20th Century Continental Philosophy

Transforming as it does from an exemplar of meticulous philosophical analysis into an allusive political/messianic tract, Walter Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence” is representative of all that is most difficult about his work. Against those critics who find the eschatological dimensions of Benjamin’s texts unpalatable and/or philosophically bankrupt, 1 however, the wager of this paper is that it is possible to extract a philosophically sophisticated and politically interesting concept of the messianic from Benjamin. For it remains the case that the mortification (...) of law carried out in “Zur Kritik der Gewalt” does not simply boil down to a naive antinomianism; that Benjamin’s argument is far more subtle than any simple call for “a radical destruction of the legal order.” 2 Indeed, if we read the text in conjunction with certain others in the Benjaminian oeuvre it becomes clear that it engages lucidly with a set of crucial, difficult questions about the status of law in modernity. (shrink)

Nietzsche's use of metaphor has been widely noted but rarely focused to explore specific images in great detail. A Nietzschean Bestiary gathers essays devoted to the most notorious and celebrated beasts in Nietzsche's work. The essays illustrate Nietzsche's ample use of animal imagery, and link it to the dual philosophical purposes of recovering and revivifying human animality, which plays a significant role in his call for de-deifying nature.

It is not easy for an Englishman to acquire a competent knowledge of French philosophy. For one thing there are so many French philosophers writing so many books, and for another the multiplicity of men is matched by the variety of views. In a country where a knowledge of philosophy is expected of any cultivated man, and where the flourishing of philosophy in school and university curricula is regarded as a condition of intellectual freedom, this variety is accepted as part (...) of the cultural background. Professor Bréhier's Transformation de la Philosophie Française must, even so, be of great value to French readers, because of the author's capacity-so admirably shown already in a History of Philosophy that is unquestionably the best now obtainable-to pick out what is essential in a welter of theories, arguments, and mere pronouncements. To English readers, whose knowledge of the background is necessarily limited, this book is particularly valuable, not only for the clarification it brings, but also for a bibliography that is closely related to the text. M. Bréhier observes that French philosophers of the generation that followed and criticized Durkheim, Bergson and Brunschwicg showed themselves acutely conscious of the discontinuities of things, and puritanically averse to the construction of philosophical systems. M. Bréhier, however, does not take this anti-systematic, pluralist tendency at its own valuation. French philosophy, he thinks, is in a phase that makes it comparable to medieval philosophy. It was characteristic of medieval philosophy that it comprised no individually constructed systems like those, for example, of Descartes, Leibniz, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, which have grown up and died away in Europe since the Renaissance. The main reason for this was that Christianity itself provided a common system which was never to be questioned, so that philosophers concerned themselves not with systems, for that would have led to heresy, but with particular problems. Part of M. Bréhier's parallel with modern times is that some Christians and all Marxists aim to produce the same condition. (shrink)

The problematic of world articulation is central to post-phenomenological approaches. With Castoriadis, it emerges as a significant if shadowy thematic. Its shifting contours in his thought are redolent of the ongoing dialogue between romantic and enlightenment currents. They are also indicative of the ambiguity inherent to cultural articulations of the world in modernity. Here, two world perspectives open up various — and conflicting — interpretative challenges to which a response is necessitated. In Castoriadis's case, these take on particular forms of (...) more general trends of `alienation' and `worldliness'. In particular, the isolation of the social-historical as the sole bearer of creativity tends to result in world alienation, whilst his later shift towards radical physis indicates a trend towards vertical worldliness. Arnason's theorization of world articulation in its twofold sense re-imagines the worldliness of the social-historical both in terms of the world tout court and our concrete stance towards it (or the world towards us). As such, it offers a corrective to the `worldless freedom' of the social-historical in Castoriadis's thought. (shrink)

I wish to begin by recalling the treatment of mourning, melancholy, and suicide in the last two books of Troilus and Criseyde. The subject of that catastrophe was a chivalric hero whose identity, as I have argued elsewhere, involved a particular discourse of love. This discourse assumed models of gender, individual identity, and community which were intrinsic to ruling elites. It hinged on producing a sense of lack which was to be met by distinctive forms of erotic desire bound up (...) with a complex web of courtly language and behavior. To this process a minutely organized construction of gender roles is essential, a topic whose analysis has been enabled and encouraged by wide-ranging developments in feminist scholarship over the last twenty years. (shrink)

First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

El ensayo siguiente consiste en una reinterpretación de la obra de Frantz Fanon a partir de la problemática biopolítica iniciada por Michel Foucault. Se analizan los procesos a través de los cuales las vidas de los colonizados se determinan como inhumanas, y se insertan dentro de un "lenguaje de pura violencia", es decir de una red de poderes violentos, soberanos y totalizantes. Fanón va a pensar una puesta en jaque de aquel estado de excepción permanente colonial a partir de la (...) violencia misma, ya que se tratara para él de transformar, sobre la práctica de las luchas, la violencia en ejercicio del descubrimiento de la verdad. In this essay we approach Franz Fanon's work from a biopolitical standpoint as initiated by Michel Foucault. We analyze the processes that lead to the notion of colonized people's life as less than human with a "language of pure violence", that is, within a network of violent powers at the same time sovereign and totalizing. Fanón intends to check that permanent "state of emergency" of the colonies by means of violence itself, since fighting can be transformed from violence alone to the fight for the discovery of truth. (shrink)

While many of those engaged in the study of philosophy would accept the continued reality and importance of an analytic/continental divide in the discipline, there has been no serious examination of the political dimensions of this rift. Here a series of political assumptions are revealed to be widely held among the British analytic philosophers who were active during the period in which the analytic/continental divide was being established. This paper will approach demonstrating the analysts’ beliefs about the political affiliations of (...) continental philosophy in three ways. Firstly, it will produce direct evidence of the analysts’ belief in the relationship between 19th century continental philosophy and various politically undesirable regimes. Secondly, it will examine in detail one illustrative example, that of Hegel. Thirdly, it will illustrate how the political beliefs already canvassed permeated beyond the limited political critique of continental philosophy into the analysts’ writing on the history of philosophy. (shrink)

Philosophy and Kafka is a collection of original essays interrogating the relationship of literature and philosophy. The essays either discuss specific philosophical commentaries on Kafka’s work, consider the possible relevance of certain philosophical outlooks for examining Kafka’s writings, or examine Kafka’s writings in terms of a specific philosophical theme, such as communication and subjectivity, language and meaning, knowledge and truth, the human/animal divide, justice, and freedom.

¿Habrá motivos para hacer una lecturaestética de la Etica? Y ¿qué hacer entonces, sital fuese el caso, con el orden geométrico desu exposición que no se puede separar de susdoctrinas características? Intentando contestarestas preguntas, se propone la rehabilitacióndel criminal como criterio spinozista de lo estético,y se ponen de manifiesto cuatro quiebresconceptuales (clareza del enigma, afectode la TMdusa, opacidad de la verdad, densidadde la potencia) que le confieren su potenciaverdadera al orden geométrico, a la vez que determinansu alcance altamente estético, asícomo (...) una remanencia de las imágenes quedesdibuja la diferencia entre la razón y laimaginación. Derivando entre lo sublime y lotrágico, la gloria restituye a la naturaleza unainocencia soberana anterior a la invención dela mala conciencia, que hace quizás delMarqués de Sade el único spinozista auténticoen el curso de la historia. (shrink)