O. Bradley Bassler – författare

This book charts the shape of future philosophical investigation by posing the question: “What is the Matrix?” Guided by the example of the Matrix film trilogy, the author examines issues ranging from simulation, proof and action to value, culture and mythology, offering a progressively deeper diagnosis of modern philosophical conditions.

This book charts the shape of future philosophical investigation by posing the question: “What is the Matrix?” Guided by the example of the Matrix film trilogy, the author examines issues ranging from simulation, proof and action to value, culture and mythology, offering a progressively deeper diagnosis of modern philosophical conditions.

This book addresses the philosophy of Kant and the poetry of Shelley as historical starting points for a new way of thinking in the modern age. Fusing together critical philosophy and visionary poetry, Bassler develops the notion of visionary critique, or paraphysics, as a model for future philosophical endeavor.

Many philosophical accounts of reason are geared toward providing rational justifications ex post facto rather than accounting for the role reason plays in actu in the process of creative work.

Many philosophical accounts of reason are geared toward providing rational justifications ex post facto rather than accounting for the role reason plays in actu in the process of creative work.  Moreover, when in actu accounts of reason are given, they are usually too narrow to describe the sort of high-level creative work that is involved in the composition of poetry or the creation of a scientific theory.  This book suggests that the rudiments of a broader account are found in various German Idealist figures, most notably the philosopher-novelist-critic Friedrich Schlegel and the philosophical poet and novelist Friedrich Hölderlin.  However, German Idealism generally is subject to Hans Blumenberg‘s secularization critique which provides a strong prima facie argument that the accounts of poetic reason suggested by Schlegel and Hölderlin are indefensible. This book argues that confronting Blumenberg’s secularization critique and his associated legitimation of modernity with a romantic conception of poetic reason requires revisions on both sides, and that the work of Lacan is especially well-suited to provide the conditions upon which a legitimation of poetic reason can be provided.

Hegel’s Jena Moment remains the undiscovered continent of his thought.  This book explores this continent by glossing the Logic and Metaphysics from Hegel’s 1804-5 Jena System-Project, and it is the first book-length treatment of these works in English.  Previously, H. S. Harris has written fruitfully on the Jena Moment, but his work is couched in terms of the Jena Moment as preparation for Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Instead, this book reads the Jena Moment on its own terms.  Hegel’s Jena System-Project is a masterpiece of philosophical thinking and in some ways more radical than anything he would go on to publish. In a contemporary philosophical climate largely dominated by receptions of the Phenomenology of Spirit, it points to new inroads and programs for reading Hegel.  This book should appeal to anyone interested in using Hegel as a springboard for philosophical thinking in the twenty-first century.