Philosophical Projections – serie

In the reincarnation myth in Book X of Plato’s Republic, the unnamed first soul, who has lived a good life and has been rewarded in the afterlife, chooses a new life and fate, and chooses catastrophically badly. He finds himself fated to eat his own children. Despite being warned to blame only himself, he wails and blames anything and everything else in his conviction that his fate is undeserved. Though he should not be shocked because he has made this choice himself, he is incredulous because he has completely misunderstood the nature of his choice. Starting with Plato’s myth, this book looks at the errors this soul has made and considers these errors through both the Republic and a series of paired Shakespeare plays. Reading the Republic along with Othello and The Comedy of Errors, the first section focuses on the misreading of comedy and tragedy in the life of the individual; returning to the Republic and using The Merchant of Venice and Pericles, Part II focuses on the broadened context of the misuse of political and economic forces; returning again to the Republic and reading Timon of Athens and Measure for Measure, Part III focuses on the broadest context, the misunderstanding of the inseparability of birth and infinite debt. The hope of the text, and the hope of human life, is to help us avoid choosing lives that devour what we most love.

Political Loneliness: Modern Liberal Subjects in Hiding examines the loneliness that remains at work in modern life even as we find ourselves increasingly interconnected. While much has been said about this experience in the main currents of continental philosophy, this book opens new paths within this discourse by developing the problem of loneliness in a political register. The central claim of this book is that neoliberal subjectivity has rendered us lonely. Drawing especially on the work of Hannah Arendt, the author suggests that the political structures we have inherited from the liberal tradition—such as the anonymity of the vote and the right to pursue one’s private self-interest as far as possible—have left us hidden from one another, unable to appear as members of a common world. The author further argues that it is precisely this experience of political loneliness that renders citizens in liberal and allegedly open societies desperate to belonging and willing, in turn, to surrender to delusional fellowships like totalitarianism. By developing the problem of loneliness in a political register, this book offers a framework for interpreting the rise of totalitarianism at the beginning of the twentieth century, no less than the recent ascendance of right-wing populism in Western liberal democracies today. It thus makes an important contribution to debates in current continental philosophy, liberal political theory, and critical theory regarding issues of alienation, political life, and community in the present age.

From the twentieth century in the twenty-first, psychoanalysis and deconstruction have challenged, and continue to challenge, our conceptions of subjectivity and selfhood. Psychoanalysis revealed that even in our innermost households we are never quite alone; rather, instances of “otherness” incessantly interfere in our most intimate relation to ourselves, forcing us to adapt continuously. Deconstruction, inheriting both this psychoanalytic disclosure and Heidegger’s destruction of the history of metaphysics, went to the foundations of the Western constructions of “the subject” and “the self,” only to find how a destabilizing otherness was always already haunting them. What, if anything, remains of the self in the aftermath?Early on in the wake of deconstruction, a certain misconceived and simplified notion of the “death of the subject” was proclaimed and in recent years more or less successful attempts have been made at reviving the notions of “the subject,” “the self,” and “agency.” In contrast to these attempts at revival, this book offers a two-pronged approach: On the one hand, it argues that neither psychoanalysis nor deconstruction propounds a simple annihilation of the subject or liquidation of the self; on the other hand, however, neither do they pave the way for a “return to the subject” or “resurrection of the self” that would allow us once again to become confident about our presence to ourselves. Instead, this book suggests that if we set ourselves the task of taking up the heritage from psychoanalysis and deconstruction in a serious manner, we are obliged to retrace the subject and the self as undergoing perpetual auto-deconstruction.

For over fifty years the concept of memory has played a crucial role in a large number of academic and societal debates. The Work of Forgetting: Or, How Can We Make the Future Possible? draws attention to the limits of the academic field of memory studies. It argues that the faculty of memory offers an inadequate response to the challenges of the present. The book sets up a dialogue between the philosophies of forgetting that underlie the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin and Gilles Deleuze, and the philosophies of memory that inform the work of Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt. It builds on the idea that history is inseparable from a type of transience that cannot be counter-acted by the preserving work of memory and develops a new understanding of the phenomenon of forgetting in which the passage of time is asserted in thought and thus made productive.

Now is a time of tremendous anxiety about the present and future state of the world. As the second law of thermodynamics states, entropy never decreases, time marches relentlessly forward, and closed systems inevitably break down. Entropy serves as a powerful metaphor capturing expressions of growing malaise and decline.Entropic Philosophy: Chaos, Breakdown, and Creation builds on the meaning of entropy from the Greek entropia, signifying “a turning toward” or “transformation.” Developing a philosophy of entropy, this book draws variously from anthropology, psychoanalysis, literature, art, and the history of philosophy. This approach opens pathways for reverence and care that are crucial in preventing fear, existential inertia, and despair.

There have never been more refugees, across the world from Myanmar to Syria, than at this moment. Many more millions of refugees are likely to be displaced by the effects of climate change. Why has politics failed to produce adequate responses to these challenges, and not heeded the lessons of refugee crises of the past? Are human rights and international law, or more radically, the case for 'open borders', sufficient to address them?Nathan Bell argues for nothing less than a new concept of the political: that societies (liberal or not, in the mode of the sovereign state or some other form) embrace an ethos of responsibility for others, where the right to seek asylum becomes foundational for politics itself. Such a proposal is at the antipodes of Schmitt's friend-enemy distinction, such that hospitality and not hostility forms the basis of political decision-making.This book comprises two halves: the first establishes the theoretical basis of the ethos of responsibility, with particular reference to the writings of Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, while the second half examines these theorists in the context of historical and contemporary case studies. Finally, the book calls for a ‘politics of hauntology’ in memory of the missing - those who might have been rescued, and those yet to come, who are already among the disappeared.In this urgent work, Bell demonstrates that a radical reconfiguration of the understanding of politics is required in order to safeguard the future and human dignity of stateless persons.

We are used to seeing the everyday as an ordinary aspect of life, something that we need to "overcome"; whereas it actually plays a crucial role in any event of our lives. This highly original book engages with a range of thinkers and texts from across the fields of phenomenology, psychoanalysis and critical theory, including Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Freud and Benjamin, together with innovative analysis of French literature and the visual arts, to demonstrate that the role of repetition and deferral in modernity has changed dramatically. Rather than allowing the everyday gradually to integrate singular events into its repetitive texture, events are experienced now as self-enclosed entities, allegedly disconnected from the everyday, leading to its impoverishment. The book thus offers a novel understanding of being, body, trauma and shock, but within the framework of the everyday as a concept that deserves a theory of its very own.

Discussions of materialism have exploded in recent years. From the speculative realism/materialism of Quentin Meillassoux to the New Materialism of many modern Marxisms, the interest in a return to or rehabilitation of materialism is on the rise. What is not analyzed in many of these discussions, however, is a trenchant methodological and metaphysical problem lying at the basis of any philosophical materialism: if matter is simply that which is other than thought, then how can it be thought without drawing it away from its materiality? On the other hand, if one assumes a direct access to matter, to this other, what are the conditions of that access? Are they material conditions or cognitive (thought) conditions? Does what would present itself immediately present, at the same time, the conditions that allow it to be presented? If not, then we are closer to a theology of matter and further from a philosophical materialism. The Thought of Matter investigates this metaphysical and methodological problem through Aristotle, Marx, Adorno, Althusser, Duns Scotus, Hobbes, and Benjamin in order to show that a philosophical materialism necessarily requires the concepts and tools of thought in order to allow the otherness of matter to emerge in its own materiality.

Discussions of materialism have exploded in recent years. From the speculative realism/materialism of Quentin Meillassoux to the New Materialism of many modern Marxisms, the interest in a return to or rehabilitation of materialism is on the rise. What is not analyzed in many of these discussions, however, is a trenchant methodological and metaphysical problem lying at the basis of any philosophical materialism: if matter is simply that which is other than thought, then how can it be thought without drawing it away from its materiality? On the other hand, if one assumes a direct access to matter, to this other, what are the conditions of that access? Are they material conditions or cognitive (thought) conditions? Does what would present itself immediately present, at the same time, the conditions that allow it to be presented? If not, then we are closer to a theology of matter and further from a philosophical materialism. The Thought of Matter investigates this metaphysical and methodological problem through Aristotle, Marx, Adorno, Althusser, Duns Scotus, Hobbes, and Benjamin in order to show that a philosophical materialism necessarily requires the concepts and tools of thought in order to allow the otherness of matter to emerge in its own materiality.

For over fifty years the concept of memory has played a crucial role in a large number of academic and societal debates. The Work of Forgetting: Or, How Can We Make the Future Possible? draws attention to the limits of the academic field of memory studies. It argues that the faculty of memory offers an inadequate response to the challenges of the present. The book sets up a dialogue between the philosophies of forgetting that underlie the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin and Gilles Deleuze, and the philosophies of memory that inform the work of Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt. It builds on the idea that history is inseparable from a type of transience that cannot be counter-acted by the preserving work of memory and develops a new understanding of the phenomenon of forgetting in which the passage of time is asserted in thought and thus made productive.

This collection of essays by one of the foremost figures in contemporary theory takes as its theme the edge or limit between language, time, history, and politics. These are essays that are all on the brink, the very extreme at which one can no longer define where one is located, neither on the cliff, say, nor over the edge. To be on the brink is to take up that extreme limit, the point of contamination or indetermination where language, time, history, and politics all converge upon one another.On the Brink begins with a consideration of Kant’s treatment of time as representation and of Hegel’s treatment of the writing of history and the end of art, all while taking up other key figures in the history of philosophy. The book then moves to an exploration of language in a variety of manifestations, from translation to complaint and greeting. It concludes by analyzing political and social questions that continue to haunt us today—the conception of work, not least in National Socialism, and our relationship to democracy. Taken together, Werner Hamacher’s essays offer trenchant historical, political, and rhetorical interventions into the history of philosophy, literature, and our contemporary political situation.

This collection of essays by one of the foremost figures in contemporary theory takes as its theme the edge or limit between language, time, history, and politics. These are essays that are all on the brink, the very extreme at which one can no longer define where one is located, neither on the cliff, say, nor over the edge. To be on the brink is to take up that extreme limit, the point of contamination or indetermination where language, time, history, and politics all converge upon one another.On the Brink begins with a consideration of Kant’s treatment of time as representation and of Hegel’s treatment of the writing of history and the end of art, all while taking up other key figures in the history of philosophy. The book then moves to an exploration of language in a variety of manifestations, from translation to complaint and greeting. It concludes by analyzing political and social questions that continue to haunt us today—the conception of work, not least in National Socialism, and our relationship to democracy. Taken together, Werner Hamacher’s essays offer trenchant historical, political, and rhetorical interventions into the history of philosophy, literature, and our contemporary political situation.

Political Loneliness: Modern Liberal Subjects in Hiding examines the loneliness that remains at work in modern life even as we find ourselves increasingly interconnected. While much has been said about this experience in the main currents of continental philosophy, this book opens new paths within this discourse by developing the problem of loneliness in a political register. The central claim of this book is that neoliberal subjectivity has rendered us lonely. Drawing especially on the work of Hannah Arendt, the author suggests that the political structures we have inherited from the liberal tradition—such as the anonymity of the vote and the right to pursue one’s private self-interest as far as possible—have left us hidden from one another, unable to appear as members of a common world. The author further argues that it is precisely this experience of political loneliness that renders citizens in liberal and allegedly open societies desperate to belonging and willing, in turn, to surrender to delusional fellowships like totalitarianism. By developing the problem of loneliness in a political register, this book offers a framework for interpreting the rise of totalitarianism at the beginning of the twentieth century, no less than the recent ascendance of right-wing populism in Western liberal democracies today. It thus makes an important contribution to debates in current continental philosophy, liberal political theory, and critical theory regarding issues of alienation, political life, and community in the present age.

The concept of community is one of the most frequently used and abused of recent philosophical or socio-political concepts. In the 1980s, faced with the imminent collapse of communism and the unchecked supremacy of free-market capitalism, the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy (in The Inoperative Community) and the writer Maurice Blanchot (in The Unavowable Community) both thought it essential to rethink the fundamental basis of “community” as such. More recently, Nancy has renewed the debate by unexpectedly attacking Blanchot’s account of community, claiming that it embodies a dangerously nostalgic desire for mythic and religious communion.This book examines the history and implications of this controversy. It analyses in forensic detail Nancy’s and Blanchot’s contrasting interpretations of German Romanticism, and the work of Heidegger, Bataille, and Marguerite Duras, and examines closely their divergent approaches to the contradictory legacy of Christianity. At a time when politics are increasingly inseparable from a deep-seated sense of crisis, it provides an incisive account of what, in the concept of community, is thought yet crucially still remains unthought.

The concept of community is one of the most frequently used and abused of recent philosophical or socio-political concepts. In the 1980s, faced with the imminent collapse of communism and the unchecked supremacy of free-market capitalism, the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy (in The Inoperative Community) and the writer Maurice Blanchot (in The Unavowable Community) both thought it essential to rethink the fundamental basis of “community” as such. More recently, Nancy has renewed the debate by unexpectedly attacking Blanchot’s account of community, claiming that it embodies a dangerously nostalgic desire for mythic and religious communion.This book examines the history and implications of this controversy. It analyses in forensic detail Nancy’s and Blanchot’s contrasting interpretations of German Romanticism, and the work of Heidegger, Bataille, and Marguerite Duras, and examines closely their divergent approaches to the contradictory legacy of Christianity. At a time when politics are increasingly inseparable from a deep-seated sense of crisis, it provides an incisive account of what, in the concept of community, is thought yet crucially still remains unthought.

Now is a time of tremendous anxiety about the present and future state of the world. As the second law of thermodynamics states, entropy never decreases, time marches relentlessly forward, and closed systems inevitably break down. Entropy serves as a powerful metaphor capturing expressions of growing malaise and decline.Entropic Philosophy: Chaos, Breakdown, and Creation builds on the meaning of entropy from the Greek entropia, signifying “a turning toward” or “transformation.” Developing a philosophy of entropy, this book draws variously from anthropology, psychoanalysis, literature, art, and the history of philosophy. This approach opens pathways for reverence and care that are crucial in preventing fear, existential inertia, and despair.

There have never been more refugees, across the world from Myanmar to Syria, than at this moment. Many more millions of refugees are likely to be displaced by the effects of climate change. Why has politics failed to produce adequate responses to these challenges, and not heeded the lessons of refugee crises of the past? Are human rights and international law, or more radically, the case for 'open borders', sufficient to address them?Nathan Bell argues for nothing less than a new concept of the political: that societies (liberal or not, in the mode of the sovereign state or some other form) embrace an ethos of responsibility for others, where the right to seek asylum becomes foundational for politics itself. Such a proposal is at the antipodes of Schmitt's friend-enemy distinction, such that hospitality and not hostility forms the basis of political decision-making.This book comprises two halves: the first establishes the theoretical basis of the ethos of responsibility, with particular reference to the writings of Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, while the second half examines these theorists in the context of historical and contemporary case studies. Finally, the book calls for a ‘politics of hauntology’ in memory of the missing - those who might have been rescued, and those yet to come, who are already among the disappeared.In this urgent work, Bell demonstrates that a radical reconfiguration of the understanding of politics is required in order to safeguard the future and human dignity of stateless persons.