Vladimir Jankelevitch left behind a remarkable ?uvre steeped as much in philosophy as in music. His writings on moral quandaries reflect a lifelong devotion to music and performance, and, as a counterpoint, he wrote on music aesthetics and on modernist composers such as Faure, Debussy, and Ravel. "Music and the Ineffable" brings together these two threads, the philosophical and the musical, as an extraordinary quintessence of his thought. Jankelevitch deals with classical issues in the philosophy of music, including metaphysics and ontology. These are a point of departure for a sustained examination and dismantling of the idea of musical hermeneutics in its conventional sense.

Music, Jankelevitch argues, is not a hieroglyph, not a language or sign system; nor does it express emotions, depict landscapes or cultures, or narrate. On the other hand, music cannot be imprisoned within the icy, morbid notion of pure structure or autonomous discourse. Yet if musical works are not a cipher awaiting the decoder, music is nonetheless entwined with human experience, and with the physical, material reality of music in performance. Music is "ineffable," as Jankelevitch puts it, because it cannot be pinned down, and has a capacity to engender limitless resonance in several domains. Jankelevitch's singular work on music was central to such figures as Roland Barthes and Catherine Clement, and the complex textures and rhythms of his lyrical prose sound a unique note, until recently seldom heard outside the francophone world."

Appearing here in English for the first time, Vladimir Jankelevitch's Henri Bergson is one of the two great commentaries written on Henri Bergson. Gilles Deleuze's Bergsonism renewed interest in the great French philosopher but failed to consider Bergson's experiential and religious perspectives. Here Jankelevitch covers all aspects of Bergson's thought, emphasizing the concepts of time and duration, memory, evolution, simplicity, love, and joy. A friend of Bergson's, Jankelevitch first published this book in 1931 and revised it in 1959 to treat Bergson's later works. This unabridged translation of the 1959 edition includes an editor's introduction, which contextualizes and outlines Jankelevitch's reading of Bergson, additional essays on Bergson by Jankelevitch, and Bergson's letters to Jankelevitch.

Philosopher Vladimir Jankelevitch has only recently begun to receive his due from the English-speaking world, thanks in part to discussions of his thought by Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, and Paul Ricoeur. His international readers have long valued his unique, interdisciplinary approach to philosophy's greatest questions and his highly readable writing style. Originally published in 1967, "Le Pardon", or "Forgiveness", is one of Jankelevitch's most influential works. In it, he characterizes the ultimate ethical act of forgiving as behaving toward the perpetrator as if he or she had never committed the action, rather than merely forgetting or rationalizing it - a controversial notion when considering events as heinous as the Holocaust. Like so many of Jankelevitch's works, "Forgiveness" transcends standard treatments of moral problems, not simply generating a treatise on one subject but incorporating discussions of topics such as free will, giving, creativity, and temporality. Translator Andrew Kelley masterfully captures Jankelevitch's melodic prose and, in a substantive introduction, reviews his life and intellectual contributions. "Forgiveness" is an essential part of that legacy, and this indispensable English translation provides key tools for understanding one of the great Western philosophers of the twentieth century.

Appearing here in English for the first time, Vladimir Jankelevitch's Henri Bergson is one of the two great commentaries written on Henri Bergson. Gilles Deleuze's Bergsonism renewed interest in the great French philosopher but failed to consider Bergson's experiential and religious perspectives. Here Jankelevitch covers all aspects of Bergson's thought, emphasizing the concepts of time and duration, memory, evolution, simplicity, love, and joy. A friend of Bergson's, Jankelevitch first published this book in 1931 and revised it in 1959 to treat Bergson's later works. This unabridged translation of the 1959 edition includes an editor's introduction, which contextualizes and outlines Jankelevitch's reading of Bergson, additional essays on Bergson by Jankelevitch, and Bergson's letters to Jankelevitch.