William S Smith – författare

Following costly U.S. engagement in two wars in the Middle East, questions about the appropriateness of American military interventions dominate foreign policy debates. Is an interventionist foreign policy compatible with the American constitutional tradition? This book examines critic Irving Babbitt’s (1865–1933) unique contribution to understanding the quality of foreign policy leadership in a democracy. Babbitt explored how a democratic nation’s foreign policy is a product of the moral and cultural tendencies of the nation’s leaders, arguing that the substitution of expansive, sentimental Romanticism for the religious and ethical traditions of the West would lead to imperialism. The United States’ move away from the restraint and order of sound constitutionalism to involve itself in the affairs of other nations will inevitably cause a clash with the “civilizational” regions that have emerged in recent decades. Democracy and Imperialism uses the question of soul types to address issues of foreign policy leadership, and discusses the leadership qualities that are necessary for sound foreign policy.

This edited volume explores the intersections of the human, nonhuman, transhuman, and posthuman from a phenomenological perspective.  Representing perspectives from several disciplines, these investigations take a closer look at the relationship between the phenomenology of life, creative ontopoiesis, and otherness; technology and the human; art and the question of humanity; nonhumans, animals, and intentionality; and transhumanism.  Ontological positioning of the human is reconsidered with regard to the nonhuman, transhuman, and posthuman within the cosmos.  Further examination of the artificial and object in the lifeworld is also explored.  This volume also pays tribute to Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka and her methodical contributions to phenomenology.  This text appeals to students and researchers of phenomenology worldwide.

This volume investigates the intersection of phenomenology and posthumanism by rethinking the human and nonhuman specifically with regard to boredom, isolation, loneliness, and solitude.  By closely examining these concepts from phenomenological, philosophical, and literary perspectives, this diverse collection of essays offers insights into the human and nonhuman in the absence of the Other and within the postapocalyptic.

Topics of interest include modalities of presence and absence with regard to body, time, beast, and things; the phenomenology of corporeity; ontopoiesis and the sublime; alienation, absurdity, and phenomenology of existence; memory, posthistoricity, posthuman nihilism, and posthumanity; speculative cosmology, cosmic holism, and consciousness; ecophenomenology; and the philosophy of the aesthetic.  These essays parse and probe distinct aspects of the posthuman condition and what it means to exist in a posthuman world, thereby furthering the vast,rich scope of phenomenological research and study.  This text appeals to students and researchers working in these topics and fields.