathematics. It also considers the relationship between myth and ideology in the twentieth century in relation to politics and power. It both incorporates and broadens Krader's theory of nature as a manifold consisting of different orders of space-time which he developed in his magnum opus Noetics: The Science of Thinking and Knowing.

The essays contained in Beyond the Juxtaposition of Nature and Culture represent an attempt by scholars from Canada, Germany, and Mexico to come to grips with the innovative work of the American philosopher and anthropologist Lawrence Krader who has proposed nothing less than a new theory of nature, according to which there are at least three different orders-the material-biotic, the quantum, and the human-which differ from one another according to their different configurations of space-time, and which cannot be reduced the one to the others. Each author takes up Krader's theory in relation to its impact on their own discipline: sociology, anthropology, the study of myth, the theory of labor and value, economics, linguistics, and aesthetics. The question of how nature and culture can be integrated within a theoretical framework which links them in difference and nexus and allows each their non-reductive space leads each of the contributors to move in their thinking beyond the old dualisms of materialism and idealism, fact and value, nature and culture.

Dieser Sammelband ist aus einer Ringvorlesung hervorgegangen, die unter dem gleichen Titel im Wintersemester 2007/08 am Institut fur Kulturwissenschaften der Universitat Leipzig stattfand. Da diese Vorlesungsreihe sowohl aus einem bes- deren Anlass ins Leben gerufen als auch in einer besonderen Form verwirklicht wurde, sollen nun einige Worte dazu am Anfang dieses Buches stehen. Die Vorlesungsreihe entstand anlasslich einer einschneidenden Kurzungsm- nahme der Universitat Leipzig: Im Wintersemester 2007/08 war die Stelle fur AEst- tik am Institut fur Kulturwissenschaften in Leipzig mit der Pensionierung von Prof. Dr. Uta Koesser endgultig gestrichen worden. Und dies ohne jede inhaltliche - grundung. Ausschliesslich pragmatische Hochschulpolitik war es, die hier von nun an den Studierenden das Studium eines Teils ihrer gewahlten Studienrichtung - moeglich machte. Um dieses "Ende der AEsthetik" in Leipzig nicht einfach unk- mentiert hinzunehmen und ausserdem die AEsthetik und ihre Vielfalt noch ein letztes Mal in Leipzig zu prasentieren, wurde daraufhin von Studierenden der Plan gefasst, eine Ringvorlesung zu organisieren. Die Vorlesung sollte einerseits viele der m- lichen Perspektiven innerhalb der AEsthetik aufzeigen und damit den Studierenden nochmals sozusagen in geballter Form die Moeglichkeit geben, sich in dieser Dis- plin zu orientieren und sich mit unterschiedlichen Positionen der AEsthetik ause- anderzusetzen. Andererseits sollte damit der grosse Verlust, den diese Streichung und Wegrationalisierung tatsachlich bedeutet, herausgestellt und kritisiert w- den.