This book provides a clear, concise and readable introduction to philosophy in the continental tradition. It is a wide-ranging and reliable guide to the work of such major figures as Habermas, Foucault, Derrida, Heidegger, Sartre and Nietzsche. At the same time, it situates their thought within a coherent overall account of the development of continental philosophy since the Enlightenment. Individual chapters consider the character of modernity, the Enlightenment and its continental critics; the ideas of Marxism, the Frankfurt School and Habermas; (...) hermeneutics and phenomenology; existentialism; structuralism and post-structuralism; and postmodernism. In addition to the thinkers already mentioned, there is extended discussion of the ideas of Kant, Hegel, Dilthey, Husserl, Gadamer, Kierkegaard, De Beauvoir and Lyotard. An Introduction to Continental Philosophy is an invaluable introductory text for courses on continental philosophy as well as courses dealing with major figures or influential approaches within that tradition. It will also be most helpful to students and academics from the many disciplines which have been significantly influenced by continental philosophy in recent years, including politics, sociology, anthropology, psychology, theology, literature and cultural studies. (shrink)

Undoubtedly Romantic love has come to saturate our culture and is often considered to be a, or even the, major existential goal of our lives, capable of providing us with both our sense of worth and way of being in the world. The Radicalism of Romantic Love interrogates the purported radicalism of Romantic love from philosophical, cultural and psychoanalytic perspectives, exploring whether it is a subversive force capable of breaking down entrenched social, political and cultural norms and structures, or whether, (...) in spite of its role in the fight against certain barriers, it is in fact a highly conservative impulse. Exploring both the grounds for the central place of Romantic love in contemporary lives and the meaning, extent and nature of its supposed radicalism, this volume considers love from a variety of theoretical perspectives, with attention to matters of gender, sexuality, class and ethnicity. With authors examining a range of questions, including the role of love in the same-sex marriage debate, polyamory and the notion of love as a political force, The Radicalism of Romantic Love illuminates a fundamental but perplexing aspect of our contemporary lives and will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities with interests in the emotions and love as a social and political phenomenon. (shrink)

Teaching philosophy is doing philosophy. This medium gets students doing it from day it.

The poets and prose-writers of Greece and Rome were acutely conscious of their literary heritage. They expressed this consciousness in the regularity with which, in their writings, they imitated and alluded to the great authors who had preceded them. Such imitation was generally not regarded as plagiarism but as essential to the creation of a new literary work: imitating one's predecessors was in no way incompatible with originality or progress. These views were not peculiar to the writers of Greece and (...) Rome but were adopted by many others who have written in the 'classical tradition' right up to modern times. Creative Imitation and Latin Literature is an exploration of this concept of imitation. The contributors analyse selected passages from various authors - Greek, Latin and English - in order to demonstrate how Latin authors created new works of art by imitating earlier passages of literature. (shrink)

This book is a fully updated and expanded new edition of _An Introduction to Continental Philosophy_, first published in 1996. It provides a clear, concise and readable introduction to philosophy in the continental tradition. It is a wide-ranging and reliable guide to the work of such major figures as Nietzsche, Habermas, Heidegger, Arendt, Sartre, Foucault, Derrida and Žižek. At the same time, it situates their thought within a coherent overall account of the development of continental philosophy since the Enlightenment. Individual (...) chapters consider the character of modernity, the Enlightenment and its continental critics; the ideas of Marxism, the Frankfurt School and Habermas; hermeneutics and phenomenology; existentialism; structuralism, post-structuralism and postmodernism. In addition to the thinkers already mentioned, there is extended discussion of the ideas of Kant, Hegel, Dilthey, Husserl, Gadamer, Kierkegaard, de Beauvoir and Lyotard. The new edition includes an additional, full-length chapter on continental philosophy in the twenty-first century focusing on Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek. _Continental Philosophy: An Introduction_ is an invaluable introductory text for courses on continental philosophy as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences dealing with major figures or influential approaches within that tradition. (shrink)

The opposition between analytical and continental philosophy has something in common with that other, more worldly and now obsolete opposition between East and West. The observer of politics quickly realizes that ‘East’ and ‘West’ are ideological rather than geographical terms. The West is free and prosperous and celebrates human rights and the American way; the East has been totalitarian, stagnant and oppressive. Japan and Australia are for most purposes in the West, Cuba in the East. Similar anomalies beset our more (...) philosophical dichotomy. There are obvious difficulties in the path of any straightforwardly geographical interpretation. Frege played a seminal role in the development of analytical philosophy despite being German; so did the Vienna Circle and Wittgenstein. On the other hand, there are obvious affinities between such British idealists as Bradley, Collingwood and Oakeshott and their colleagues across the Channel. Contemporary figures like Richard Rorty, Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor develop ‘continental’ themes in an idiom more congenial to analytical philosophy. Again, there are growing schools of analytical philosophy in France, Germany and elsewhere as well as recurrent waves of a neo‐Kantianism which, in its fundamental claims, is not so very different. (shrink)

A states the phenomenon that requires to be explained. B explains it. C justifies B. D is the furthest reach of the argument and explains C. E. begins the way back, stating the consequence of D and therefore balancing C. F is the inference from E and corresponds to B, and G brings us back to A. The logic is closely knit. And it is pointed by repeats and correspondences. In A the fire is liquidus; in E profundant, in F (...) profundunt. In B the clouds must contain permulta seeds of fire; in D they must conceive multa from the light of the sun, and the repeat of necessest, necessust hammers home the argument. (shrink)

A states the phenomenon that requires to be explained. B explains it. C justifies B. D is the furthest reach of the argument and explains C. E. begins the way back, stating the consequence of D and therefore balancing C. F is the inference from E and corresponds to B, and G brings us back to A. The logic is closely knit. And it is pointed by repeats and correspondences. In A the fire is liquidus; in E profundant, in F (...) profundunt. In B the clouds must contain permulta seeds of fire; in D they must conceive multa from the light of the sun, and the repeat of necessest, necessust hammers home the argument. (shrink)

A radical concept of power identifies social processes which (whether as ?ideology?, ?false consciousness?, or ?the spectacle') influence people's actions by moulding their beliefs or desires. However, seeing people as deluded is to risk treating them as less than fully autonomous beings. Despite his libertarian intentions, Lukes fails to guard against this paternalistic implication. His view still implies that it is the social critic who is in the best position to identify the real interests of an oppressed group. Here it (...) is argued that power should be conceived as an intrusion on the ?formative practices? of people. It is possible to identify power as an unwanted influence on the processes in which people ?form and discover? interests, while maintaining that interests can only be self?ascribed. This solution requires a concept of formation as both irreducibly social and yet potentially free. Neither Foucault nor Habermas can provide such a solution, despite some valuable insights. In the end, we must look at the influences of power on formative practices which are actual rather than idealized, productive rather than reflective, and which involve the whole person rather than merely the intellect. (shrink)

This book traces the genealogy of ideas of reason, self and sexuality in the West, opening the way to a richer and more diverse understanding of sexual experience. Western philosophy and religion have distorted and continue to distort our experience of sex and love through three far-reaching constellations of reason, self and sexuality. Thinkers like Plato, Aquinas and Kant helped to fashion an ascetic ideal of reason hostile to bodily pleasures and sexual diversity. By contrast, philosophical hedonism advocates a less (...) demanding conception of rationality and defends sexual pleasure. But this approach of thinkers like Hume, Bentham, La Mettrie and de Sade is still one-sided and limiting. A third constellation, Romanticism avoids the limitations of both forms of rationalism, but in the name of a religion of love and passion that ultimately threatens the integrity of the self. In Reason and Sexuality in Western Thought, a richer understanding of sexual experience is traced to a dissident philosophical tradition. In their different ways Montaigne, Spinoza, Hegel and Kierkegaard, Marcuse and Foucault contribute to a more holistic, multi-layered and open conception of reason, sexuality and the self. This book will be essential reading for all students of philosophy and gender studies. (shrink)

In the face of impending global crises and stubborn conflicts, a conventional view of politics risks leaving us confused and fatalistic, feeling powerless because we are unaware of all that can be achieved by political means. By contrast, a variety of recent social movements, ranging from those of women, gays and lesbians and anti-racists, to environmentalists, the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring, demonstrate the enormous potential of political action beyond the institutional sphere of politics. At the same time, religious (...) fundamentalists, racial supremacists and ultra-nationalists make clear that movements are not necessarily progressive and are often at odds with one another. -/- West highlights the many ways in which national and global institutions depend on a broader context of extra-institutional action or what is, in effect, the formative dimension of politics. He explores some of the major contributions of social movements: from the genealogy of liberal democratic nation-states, sixties’ radicalism and the ‘new social movements’ to the politics of sexuality, gender and identity, the politicization of nature and climate, and alter-globalization. The book also considers current theoretical approaches and sets out the basis for a critical theory of social movements. This is a fresh and original account of social movements in politics and will be essential reading for any students and scholars interested in the challenges and the unpredictable potential of political action. (shrink)

The argument as far as 205 is simply and clearly laid out by Munro, but later editors have rejected his explanation, and proposed more involved analyses. The first purpose of this paper is to support the simple interpretation and refute later complications. The only serious difficulty lies in the mention of plants in line 189. Without this line the argument would run as follows. ‘Nothing can move upwards of its own accord’. ‘Don&t be misled by the atoms of flames, for (...) they spring into being and take their increase in an upward direction, although all weights, left to themselves, move downwards’. ‘Nor must we believe that when fire leaps up to the roofs of houses …, it does so of its own accord’. Now the two analogicalarguments: ‘For blood spurts up into the air and timbers leap out of the water, yet everybody agrees that their weights left to themselves move downwards’. Now the conclusion repeating the original proposition: ‘This is how it must be that flames too rise, forced out upwards through the air although their weights, left to themselves, move downwards’. (shrink)

The argument as far as 205 is simply and clearly laid out by Munro, but later editors have rejected his explanation, and proposed more involved analyses. The first purpose of this paper is to support the simple interpretation and refute later complications.The only serious difficulty lies in the mention of plants in line 189. Without this line the argument would run as follows. ‘Nothing can move upwards of its own accord’. ‘Don&t be misled by the atoms of flames, for they (...) spring into being and take their increase in an upward direction, although all weights, left to themselves, move downwards’. ‘Nor must we believe that when fire leaps up to the roofs of houses …, it does so of its own accord’. Now the two analogicalarguments: ‘For blood spurts up into the air and timbers leap out of the water, yet everybody agrees that their weights left to themselves move downwards’. Now the conclusion repeating the original proposition: ‘This is how it must be that flames too rise, forced out upwards through the air although their weights, left to themselves, move downwards’. (shrink)

Reviews : A. Phillips Griffiths, Contemporary French Philosophy ; Raoul Mortley, French Philosophers in Conversation.