SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy – serie

A critical and creative reconstruction of Adorno's conception of truth that shows its relevance for contemporary philosophy, art, and politics.An elusive and complex idea of truth lies at the center of Theodor Adorno's thought. Yet he never spells out what it is. Through close readings of Negative Dialectics, Aesthetic Theory, and related course lectures, Lambert Zuidervaart reconstructs Adorno's conception of truth, contrasts it with the conceptions of Martin Heidegger and Michel Foucault, and explores its relevance for contemporary philosophy, art, and politics. Adorno regards truth as a dynamic constellation in which various dialectical polarities intersect. The most decisive polarity, Zuidervaart argues, occurs between society as it has developed and the historical possibility of a completely transformed world. Critically reconstructed, Adorno's conception of truth can help inspire hopeful critiques of an allegedly post-truth society.

A particularly insightful commentary on Heidegger's thinking, as well as a fascinating look at Gadamer himself.The combination of author and subject matter found here makes an unusually interesting text on the Continental European Philosophy of the twentieth century. As Heidegger's former student, colleague and lifelong friend, Gadamer offers a particularly insightful commentary on Heidegger's thinking. Not only do the essays focus on Heidegger's thought, but they also often begin with a description of the philosophical scene in which he first appeared, giving the reader a genuine feel for the kind of impact he made. But the essays do not leave off in the past; rather, they lead into the present, giving Heidegger a voice which continues to have a revolutionary impact.The text does not only provide a commentary on Heidegger; it also provides a fascinating look at Gadamer himself. The narratives provide us with an intimate look at both the author and his hermeneutics at work, and his commentary on Heidegger's thought is a commentary on his own thought as well.

Text of and reflection on the 1981 encounter between Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jacques Derrida, which featured a dialogue between hermeneutics in Germany and post-structuralism in France.Before the encounter in 1981 between Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jacques Derrida, there had been virtually no confrontation or dialogue between hermeneutics in Germany and post-structuralism in France, nor has there been since then. Part I of this book makes available for the first time in English the complete texts of the encounter at the Goethe Institute in Paris. This exchange raised such issues as Gadamer's relation to psychoanalytic interpretation, the questionability of texts, Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche, and the dialogical aspect of language.Part II offers further reflections by Gadamer on the encounter itself and its relation of hermeneutics to deconstruction. Among the issues covered are Derrida's interpretation of "Destruktion" in Heidegger, Derrida's attack on logocentrism in Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche, and the relation of Heidegger, hermeneutics, and deconstruction to dialectic.Part III offers commentaries on the encounter from a variety of perspectives. The authors assess the original encounter as well as Gadamer's subsequent reflections on it.

The contributors discuss the current debate about what philosophy is, how it works, and how Nietzsche's thought clarifies or complicates its understanding. They represent a wide range of views and practices, some aggressively postmodern in their approach, some profoundly skeptical about postmodernism. Although the issue of postmodernism is the central focus, the essays also touch on many other areas of interest to readers of Nietzsche.

This book engages and clarifies concepts crucial to Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, including the concepts of effective-history, tradition, dialogue, and language. Festivals of Interpretation exhibits the universal scope of hermeneutics.The authors respond to three questions often raised about Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. Part One takes up the question of how Gadamer understands truth. It discusses how hermeneutical truth relates to methods, how truth may be thought to be historically conditioned without at the same time being relative, and how a truthful interpretation can produce a new understanding while simultaneously remaining faithful to the text.Part Two brings out the political, legal, and social relevance of Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics by focusing on the role interpretation plays in times of political crisis, of disputes in Constitutional law, of changing ideas of societal needs such as health care, and of increased technological control of public opinion.The last question often asked about Gadamer's work concerns its relation to poetry. Part Three treats the challenge posed to philosophy by poetry in general and particularly by the poetry of Paul Celan as well as questions raised recently by Jacques Derrida about different ways of thinking about interpretation and text.

This book engages and clarifies concepts crucial to Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, including the concepts of effective-history, tradition, dialogue, and language. Festivals of Interpretation exhibits the universal scope of hermeneutics.The authors respond to three questions often raised about Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. Part One takes up the question of how Gadamer understands truth. It discusses how hermeneutical truth relates to methods, how truth may be thought to be historically conditioned without at the same time being relative, and how a truthful interpretation can produce a new understanding while simultaneously remaining faithful to the text.Part Two brings out the political, legal, and social relevance of Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics by focusing on the role interpretation plays in times of political crisis, of disputes in Constitutional law, of changing ideas of societal needs such as health care, and of increased technological control of public opinion.The last question often asked about Gadamer's work concerns its relation to poetry. Part Three treats the challenge posed to philosophy by poetry in general and particularly by the poetry of Paul Celan as well as questions raised recently by Jacques Derrida about different ways of thinking about interpretation and text.

This book investigates the possibility of a contemporary ethics of compassion based upon the experience of human mortality. During an age in which the traditional metaphysical guarantors of order, transcendent sources of meaning, and appeals to human rationality are becoming historical phenomena, it is important to investigate whether an alternative source of measure for human conduct can be discovered through phenomenological analysis. Marx shows how a confrontation with one's mortality, as a basic condition of human existence which is ignored or actively avoided for the most part, can transform a person's attitude from one of indifference to one of active concern for other human beings; how it can heighten one's awareness of the social nature of human existence; and how it can serve as an integrative force in the various spheres of human life. The transformation Marx outlines depends, not upon deliberation and conscious decision, or upon a demand to conform to formal rules or maxims, but rather, upon a change in one's emotional attunement toward others, out of which a more compassionate conduct emerges almost automatically. He shows how the awareness of one's limitations and dependencies as a mortal can raise sociality to an important and pervasive factor in human existence instead of a merely unpleasant or indifferent fact.Marx also shows how the development of the notion of "world" as a sphere of human concerns has been accompanied by a deterioration of the traditional idea of the world as a seamless unity or an integrated whole, and he points out that a transformed ethical awareness of others as fellow mortals helps provide a unifying meaning to the disparate worlds in which we all live.

This book investigates the possibility of a contemporary ethics of compassion based upon the experience of human mortality. During an age in which the traditional metaphysical guarantors of order, transcendent sources of meaning, and appeals to human rationality are becoming historical phenomena, it is important to investigate whether an alternative source of measure for human conduct can be discovered through phenomenological analysis. Marx shows how a confrontation with one's mortality, as a basic condition of human existence which is ignored or actively avoided for the most part, can transform a person's attitude from one of indifference to one of active concern for other human beings; how it can heighten one's awareness of the social nature of human existence; and how it can serve as an integrative force in the various spheres of human life. The transformation Marx outlines depends, not upon deliberation and conscious decision, or upon a demand to conform to formal rules or maxims, but rather, upon a change in one's emotional attunement toward others, out of which a more compassionate conduct emerges almost automatically. He shows how the awareness of one's limitations and dependencies as a mortal can raise sociality to an important and pervasive factor in human existence instead of a merely unpleasant or indifferent fact.Marx also shows how the development of the notion of "world" as a sphere of human concerns has been accompanied by a deterioration of the traditional idea of the world as a seamless unity or an integrated whole, and he points out that a transformed ethical awareness of others as fellow mortals helps provide a unifying meaning to the disparate worlds in which we all live.

Situates Merleau-Ponty's thinking in the last decade of the twentieth century, both with regard to general context and specific themes.The essays in this volume situate Merleau-Ponty's thinking in the last decade of the twentieth century, both with regard to general context and with regard to specific themes. These are original contributions which reconfigure traditional patterns of thought by means of a plurality of styles which reflect each author's response to Merleau-Ponty's incomplete vision. The text opens with a new vision of space and proceeds to reorient traditional structures of thinking in ethics, psychology, political theory, axiology, language theory, metaphysics, textuality, semiology, and aesthetics. Through this procession one witnesses currently emerging views of subjectivity, objectivity, location, locution, and personal style as these themes have evolved through the deconstructive critique. Contributors include Edward S. Casey, Duane H. Davis, David Michael Levin, Alphonso Lingis, G. B. Madison, Joseph Margolis, Hugh J. Silverman, and Jacques Taminiaux.

"It is by all means a dubious thing to depend and rest on what an author himself has brought to the forefront. The important thing is rather to give attention to those things he left shrouded in silence."Such was the methodological advice, given in 1924 by Heidegger himself, that is rigorously followed in this book, Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology. The project involves the vast complex of problems that emerged around Being and Time (1927) and then continued from the time of the Marburg lecture courses (1923-1928) up to the Freiburg lectures (1928-1935), today available in the Gesamtausgabe. Heidegger's silence concerning some of his foundational sources is a fact fully recognized by those who have carefully read him. This book systematically explores and critically assesses the silences concerning Husserl, the Aristotle of Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics, the Hegel of Phenomenology, Nietzsche, and even Descartes. What emerges is a systematic and original reinterpretation of 'fundamental ontology' focused on the self-understanding of the human Dasein as the key for understanding the various meanings of Being and the entire deconstructed history of ontology. The project culminated in the pretensions to absoluteness rampant in modern metaphysics, with its peak and paroxysm to be found in The Introduction to Metaphysics (1935).In regard to the 'Heidegger affair', this book, which was begun well before the present turmoil, shows both the ambiguity and coherence of Heidegger's involvement with the Nazis, and, for the first time, exposes the work of the young Heidegger to a rigorous and wholesome internal criticism. By delineating the origins, the shifts, and the final outcome from within his own field, phenomenology, it allows us to reflect on this difficult question at its depth and origin.

"It is by all means a dubious thing to depend and rest on what an author himself has brought to the forefront. The important thing is rather to give attention to those things he left shrouded in silence."Such was the methodological advice, given in 1924 by Heidegger himself, that is rigorously followed in this book, Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology. The project involves the vast complex of problems that emerged around Being and Time (1927) and then continued from the time of the Marburg lecture courses (1923-1928) up to the Freiburg lectures (1928-1935), today available in the Gesamtausgabe. Heidegger's silence concerning some of his foundational sources is a fact fully recognized by those who have carefully read him. This book systematically explores and critically assesses the silences concerning Husserl, the Aristotle of Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics, the Hegel of Phenomenology, Nietzsche, and even Descartes. What emerges is a systematic and original reinterpretation of 'fundamental ontology' focused on the self-understanding of the human Dasein as the key for understanding the various meanings of Being and the entire deconstructed history of ontology. The project culminated in the pretensions to absoluteness rampant in modern metaphysics, with its peak and paroxysm to be found in The Introduction to Metaphysics (1935).In regard to the 'Heidegger affair', this book, which was begun well before the present turmoil, shows both the ambiguity and coherence of Heidegger's involvement with the Nazis, and, for the first time, exposes the work of the young Heidegger to a rigorous and wholesome internal criticism. By delineating the origins, the shifts, and the final outcome from within his own field, phenomenology, it allows us to reflect on this difficult question at its depth and origin.

Shapiro explores an interrelated series of themes that contest and offer alternatives to some of the traditional concepts of metaphysics. The notion of gift giving and related ideas are seen to play fundamental roles in the economy of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Shapiro articulates the relevance of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Marcel Mauss, and Georges Bataille for the thought of the gift and shows that Nietzsche's writing contains a conception of an archaic economy that is radically different from the order of property and exchange usually associated with Western metaphysics. This leads to a critique of Martin Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche as a philosopher of value.Shapiro reads the fourth part of Zarathustra as the libretto for an anti-Wagnerian, postmodern opera in which food, noise, feasting, and parasitism are the major themes, and in which the thought of eternal recurrence is sung and orchestrated in ways that usually go unnoticed. He demonstrates that the fourth part constitutes a rigorous analysis of the logic of the supplementary and the parasitic.In the final chapter, Shapiro undertakes a reading of the classical texts presupposed by Nietzsche's claim that Zarathustra will not be understood unless one hears its "halcyon tone." By juxtaposing Nietzsche's halcyon with the Homeric version of the myth, Shapiro shows how Nietzsche's appeal to the halcyon evokes a premetaphysical economy and a voice suppressed by ontotheology.

Shapiro explores an interrelated series of themes that contest and offer alternatives to some of the traditional concepts of metaphysics. The notion of gift giving and related ideas are seen to play fundamental roles in the economy of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Shapiro articulates the relevance of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Marcel Mauss, and Georges Bataille for the thought of the gift and shows that Nietzsche's writing contains a conception of an archaic economy that is radically different from the order of property and exchange usually associated with Western metaphysics. This leads to a critique of Martin Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche as a philosopher of value.Shapiro reads the fourth part of Zarathustra as the libretto for an anti-Wagnerian, postmodern opera in which food, noise, feasting, and parasitism are the major themes, and in which the thought of eternal recurrence is sung and orchestrated in ways that usually go unnoticed. He demonstrates that the fourth part constitutes a rigorous analysis of the logic of the supplementary and the parasitic.In the final chapter, Shapiro undertakes a reading of the classical texts presupposed by Nietzsche's claim that Zarathustra will not be understood unless one hears its "halcyon tone." By juxtaposing Nietzsche's halcyon with the Homeric version of the myth, Shapiro shows how Nietzsche's appeal to the halcyon evokes a premetaphysical economy and a voice suppressed by ontotheology.

Georg Lukacs's The Process of Democratization provides indispensable reading for an understanding of the revolution that swept Russia and Eastern Europe during 1989-1990. Lukacs, a spokesman for anti-Bolshevik communism, was the advance guard of anti-Stalinist reform. Written in the aftermath of the Prague Spring, his book was a precursor to many of the Gorbachev reforms. Lukacs was the leading communist intellectual in the world until his death. During his last 15 years, he embarked upon a massive effort to revive Marxism as philosophy, as aesthetics, and as politics. The Process of Democratization was part of this attempt at a Marxist renaissance. He would probably be surprised to find that the Second Russian Revolution of 1989-1990 moved far beyond his reformism, overthrowing even the anti-Stalinist communism that he fought to retain.

This translation of Lyotard's first book, La Phenomenologie, supplies an important link to Lyotard's more recent works. Phenomenology presents a commentary on the phenomenological movement. From the dual perspectives of a work on, and of, phenomenology, Lyotard's text profiles the different aspects of phenomenology, focusing particularly on the writings of Hegel, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Tran Duc Thao. Phenomenology marks a particular episode in Lyotard's reflections on the "philosophical project" and is emblematic of his critical reflections on philosophy's involvements in routine, daily commitments. Like Merleau-Ponty, in this work Lyotard eliminates philosophy as a "separate existence." Beyond offering an account of certain phenomenological themes, Lyotard's commentary explicates phenomenology's relevance to psychology, sociology, and history.

This translation of Lyotard's first book, La Phenomenologie, supplies an important link to Lyotard's more recent works. Phenomenology presents a commentary on the phenomenological movement. From the dual perspectives of a work on, and of, phenomenology, Lyotard's text profiles the different aspects of phenomenology, focusing particularly on the writings of Hegel, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Tran Duc Thao. Phenomenology marks a particular episode in Lyotard's reflections on the "philosophical project" and is emblematic of his critical reflections on philosophy's involvements in routine, daily commitments. Like Merleau-Ponty, in this work Lyotard eliminates philosophy as a "separate existence." Beyond offering an account of certain phenomenological themes, Lyotard's commentary explicates phenomenology's relevance to psychology, sociology, and history.

In these essays, appearing for the first time in English, Gadamer addresses practical questions about recent politics in Europe, about education and university reform, and about the role of poetry in the modern world. This book also includes a series of interviews that the editors conducted in 1986. Gadamer elaborates on his experiences in education and politics, touching on the collapse of the Weimar Republic, the early Frankfurt School, Heidegger and the Nazis, university life in East Germany, and the prospects for Europe in the coming years.Hans-Georg Gadamer was probably Heidegger's leading interpreter in Germany, and in the 1950s and 1960s he became the world's leading exponent of hermeneutics. His hermeneutical theory explains how it is that ancient art and philosophy still speak to us today. His influential idea of the "fusion of horizons" also shows how it is that we understand what is remote form our own culture.

In these essays, appearing for the first time in English, Gadamer addresses practical questions about recent politics in Europe, about education and university reform, and about the role of poetry in the modern world. This book also includes a series of interviews that the editors conducted in 1986. Gadamer elaborates on his experiences in education and politics, touching on the collapse of the Weimar Republic, the early Frankfurt School, Heidegger and the Nazis, university life in East Germany, and the prospects for Europe in the coming years.Hans-Georg Gadamer was probably Heidegger's leading interpreter in Germany, and in the 1950s and 1960s he became the world's leading exponent of hermeneutics. His hermeneutical theory explains how it is that ancient art and philosophy still speak to us today. His influential idea of the "fusion of horizons" also shows how it is that we understand what is remote form our own culture.

This book is a close reading of Jacques Lacan's seminal essay, "The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason Since Freud, " selected for the particular light it casts on Lacan's complex relation to linguistics, psychoanalysis, and philosophy. It clarifies the way Lacan renews or transforms the psychoanalytic field, through his diversion of Saussure's theory of the sign, his radicalization of Freud's fundamental concepts, and his subversion of dominant philosophical values. The authors argue, however, that Lacan's discourse is marked by a deep ambiguity: while he invents a new "language," he nonetheless maintains the traditional metaphysical motifs of systemacity, foundation, and truth.

Brings Heidegger’s perspective to bear on questions of ethics, moral freedom, and its social implications, rooting much of Heidegger in his joining with or rejoinders to Kant.

Brings Heidegger’s perspective to bear on questions of ethics, moral freedom, and its social implications, rooting much of Heidegger in his joining with or rejoinders to Kant.

This book asks how we may undertake to represent representation.

This is the first full-length study of the impact of Friedrich Nietzsche's writings on the thought of French philosopher Michel Foucault. Focusing on the notion of genealogy in the thought of both Nietzsche and Foucault, the author explores the three genealogical axes-truth, power, and the subject-as they gradually emerge in Foucault's writings. This complex of axes into which Foucault was drawn, especially as a result of his early history of madness, called forth his explicit adoption of a Nietzschean approach to his future work.By interpreting Foucault's Histoire de la folie in the light of Nietzsche's genealogy of tragedy, Mahon shows how the moral problematization of madness in history provides the historical conditions from which the three axes emerge. After tracing the gradual emergence of the three axes through Foucault's writings of the remainder of the 1960s, especially Les Mots et les choses, Mahon turns to Foucault's explicit methodological statements and his notion of genealogy and offers a reading of Foucault's L'archeologie du savoir, arguing that there is no chasm between Foucault's archaeological writings and his genealogies.The work concludes with an analysis of Foucault's final writings on the genealogy of modern subjectivity and an examination of how truth, power, and the subject operate for the modern psychoanalytic subject of desire.

Develops a fourfold theory of hermeneutics and applies it to educational theory to show how interpretation shapes learning, teaching, and the philosophical foundations of education.In Hermeneutics and Education, Shaun Gallagher offers a groundbreaking philosophical investigation into the role of interpretation in learning, teaching, and educational theory. Moving beyond abstract debate, Gallagher develops a rich fourfold typology of hermeneutics—conservative, moderate, critical, and radical—each articulated through a set of guiding principles that illuminate how meaning is formed, contested, and transformed in educational contexts.With clarity and philosophical rigor, Gallagher not only maps these positions but tests their implications against contemporary educational theory. He shows how each hermeneutical stance can deepen educational practice, while also critically examining the limits of hermeneutic approaches through insights drawn from learning theory.This work is both a theoretical landmark and a practical provocation. It challenges educators and philosophers alike to reconsider the foundations of educational meaning, authority, and interpretation.Wide-ranging, deeply researched, and conceptually innovative, Hermeneutics and Education is essential reading for scholars of philosophy of education, curriculum theory, and hermeneutic philosophy—and a powerful resource for anyone interested in how understanding is shaped in the classroom and beyond.

Traces the development of aesthetic judgment from Kant through German Idealism to modern continental philosophy, offering detailed readings of major thinkers to show how debates about art, truth, and metaphysics continue to shape philosophical thought today.In this sweeping and intellectually rigorous study, Jacques Taminiaux establishes his stature as one of the foremost historians and philosophers of post-Kantian continental thought. Tracing the fate of aesthetic judgment from its pivotal emergence in Kant's philosophy, Taminiaux follows its reverberations through German Idealism and into the most influential currents of modern and contemporary thought.At the center of Poetics, Speculation, and Judgment lies a sustained investigation into how questions of judgment, speculation, and aesthetic experience reshape the trajectory of philosophy after Kant. Through meticulous and incisive readings, Taminiaux engages a remarkable constellation of thinkers—including Friedrich Schiller, Friedrich Hölderlin, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty—revealing how each reconfigures the tension between art, truth, and metaphysics.From the "end of metaphysics" to the "death of art," from the nostalgia for ancient Greece to the transformation of aesthetic experience in modern philosophy, Taminiaux illuminates the enduring philosophical stakes of aesthetic judgment. His analyses are as historically grounded as they are conceptually daring, offering new clarity on some of the most contested problems in continental philosophy.More than a commentary on German Idealism and its aftermath, Poetics, Speculation, and Judgment also charts the intellectual itinerary of Taminiaux’s own thought across three decades—showing a thinker continually testing, refining, and renewing his insights in response to the tradition he interrogates.

Traces the development of aesthetic judgment from Kant through German Idealism to modern continental philosophy, offering detailed readings of major thinkers to show how debates about art, truth, and metaphysics continue to shape philosophical thought today.In this sweeping and intellectually rigorous study, Jacques Taminiaux establishes his stature as one of the foremost historians and philosophers of post-Kantian continental thought. Tracing the fate of aesthetic judgment from its pivotal emergence in Kant's philosophy, Taminiaux follows its reverberations through German Idealism and into the most influential currents of modern and contemporary thought.At the center of Poetics, Speculation, and Judgment lies a sustained investigation into how questions of judgment, speculation, and aesthetic experience reshape the trajectory of philosophy after Kant. Through meticulous and incisive readings, Taminiaux engages a remarkable constellation of thinkers—including Friedrich Schiller, Friedrich Hölderlin, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty—revealing how each reconfigures the tension between art, truth, and metaphysics.From the "end of metaphysics" to the "death of art," from the nostalgia for ancient Greece to the transformation of aesthetic experience in modern philosophy, Taminiaux illuminates the enduring philosophical stakes of aesthetic judgment. His analyses are as historically grounded as they are conceptually daring, offering new clarity on some of the most contested problems in continental philosophy.More than a commentary on German Idealism and its aftermath, Poetics, Speculation, and Judgment also charts the intellectual itinerary of Taminiaux’s own thought across three decades—showing a thinker continually testing, refining, and renewing his insights in response to the tradition he interrogates.

Michel Haar argues that Heidegger went too far in transferring all traditional properties of man to being. Haar examines what is left, after this displacement, not only of human identity, but perhaps more importantly, of nature, life, embodiment-of the flesh of human existence. This sensitive yet critical reading of Heidegger raises such issues in relation to questions of language, technology, human freedom, and history. In doing so, it provides a compelling argument for the need to rethink what it means to be human.