SUNY series, Intersections: Philosophy and Critical Theory – serie

The first authoritative study of the emergence of the modern concept of literature in German romanticism.The Literary Absolute is the first authoritative study of the emergence of the modern concept of literature in German romanticism. The authors trace this concept from the philosophical crisis bequeathed by Kant to his successors, to its development by the central figures of the Athenaeum group: the Schlegel brothers, Schelling, and Novalis.This study situates the Jena romantics' "fragmentary" model of literature-a model of literature as the production of its own theory-in relation to the development of a post-Kantian conception of philosophy as the total and reflective auto-production of the thinking subject. Analyzing key texts of the period, the authors articulate the characteristics of romantic thought and at the same time show historical and systematic connections with modern literary theory. Thus, The Literary Absolute renews contemporary scholarship, showing the romantic origins of some of the leading issues in current critical theory.

Outlines a mystical theology and experience of the sacred founded on the absence of god.Originally published in 1943, Inner Experience is the single most significant work by one of the twentieth century's most influential writers. It outlines a mystical theology and experience of the sacred founded on the absence of god. Bataille calls Inner Experience a "narrative of despair," but also describes it as a book wherein "profundity and passion go tenderly hand in hand." Herein, he says, "The mind moves in a strange world where anguish and ecstasy take shape."Bataille's search for experience begins where religion, philosophy, science, and literature leave off, where doctrines, dogmas, methods, and the arts collapse. His method of meditation, outlined and documented here, commingles horror and delight. Laughter, intoxication, eroticism, poetry, and sacrifice are pursued not as ends in and of themselves but as means of access to a sovereign realm of inner experience.This new translation is the first to include Method of Meditation and Post-Scriptum 1953, the supplementary texts Bataille added to create the first volume of his Summa Atheologica. This edition also offers the full notes and annotations from the French edition of Bataille's Oeuvres Complètes, along with an incisive introductory essay by Stuart Kendall that situates the work historically, biographically, and philosophically.

In Tears, the author explores theoretical issues raised by the intersection of philosophy, literature, art, architecture, and theology. The critical accounts of thinkers like Derrida, Blanchot, Jabès, Kierkegaard, Hegel, Heidegger, Ricoeur, Gadamer, Austin, Ayre, Rorty, Tillich, Barth, and Altizer developed in this book effectively reshape and refocus the terms of current debate.

This book presents contemporary analyses of interpretation by some of the most prominent figures in contemporary philosophy and literary criticism. These essays question and transform traditional statements on the aims, methods, and techniques of interpretation.The essays demonstrate how contemporary discussions of interpretation are necessarily sent back to the hermeneutic tradition. Emphasizing the importance of Friedrich Nietzsche's influence on the contemporary debates concerning current interpretive practices, this volume traces the differences in interpretive perspectives generated in the writings of Michel Foucault, Eric Blondel, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, Manfred Frank, Werner Hamacher, and Jean-Luc Nancy. The essays by Foucault, Blondel, Frank, Hamacher, and Nancy appear here for the first time in English.

The major statements of the leading figures in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century German and French hermeneutic traditions.Here are the major statements of the leading figures in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century German and French hermeneutic traditions-the major statements on the aims, methods, and techniques of interpretation. Some of these appear here for the first time in English.This book establishes the context for contemporary analyses of interpretation. Part I traces the evolution of hermeneutics from Friedrich Ast and Friedrich Schleiermacher through Wilhelm Dilthey to Martin Heidegger's placing of hermeneutics at the center of the ontological analysis of human being. Part II follows the development of the Heideggerian tradition in the writings of Hans-Georg Gadamer. Gadamer's "philosophical hermeneutics" is then located at the center of several important exchanges with more traditional, objective hermeneutical methodologists like Emilio Betti, ideology-critics like Jürgen Habermas, and linguistic-phenomenological thinkers like Paul Ricoeur.

This book, like the post-Heideggerian reception of Nietzsche, rides out the splits and frays of the text offering an up-to-date look at international Nietzsche scholarship. Included are topics such as the collaboration of German thought with the rise of National Socialism and the alliance between Nietzschean genealogy and Freudian culture criticism in regard to technology and the unconscious, the status of moral imperatives from Kant to Heidegger, and Heidegger's alleged rediscovery of Nietzsche as the "last metaphysician." Looking After Nietzsche is nonexclusionary in the risks it takes; every thread of "Nietzsche" is pursued throughout its labyrinthine entanglements.

"This book is the first authoritative analysis of the theory of translation in German Romanticism. In a systematic study of Herder, Goethe, Schlegel, Novalis, Humboldt, Schleiermacher, and Hölderlin, Berman demonstrates the importance of the theory of translation for an understanding of German romantic culture, arguing that never before has the concept of translation been meditated in such detail and such depth. Indeed, fundamental questions that arise again today, such as the question concerning the proper versus the literal, of the Other to a given culture, the essence of the work of art, and of language, all these issues, and many more, are shown to have been premeditated in a most important manner by these German Romantics.

"This book is the first authoritative analysis of the theory of translation in German Romanticism. In a systematic study of Herder, Goethe, Schlegel, Novalis, Humboldt, Schleiermacher, and Hölderlin, Berman demonstrates the importance of the theory of translation for an understanding of German romantic culture, arguing that never before has the concept of translation been meditated in such detail and such depth. Indeed, fundamental questions that arise again today, such as the question concerning the proper versus the literal, of the Other to a given culture, the essence of the work of art, and of language, all these issues, and many more, are shown to have been premeditated in a most important manner by these German Romantics.

This book is a translation of Maurice Blanchot's work that is of major importance to late 20th-century literature and philosophy studies. Using the fragmentary form, Blanchot challenges the boundaries between the literary and the philosophical. With the obsessive rigor that has always marked his writing, Blanchot returns to the themes that have haunted his work since the beginning: writing, death, transgression, the neuter, but here the figures around whom his discussion turns are Hegel and Nietzsche rather than Mallarme and Kafka.The metaphor Blanchot uses for writing in The Step Not Beyond is the game of chance. Fragmentary writing is a play of limits, a play of ever-multiplied terms in which no one term ever takes precedence. Through the randomness of the fragmentary, Blanchot explores ideas as varied as the relation of writing to luck and to the law, the displacement of the self in writing, the temporality of the Eternal Return, the responsibility of the self towards the others.

Imagination and Chance illuminates the different philosophical projects that animate Ricoeur's hermeneutics and Derrida's deconstruction. Basic concepts in Ricouer such as discourse, metaphor and symbol, and tradition are examined, and texts by Derrida including "White Mythology," Introduction to Husserl's The Origin of Geometry, and "The Double Session" are analyzed. The book also includes a previously untranslated round table discussion between Ricoeur and Derrida.

Today, the sublime has again become the focus of sustained reconsideration, but now for its epistemological and ontological-or presentational-aspects. As an unmasterable excess of beauty, the sublime marks the limits of representational thinking. These essays will be indispensable reading for anyone whose work is concerned with the sublime or, more generally, with the limits of representation, including philosophers, literary scholars and art historians.

Three seminal philosophical texts by F. W. J. Schelling, arguably the most complex representations of German Idealism, are clearly presented here for the first time in English.Three seminal philosophical texts by F. W. J. Schelling, arguably the most complex representations of German Idealism, are clearly presented here for the first time in English. Included are Schelling's "Treatise Explicatory of the Idealism in the Science of Knowledge" (1797), "System of Philosophy in General" (1804), and "Stuttgart Seminars" (1810). Of these texts, the "Treatise" constitutes the most comprehensive critical reading of Kant and Fichte by a contemporary thinker and, as a result, proved seminal to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's efforts at interconnecting English Romanticism and German speculative thought. Extending his early critique of subjectivity, Schelling's "System of Philosophy in General" and his "Stuttgart Seminars" launch a far more radical inquiry into the notion of identity, a term which for Schelling, increasingly reveals the contingent nature and inescapable limitations of theoretical practice.An extensive critical introduction relates Schelling's work both to his philosophical contemporaries (Kant, Fichte, and Hegel) as well as to the contemporary debates about Theory in the humanities. The book includes extensive annotations of each translated text, an excursus on Schelling and Coleridge, a comprehensive multi-lingual bibliography, and a glossary.

Three seminal philosophical texts by F. W. J. Schelling, arguably the most complex representations of German Idealism, are clearly presented here for the first time in English.Three seminal philosophical texts by F. W. J. Schelling, arguably the most complex representations of German Idealism, are clearly presented here for the first time in English. Included are Schelling's "Treatise Explicatory of the Idealism in the Science of Knowledge" (1797), "System of Philosophy in General" (1804), and "Stuttgart Seminars" (1810). Of these texts, the "Treatise" constitutes the most comprehensive critical reading of Kant and Fichte by a contemporary thinker and, as a result, proved seminal to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's efforts at interconnecting English Romanticism and German speculative thought. Extending his early critique of subjectivity, Schelling's "System of Philosophy in General" and his "Stuttgart Seminars" launch a far more radical inquiry into the notion of identity, a term which for Schelling, increasingly reveals the contingent nature and inescapable limitations of theoretical practice.An extensive critical introduction relates Schelling's work both to his philosophical contemporaries (Kant, Fichte, and Hegel) as well as to the contemporary debates about Theory in the humanities. The book includes extensive annotations of each translated text, an excursus on Schelling and Coleridge, a comprehensive multi-lingual bibliography, and a glossary.

A breathtaking philosophical journey through angels, art, and language, where Massimo Cacciari reveals the Angel as the radiant, paradoxical key to understanding transcendence, meaning, and the limits of human speech.In this luminous and daring work, Massimo Cacciari traces the figure of the Angel across theology, philosophy, literature, and art to reveal a profound meditation on language itself. From Judaic, Islamic, and Christian angelology to the visionary poetics of Dante Alighieri, Rainer Maria Rilke, Franz Kafka, and Walter Benjamin, Cacciari follows the Angel as a being "suspended between all the axes of creation." In dialogue with the art of Paul Klee and Franz Marc, he uncovers an arresting metaphor for the paradox at the heart of the human condition: absolute freedom and absolute determination, transcendence and finitude, silence and speech. The Angel, Cacciari argues, is not merely a religious symbol but a philosophical figure—an intermediary presence that discloses the world while remaining itself elusive and unsayable. Through a sweeping, poetic approach to phenomenology, he confronts the defining concerns of modern thought: nihilism, representation, intelligibility, and the fragile status of language in a fractured age. Erudite yet incandescent, rigorous yet imaginative, The Necessary Angel is a tour de force—an original vocabulary for thinking the limits of meaning and the mystery at the core of human expression.

A breathtaking philosophical journey through angels, art, and language, where Massimo Cacciari reveals the Angel as the radiant, paradoxical key to understanding transcendence, meaning, and the limits of human speech.In this luminous and daring work, Massimo Cacciari traces the figure of the Angel across theology, philosophy, literature, and art to reveal a profound meditation on language itself. From Judaic, Islamic, and Christian angelology to the visionary poetics of Dante Alighieri, Rainer Maria Rilke, Franz Kafka, and Walter Benjamin, Cacciari follows the Angel as a being "suspended between all the axes of creation." In dialogue with the art of Paul Klee and Franz Marc, he uncovers an arresting metaphor for the paradox at the heart of the human condition: absolute freedom and absolute determination, transcendence and finitude, silence and speech. The Angel, Cacciari argues, is not merely a religious symbol but a philosophical figure—an intermediary presence that discloses the world while remaining itself elusive and unsayable. Through a sweeping, poetic approach to phenomenology, he confronts the defining concerns of modern thought: nihilism, representation, intelligibility, and the fragile status of language in a fractured age. Erudite yet incandescent, rigorous yet imaginative, The Necessary Angel is a tour de force—an original vocabulary for thinking the limits of meaning and the mystery at the core of human expression.

Essays on the French writer and critic Georges Bataille, that examine his thought in relation to Hegel, Nietzsche, and Derrida.This book examines the significance of Bataille's contributions to various areas of investigation: philosophical inquiry in the broadest sense; economic theory relative to waste, expenditure, and the heterogeneous; the political commitment expected of the intellectual and his relationship to the whole man; the experience of a subject at its limits, in moments of alterity, or of inscription within the literary text.Contributors include Robert Sasso, Lionel Abel, Denis Hollier, Tony Corn, Rodolphe Gasché, Pierre Klossowski, Jean Piel, Arkady Plotnitsky, Jean Borreil, Julia Kristeva, Jean-Louis Baudry, Paul Smith, Michael Halley, Mikhal Popowski, and Susan Rubin Suleiman.

Essays on the French writer and critic Georges Bataille, that examine his thought in relation to Hegel, Nietzsche, and Derrida.This book examines the significance of Bataille's contributions to various areas of investigation: philosophical inquiry in the broadest sense; economic theory relative to waste, expenditure, and the heterogeneous; the political commitment expected of the intellectual and his relationship to the whole man; the experience of a subject at its limits, in moments of alterity, or of inscription within the literary text.Contributors include Robert Sasso, Lionel Abel, Denis Hollier, Tony Corn, Rodolphe Gasché, Pierre Klossowski, Jean Piel, Arkady Plotnitsky, Jean Borreil, Julia Kristeva, Jean-Louis Baudry, Paul Smith, Michael Halley, Mikhal Popowski, and Susan Rubin Suleiman.

The author reads Rimbaud, Mallarme. Holderlin, and Trakl in relation to philosophy, and in particular to Heidegger.Is the age of poets past, or are we just on the verge of its coming in a farewell to poetry? When Rimbaud claims: "One must be absolutely modern!" what does he ask for? Is modernity really already finished, before it has even fully arrived?Is this the paradox of our present time? What if, as Mallarme said, a present does not exist?Is there any place for what Heidegger called "building, dwelling, thinking?" Why did Heidegger himself in the end need an ultimate God, after the failure of his political expectations?To keep questioning is already a way of responding. Perhaps the traditional philosophical gesture is not sufficient. If language, culture, and the history of the West have come to the point of no return as shown by Auschwitz, everything has to be rethought— without a "turn" or a return.

Examines allegory in Hölderlin's later work, exploring subjects such as Freud and Derrida's views of mourning, and offering original readings of works including Impossible Ode, Mnemosyne, and The Churchyard.

Examines the notion of Darstellung [representation] in the critical discourse of German Idealism and Romanticism, paying particular attention to Kant, Fichte, Novalis, and Kleist.The Retreat of Representation is the first book-length study to examine the radical new notion of Darstellung in its own discursive context. Martha Helfer traces the term's genealogy from its inception in Kant's Critiques through Fichte's definition of the subject as Darstellung to the poetic theory and praxis of the Jena Romantics. She argues that the conceptually powerful yet tremendously problematic figure of the negative Darstellung of the Kantian sublime opens up the possibility of a poetization of the philosophical discourse of transcendental idealism, and ultimately demonstrates that Kleist's oeuvre constitutes a critique of transcendental theories of Darstellung. Helfer provides remarkably clear, concise readings of major texts of Idealism and Romanticism in light of the Darstellung problematic, advancing compelling interpretations of Novalis's Hymns to the Night as a theory of the Romantic lyric, Kleist's essay On the Marionette Theater as a redaction and revision of the Kantian sublime, The Foundling as a critique of Fichtean ego philosophy, and The Broken Jug as a prototype of Heideggerian and post-Heideggerian critiques of representation

Examines the notion of Darstellung [representation] in the critical discourse of German Idealism and Romanticism, paying particular attention to Kant, Fichte, Novalis, and Kleist.The Retreat of Representation is the first book-length study to examine the radical new notion of Darstellung in its own discursive context. Martha Helfer traces the term's genealogy from its inception in Kant's Critiques through Fichte's definition of the subject as Darstellung to the poetic theory and praxis of the Jena Romantics. She argues that the conceptually powerful yet tremendously problematic figure of the negative Darstellung of the Kantian sublime opens up the possibility of a poetization of the philosophical discourse of transcendental idealism, and ultimately demonstrates that Kleist's oeuvre constitutes a critique of transcendental theories of Darstellung. Helfer provides remarkably clear, concise readings of major texts of Idealism and Romanticism in light of the Darstellung problematic, advancing compelling interpretations of Novalis's Hymns to the Night as a theory of the Romantic lyric, Kleist's essay On the Marionette Theater as a redaction and revision of the Kantian sublime, The Foundling as a critique of Fichtean ego philosophy, and The Broken Jug as a prototype of Heideggerian and post-Heideggerian critiques of representation

This untraditional text is a series of parables, allegories, and prose poems that reflect on the problem of the fragment. Studying the fragment lays the theoretical ground for the basic question of where a text begins and ends.Interruptions is a highly original book which refuses characterization as either literature or theory. Hans-Jost Frey explores the problem of the fragment both from a more traditional critical perspective, discussing the peculiar status of the fragmentary text in literary studies, and in a performative or exemplary way through fictional texts and short meditations. In its forays beyond the narrower realm of literary criticism, Frey addresses in turn such crucial issues as the law, personal history, death, and the constraints of understanding, revealing in each case the fundamental role the fragment plays in them.

This untraditional text is a series of parables, allegories, and prose poems that reflect on the problem of the fragment. Studying the fragment lays the theoretical ground for the basic question of where a text begins and ends.Interruptions is a highly original book which refuses characterization as either literature or theory. Hans-Jost Frey explores the problem of the fragment both from a more traditional critical perspective, discussing the peculiar status of the fragmentary text in literary studies, and in a performative or exemplary way through fictional texts and short meditations. In its forays beyond the narrower realm of literary criticism, Frey addresses in turn such crucial issues as the law, personal history, death, and the constraints of understanding, revealing in each case the fundamental role the fragment plays in them.

Rapp mounts a devastating critique against the notion that literary and cultural theory since the 1960s has succeeded in effecting, or at least reporting, both the demise of philosophy and the emergence of a genuinely post-philosophical culture.Fleeing the Universal takes issue with the popular view that contemporary literary and cultural theory has brilliantly effected, or at least brilliantly reported, the demise of philosophy and the emergence of a new post-philosophical culture. It offers a critique of the various options presented by "post-rational" critics and theorists and, at the same time, argues for the superiority of speculative philosophy to all these options. Further, it demonstrates that the chief problems with post-rationalism were already seen, before our time, by two speculative philosophers, Hegel and Santayana, both of whose systems of philosophy are primarily intended to avoid the problems that beset the critique of reason.Fleeing the Universal criticizes the arguments and methods of deconstruction, the new pragmatism, and New Historicism, and suggests that the alternatives to post-philosophy developed by Hegel in the early nineteenth century and by Santayana in the early twentieth century have not been superseded by any theory associated with the culture of postmodernism or the analytical techniques of poststructuralism.

Contra those proclaiming the end of philosophy, Badiou aims to restore philosophical thought to the complete space of the truths that condition it.

Confirms the importance of literature in Derrida's development of a postmodern ethics.Presented here is the fullest account to date of Derrida's unconventional understanding of literature and its importance to the development of a poststructural ethics. Kronick explains why Derrida has had such a great impact upon literary studies, and at the same time, he demonstrates how different Derrida's conception of literature is from the literary critic's. Focusing on such key topics as singularity, justice, law, aporia, and the event, this book explores the unexpected ways literature appears in Derrida's works and is tied to his major concepts.

Available for the first time in English, this study offers insights into the genesis of German Romanticism.While ostensibly an examination of classical Greek poetry, Friedrich Schlegel's On the Study of Greek Poetry is a signal document in the development of German Romantic aesthetics. In it, Schlegel outlines the development of classical and post-classical cultures, showing clearly that an entirely new mode of cultural production is necessary. On the Study of Greek Poetry has been at the center of the discussions of German Romanticism by German scholars such as Peter Szondi and Manfred Frank, and this translation makes an important text in the genesis of German Romanticism available for the first time in English. The book also includes a critical introduction as well as annotations that elucidate Schlegel's numerous allusions.

Available for the first time in English, this study offers insights into the genesis of German Romanticism.While ostensibly an examination of classical Greek poetry, Friedrich Schlegel's On the Study of Greek Poetry is a signal document in the development of German Romantic aesthetics. In it, Schlegel outlines the development of classical and post-classical cultures, showing clearly that an entirely new mode of cultural production is necessary. On the Study of Greek Poetry has been at the center of the discussions of German Romanticism by German scholars such as Peter Szondi and Manfred Frank, and this translation makes an important text in the genesis of German Romanticism available for the first time in English. The book also includes a critical introduction as well as annotations that elucidate Schlegel's numerous allusions.

Examines this forceful emotion from philosophical, literary, and art historical perspectives.Disgust (Ekel, dégoût) is a state of high alert. It acutely says "no" to a variety of phenomena that seemingly threaten the integrity of the self, if not its very existence. A counterpart to the feelings of appetite, desire, and love, it allows at the same time for an acting out of hidden impulses and libidinal drives.In Disgust, Winfried Menninghaus provides a comprehensive account of the significance of this forceful emotion in philosophy, aesthetics, literature, the arts, psychoanalysis, and theory of culture from the eighteenth century to the present. Topics addressed include the role of disgust as both a cognitive and moral organon in Kant and Nietzsche; the history of the imagination of the rotting corpse; the counter-cathexis of the disgusting in Romantic poetics and its modernist appeal ever since; the affinities of disgust and laughter and the analogies of vomiting and writing; the foundation of Freudian psychoanalysis in a theory of disgusting pleasures and practices; the association of disgusting "otherness" with truth and the trans-symbolic "real" in Bataille, Sartre, and Kristeva; Kafka's self-representation as an "Angel" of disgusting smells and acts, concealed in a writerly stance of uncompromising "purity"; and recent debates on "Abject Art."