Gary Peters – författare

Improvisation is usually either lionized as an ecstatic experience of being in the moment or disparaged as the thoughtless recycling of cliches. Eschewing both of these orthodoxies, "The Philosophy of Improvisation" ranges across the arts - from music to theater, dance to comedy - and considers the improvised dimension of philosophy itself in order to elaborate an innovative concept of improvisation. Gary Peters turns to many of the major thinkers within continental philosophy - including Heidegger, Nietzsche, Adorno, Kant, Benjamin, and Deleuze - offering readings of their reflections on improvisation and exploring improvisational elements within their thinking. Peters' wry, humorous style offers an antidote to the frequently overheated celebration of freedom and community that characterizes most writing on the subject. Expanding the field of what counts as improvisation, "The Philosophy of Improvisation" will be welcomed by anyone striving to comprehend the creative process.

Improvisation is usually either lionized as an ecstatic experience of being in the moment or disparaged as the thoughtless recycling of cliches. Eschewing both of these orthodoxies, "The Philosophy of Improvisation" ranges across the arts - from music to theater, dance to comedy - and considers the improvised dimension of philosophy itself in order to elaborate an innovative concept of improvisation. Gary Peters turns to many of the major thinkers within continental philosophy - including Heidegger, Nietzsche, Adorno, Kant, Benjamin, and Deleuze - offering readings of their reflections on improvisation and exploring improvisational elements within their thinking. Peters' wry, humorous style offers an antidote to the frequently overheated celebration of freedom and community that characterizes most writing on the subject. Expanding the field of what counts as improvisation, "The Philosophy of Improvisation" will be welcomed by anyone striving to comprehend the creative process.

There is an ever-increasing number of books on improvisation, ones that richly recount experiences in the heat of the creative moment, theorize on the essence of improvisation, and offer convincing arguments for improvisation’s impact across a wide range of human activity. This book is nothing like that. In a provocative and at times moving experiment, Gary Peters takes a different approach, turning the philosophy of improvisation upside-down and inside-out.            Guided by Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, and especially Deleuze—and exploring a range of artists from Hendrix to Borges—Peters illuminates new fundamentals about what, as an experience, improvisation truly is. As he shows, improvisation isn’t so much a genre, idiom, style, or technique—it’s a predicament we are thrown into, one we find ourselves in. The predicament, he shows, is a complex entwinement of choice and decision. The performativity of choice during improvisation may happen “in the moment,” but it is already determined by an a priori mode of decision. In this way, improvisation happens both within and around the actual moment, negotiating a simultaneous past, present, and future. Examining these and other often ignored dimensions of spontaneous creativity, Peters proposes a consistently challenging and rigorously argued new perspective on improvisation across an extraordinary range of disciplines.

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More than a dictionary of concepts in physical geography, this book includes a variety of analyses reaching back to origins of terms, making the work of interest to intellectual historians. The search for the intellectual genesis of each term, its development, usage, and change in meaning is accomplished with brevity and clarity. References and sources of additional information accompany each entry and provide readers with the opportunity to further their inquiry. . . . Highly recommended for upper-division and graduate students and general readers ChoiceThis volume provides definitions and historical perspective for specialized and technical concepts used in current research and writing in the field of physical geography. Of particular value to the serious student and professional in geography and related fields, the dictionary covers some 100 major concepts and provides the most complete reference available in the field to date. For each concept, the authors provide detailed definitions, arranged from the earliest to the most recent. They proceed to describe the historical growth of each term using original research works for references whenever possible. This enables the researcher to see how the concept has evolved over time, how it is currently used, and what the general direction of research might be in the future. Each entry also includes a list of prominent references concerning the concept and a bibliography of additional sources of information available such as texts, literature, reviews, important articles, and bibliographies. Complete cross referencing of concepts and an appendix that groups concepts into broad categories make the dictionary an especially valuable reference tool for both beginning students interested in the scope of physical geography and advanced students pursuing graduate study in the field.

This biographical dictionary provides sketches of seventy- seven individuals--explorers, writers, and scholars--from Aristotle to David W. Harvey, who made significant contributions to the development of the discipline of geography. The work examines a cross section of geographers from a variety of subfields within the discipline, from ancient to modern.Each entry examines the career and impact of the individual and then provides selected bibliographies of works by and about the person. The work contains internal cross-referencing, and the entire volume concludes with appendices listing the individuals chronologically as well as by country of birth. It has a general subject index and essential reference material for the general public and students looking for information on key figures and a background to the discipline.

Although, initially, dealing with specifically pedagogical issues arising out of debates within the philosophy of education, the main thrust of this book tackles the more fundamental questions concerning communication, dialogue and solitude. Irony and Singularity introduces aesthetics into higher education not as an academic discipline among others but as part of a wider strategy to re-orientate teaching. Although focused on the manner in which art and aesthetics are taught within the context of the art school, the book raises wider and more central issues within pedagogy, challenging the currently dominant models rooted in science and the humanities. Engaging with a wide range of philosophers and philosophical traditions often ignored in the philosophy of education, Peters questions the resistance of the aesthetic object to language, communication and instruction and claims that the philosophical acknowledgement of incommunicability coupled with the demand for communication allows us to better understand the role of the teacher as complicit in the production of the aesthetic rather than merely receptive as a reader or interpreter of the aesthetic 'text'.

Although, initially, dealing with specifically pedagogical issues arising out of debates within the philosophy of education, the main thrust of this book tackles the more fundamental questions concerning communication, dialogue and solitude. Irony and Singularity introduces aesthetics into higher education not as an academic discipline among others but as part of a wider strategy to re-orientate teaching. Although focused on the manner in which art and aesthetics are taught within the context of the art school, the book raises wider and more central issues within pedagogy, challenging the currently dominant models rooted in science and the humanities. Engaging with a wide range of philosophers and philosophical traditions often ignored in the philosophy of education, Peters questions the resistance of the aesthetic object to language, communication and instruction and claims that the philosophical acknowledgement of incommunicability coupled with the demand for communication allows us to better understand the role of the teacher as complicit in the production of the aesthetic rather than merely receptive as a reader or interpreter of the aesthetic 'text'.