Proposes that philosophy is the proper cure for neurosis.

_Makes the novel argument that erotic life is the real sphere of human freedom._.

Because Dasein, as conceived by Heidegger, is inherently temporal, the "who" of Dasein can never be defined simply in terms of a present identity but must have the character of what Derrida calls "différance." Dasein 's authenticity, then, must be an embracing of this, its character as différance. This means that the "self" is "neither a substance nor a subject " but a resolution. The anticipatory resoluteness of authenticity, however, is a unique kind of resolve: it is the resolve to (...) be open to transformation. For that reason, Dasein 's proper self-appropriation—authenticity—is found precisely in its inherent inappropriability. Because Dasein is always being-in-the-world, the openness of its own "who" is equally an openness of being's "what." Dasein 's authenticity is nothing other than the enactment of the question of the meaning of being. (shrink)

An important companion to contemporary Hegel studies, this book will be of interest to all students of Hegel's philosophy.

John Dewey shows the essential role of artistic expression in experience. Expression, as emotional articulation, is essential to establishing our intimate engagement with the world. G.W.F. Hegel shows that just this process of expressing our mode of “dwelling” in the world has been operative historically at the cultural level. It is characteristic of contemporary art that, in attempting to establish a new form of dwelling within the context of our technological world, it articulates just this vision of our experience as (...) essentially expressive. (shrink)

John Russon draws from a broad range of art and literature to show how philosophy speaks to the most basic and important questions in our everyday lives. In Sites of Exposure, Russon grapples with how personal experiences such as growing up and confronting death combine with broader issues such as political oppression, economic exploitation, and the destruction of the natural environment to make life meaningful. His is cutting-edge philosophical work, illuminated by original and rigorous thinking that relies on cross-cultural communication (...) and engagement with the richness of human cultural history. These probing interpretations of the nature of phenomenology, the philosophy of art, history, and politics, are appropriate for students and scholars of philosophy at all levels. (shrink)

In his discussions of “sensibility” and “feeling,” Hegel has a compelling interpretation of the emotional foundations of experience. I begin by situating “mood” within the context of “sensibility,” and then focus on the inherently “outwardizing” or self-externalizing character of mood. I then consider the different modes of moody self-externalization, for the sake of determining why we express ourselves in language. I conclude by demonstrating why the notions of emotion and spirit are necessarily linked.

This chapter contains sections titled: Hegel's Project of Phenomenology Kant and the Infinite Within‐and‐Without Experience The Phenomenology of Infinite Conflict Hegel and Witnessing to the Traces of Unacknowledged Absolutes Conclusion.

Perception and Its Development in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology brings together essays from fifteen leading Merleau-Ponty scholars to demonstrate the continuing significance of Merleau-Ponty's analysis.

The thought of G.W.F. Hegel has had a deep and lasting influence on a wide range philosophical, political, religious, aesthetic, cultural, and scientific movements. But, despite the far-reaching importance of Hegel's thought, there is often a great deal of confusion about what he actually said or believed.G. W. F. Hegel: Key Concepts provides an accessible introduction to both Hegel's thought and Hegel-inspired philosophy in general, demonstrating how his concepts were understood, adopted, and critically transformed by later thinkers. The first section (...) of the book covers the principal philosophical themes in Hegel's system: epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, ethical theory, political philosophy, philosophy of nature, philosophy of art, philosophy of religion, philosophy of history, and theory of the history of philosophy. The second section covers the main post-Hegelian movements in philosophy: Marxism, existentialism, pragmatism, analytic philosophy, hermeneutics, and French post-structuralism.The breadth and depth of G. W. F. Hegel: Key Concepts makes it an invaluable introduction for philosophical beginners and a useful reference source for more advanced scholars and researchers. (shrink)

In this book, Eric Sanday boldly demonstrates that Plato’s “theory of forms” is true, easy to understand, and relatively intuitive. Sanday argues that our chief obstacle to understanding the theory of forms is the distorting effect of the tacit metaphysical privileging of individual things in our everyday understanding. For Plato, this privileging of things that we can own, produce, exchange, and through which we gain mastery of our surroundings is a significant obstacle to philosophical education. The dialogue’s chief philosophical work, (...) then, is to destabilize this false privileging and, in _Parmenides, _to provide the initial framework for a newly oriented account of participation. Once we do this, Sanday argues, we more easily can grasp and see the truth of the theory of forms. (shrink)

Hegel has a particularly striking and original contribution to the field of hermeneutics: a contribution long recognized, but a contribution still not sufficiently appreciated. This chapter works through a hermeneutical thesis central to Hegel's philosophy: experience is ongoingly interpretive through and through, such that the very “given” is already dependent upon interpretive acts. Hegel's philosophy clearly incorporates the central tenets of this philosophical movement in his notion that all experience is interpretive, in the “concrete” or holistic principle of his interpretive (...) practice, in his notion that self‐identity is a hermeneutical phenomenon, and in his notion that hermeneutics is beyond method. His central notion of dialectic, further, anticipates the tradition of deconstruction associated with Derrida. Though it is not typically associated with the historical movement of “hermeneutics”, Hegel's is a systematic hermeneutical philosophy, of profound relevance to contemporary studies of interpretation and its role in human life. (shrink)

There is a phenomenology of the body worked out implicitly in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, in which the full implications of a rejection of a dualistic conception of self and body are articulated. A concept of body can be derived from Hegel's analysis of life, according to which the body is the phusis, hexis and logos of the self, that is, it is the qualitatively determinate conditions--hexis--of un-self-conscious comportment to the world in and by which a situation is constituted which (...) allows immediate satisfaction for the self-conscious will--phusis--and which expresses the pre-reflective commitments of the self--logos. This is a dynamic concept, and its dialectic is one side of the dialectic of selfhood which is the explicit theme of the Phenomenology of Spirit. In its dialectic, the body develops through stages in which each one of these moments in turn takes precedence. The three stages are the natural body, the institutional body, and the self-communicative body. ;Chapters 1 and 2 develop the adequate concept of self-conscious selfhood by analyzing, respectively, Chapter IV, Section B, "Freedom of Self-Consciousness," and Chapter V, "Reason." Chapter 3 develops the concept of body in relation to self-consciousness based on an analysis of the sections of Chapter IV, "Self-Consciousness" which deal with "Desire," "Life" and "Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness," and considers natural embodiment. Chapter 4 analyzes Chapter VI, "Spirit," to develop the notion of institutional embodiment. Chapter 5 analyzes Chapter VIII, "Absolute Knowing," to develop the concept of self-communicative embodiment. ;The conclusion of the Hegelian phenomenology of the body is that self-conscious selfhood can only be adequately embodied by a situation in which the totality of its otherness constitutes a living system of signs, the very life of which is the process of coming to self-understanding as such a system. The dialectic of body is the process of the body's overcoming of its own naturalness, and the bringing of itself to self-consciousness as mind. (shrink)

Infinite Phenomenology builds on John Russon’s earlier book, Reading Hegel’s Phenomenology, to offer a second reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Here again, Russon writes in a lucid, engaging style and, through careful attention to the text and a subtle attunement to the existential questions that haunt human life, he demonstrates how powerfully Hegel’s philosophy can speak to the basic questions of philosophy. In addition to original studies of all the major sections of the Phenomenology, Russon discusses complementary texts by (...) Hegel, namely, the Philosophy of Spirit, the Philosophy of Right, and the Science of Logic. He concludes with an appendix that discusses the reception and appropriation of Hegel’s Phenomenology in twentieth-century French philosophy. As with Russon’s earlier work, Infinite Phenomenology will remain essential reading for those looking to engage Hegel’s essential, yet difficult, text. (shrink)

In Politics, Money, and Persuasion, distinguished philosopher John Russon offers a new framework for interpreting Plato's The Republic. For Russon, Plato's work is about the distinctive nature of what it is to be a human being and, correspondingly, what is distinctive about the nature of human society. Russon focuses on the realities of our everyday experience to come to profoundly insightful assessments of our human realities: the nature of the city, the nature of knowledge, and the nature of human psychology. (...) Russon's argument concentrates on the ambivalence of logos, which includes reflections on politics and philosophy and their place in human life, how humans have shaped the environment, our interactions with money, the economy, and taking account, and the pursuit of the good in social and political systems. Politics, Money, and Persuasion offers a deeply personal but also practical kind of philosophical reading of Plato's classic text. It emphasizes the tight connection between the life of city and the life of the soul, demonstrating both the crucial role that human cognitive excellence and psychological health play in political and social life. (shrink)

An oracle was reported to have said, "No one is wiser than Socrates." And in fact it was Socrates’ life’s work to interpret these words, which demanded and defined the practice of philosophy. Each of these original essays attends carefully to the specifics of the _Apology_, looking to its dramatic details, its philosophic teaching, and its complexity as a work of writing to bring into focus the "Socrates" of the _Apology_. Overall, the contributors, distinguished scholars of ancient philosophy, share a (...) belief in the unity of the letter and the spirit of Platonic philosophy: the conviction that the Platonic text cannot be reached except through reading and cannot be read except through thinking. In this way, the readings in this volume mirror Socrates’ own hermeneutical practice of uniting the demands of the mind and the demands of the text—the Socratic "examination." The result, true to the Socratic injunction that the unexamined life is not worth living, continues that practice of examination, here offering a reexamination of Socrates in the _Apology_. (shrink)

The result illustrates the depth of Platonic thought and the debt of all philosophy to it. Retracing the Platonic Text is a pioneering effort in demonstrating how Continental philosophy both reflects and expands upon Greek philosophy.

The modern interpretation of our existence as “subjective” is of a piece with the recognition that our experience is inherently interpretive or “hermeneutic”. Because we are subjects, our world is a world of meanings. From Descartes, we see that our experience is inherently interpretive, inherently hermeneutical. “Subjectivity” can thus be understood to be semiotic reality. The political stakes of this idea that individual subjectivity is derivative of a more basic reality are thematized in figures such as Marx and Foucault. Kant (...) shows that this interpretation is not so much something we do as something that we undergo. In order to avoid invoking the presumptions of either Aristotelian naturalism or Cartesian subjectivism, Heidegger introduces a new term to designate our existence: Dasein. The ongoing philosophical study of subjectivity reveals that the processes of interpretation that shape our experience are not deliberate acts of individuals, but processes that give rise to individuals. (shrink)

ABSTRACT I begin by highlighting central texts from Aristotle that demonstrate both an appreciation of the rich coupling of subject and object that has been the subject of much of the most exciting and innovative phenomenological work and a fundamental methodological commitment to answering to the terms of experience. I then turn to Plato’s dramatic portrayals of Socrates’ distinctive practice—the “Socratic method”—first to document the subtlety that Socrates displays in his dialogical embrace of the description of lived experience and then, (...) with him, to see the depths of existential change that are integral to the commitment to this method. (shrink)

Against the dualistic conception of mind and matter that is characteristic of much modern philosophy, ancient philosophers (Aristotle and Sophocles) show us that our powers are always embedded in nature, and the existence of those powers is dependent upon the existence of the bodies they are “of” Aristotle’s discussion of the habituation in particular offers us the chance to see the materialityand the labor that are presupposed in the acquisition of new powers. Thucydides, finally, shows us the care needed to (...) maintain the existence of these powers, and equally the attitude of neglect that the possession of these powers naturally induces. (shrink)

The Introduction outlines how the topic of imagination developed in Kant and German Idealism. Bates focuses on Fichte’s establishing of imagination as the primary dynamic structure of consciousness itself, and on Schelling’s transformation of this epistemological conception into a metaphysical one, interpreting imagination as the very self-sundering of the Absolute. Chapter 1, “The Sundering Imagination of the Absolute,” then looks at Hegel’s early, Schellingian interpretation of imagination. In Hegel’s Differenzschrift and in Faith and Knowledge, philosophy is construed as a self-conscious (...) reconstruction of the acts of imaginative synthesis by which the factual world of experience was generated. (shrink)