Thomas Busch - Böcker

Existentialism has come to be identified as a critical, reactionary way of thinking, celebrating the individual, freedom, embodiment, and the limits of rationality and systematic theorizing. For the most part this assessment is true of the early and, by now, "classical" works of existentialism, those that first burst upon the philosophical and cultural scene. Circulating Being centers on the later works of several well-known French existentialists (Camus, Marcel, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty) to trace out the development of their existential thinking about language, communicative life, ethics, and politics. This development "from embodiment to incorporation" carries existentialism beyond identification with the mere reactionary and reveals how, while prefiguring postmodernism in important ways, the existential thinkers dealt with here reveal themselves to be reconstructive of the Western tradition. This is apparent in the growing appreciation of difference in their late works along with a reluctance to surrender the ideal of unity, and in their reappropriation of truth and justice while repudiating a totalizing metaphysics.

Existentialism has come to be identified as a critical, reactionary way of thinking, celebrating the individual, freedom, embodiment, and the limits of rationality and systematic theorizing. For the most part this assessment is true of the early and, by now, "classical" works of existentialism, those that first burst upon the philosophical and cultural scene. Circulating Being centers on the later works of several well-known French existentialists (Camus, Marcel, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty) to trace out the development of their existential thinking about language, communicative life, ethics, and politics. This development "from embodiment to incorporation" carries existentialism beyond identification with the mere reactionary and reveals how, while prefiguring postmodernism in important ways, the existential thinkers dealt with here reveal themselves to be reconstructive of the Western tradition. This is apparent in the growing appreciation of difference in their late works along with a reluctance to surrender the ideal of unity, and in their reappropriation of truth and justice while repudiating a totalizing metaphysics.

Wie arbeitet Aristoteles als wissenschaftlicher Autor? Wie nutzt er das Schreiben für seine Argumentation und ihre Darstellung? Dieser Frage geht die vorliegende Monografie für die Schrift De generatione animalium systematisch nach. In ihr entwickelt Aristoteles eine komplexe Theorie, mit der er Fortpflanzungs- und Vererbungsphänomene in der gesamten Tierwelt einschließlich des Menschen erklären möchte. Aristoteles‘ Argumentation ist dicht und wechselt zwischen Beweisführung, Diskursivität und Darstellung. Eine im Rahmen einer Makroplanung insgesamt prozessuale Vorgehensweise schließt die rhetorische Gestaltung einzelner Passagen nicht aus. Insgesamt kann gezeigt werden, wie Aristoteles das Schreiben nutzt, um auf innovative Weise die eigene Theorie zu entwickeln (‚epistemisches Schreiben‘) und gleichzeitig den Weg seiner Forschung zu vermitteln. Mit der detaillierten Analyse der Bücher I-IV, der systematischen Auswertung der Ergebnisse und einem Katalog signifikanter Formulierungen bietet das Buch einen Ausgangspunkt und ein Instrumentarium für die weitere detaillierte Erforschung Aristotelischer Schriften und gleichzeitig einen Beitrag zur Geschichte der Wissenschaftsliteratur.