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Philosophy
A major work in the development of critical theory in the late 20th century, ANTI-OEDIPUS is an essential text for feminists, literary theorists, social scientists, philosophers, and other interested in the problems of contemporary Western culture. "An important text in the rethinking of sexuality and sexual politics spurred by the feminist and gay liberation movements".--Margaret Cerullo, Hampshire College.
An "introduction to the nonfascist life" (Michel Foucault, from the Preface) When it first appeared in France, Anti-Oedipus was hailed as a masterpiece by some and "a work of heretical madness" by others. In it, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari set forth the following theory: Western society's innate herd instinct has allowed the government, the media, and even the principles of economics to take advantage of each person's unwillingness to be cut off from the group. What's more, those who suffer from mental disorders may not be insane, but could be individuals in the purest sense, because they are by nature isolated from society. More than twenty-five years after its original publication, Anti-Oedipus still stands as a controversial contribution to a much-needed dialogue on the nature of free thinking.
Excerpt: ...I myself haven't any doubt that the greater part of this venom (and no less of esprit) got itself into the concept of the Master only as a result of the excited nature of Christian propaganda: we all know the unscrupulousness of sectarians when they set out to turn their leader into an apologia for themselves. When the early Christians had need of an adroit, contentious, pugnacious and maliciously subtle theologian to tackle other theologians, they created a
The most complete volume of writings by one of the most fascinating thinkers in the history of Marxism
Antonio Gramsci was one of the most important theorists of class, culture, and the state since Karl Marx. Imprisoned by the Fascists for much of his adult life, Gramsci spent his time in prison avidly writing on a broad range of subjects--from folklore to philosophy, popular culture to political strategy--and developing seminal ideas that have since become essential to our understanding of political theory. This book brings together the most comprehensive collection of Gramsci's writings available in English. Along with an introduction by leading Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, the volume includes a biographical introduction, informative introductions to each section, and a glossary of key terms to help readers better grasp the legacy of this important figure. As a thorough introduction to Gramsci's key concepts, this book is essential reading for every serious student of Marxism, political theory, or modern Italian history.
The aphorism eludes definition: it can appear to be a random jotting or a more polished observation. Whether arbitrary fragment or crystalline shard, an aphorism captures the inception of a thought. Franz Kafka composed aphorisms during two periods in his life. A series of 109 was written between September 1917 and April 1918, in Zürau, West Bohemia, while Kafka was on a visit to his sister Ottla, hoping for a brief respite following the diagnosis of the tuberculosis virus that would eventually claim his life. They were originally published in 1931, seven years after his death by his friend and literary executor Max Brod, under the title Betrachtungen über Sünde, Hoffnung, Leid, und den wahren Wag (Reflections on Sin, Hope, Suffering, and the True Way). The second sequence of aphorisms, numbering 41, originally appeared as entries in Kafka's diary from January 6 to February 29, 1920. They, too, were published posthumously, under the title "Er" Aufzeichnungen aus dem Jahr 1920 ("He" Reflections from the Year 1920). Kafka's aphorisms are fascinating glimpses into the lure and the enigma of the form itself.
In the past decade a new generation of photographers has directed the documentary approach toward more personal ends. Their aim has been not to reform life, but to know it. --John Szarkowski
In 1967, The Museum of Modern Art presented New Documents, a landmark exhibition organized by John Szarkowski that brought together a selection of works by three photographers whose individual achievements signaled the artistic potential for the medium in the 1960s and beyond: Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand.
Though largely unknown at the time, these three photographers are now universally acknowledged as artists of singular talent within the history of photography. The exhibition articulated a profound shift in the landscape of 20th-century photography, and interest in the exhibition has only continued to expand. Yet, until now, there has been no publication that captures its content. Published in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the exhibition, Arbus Friedlander Winogrand features full-page reproductions of the 94 photographs included in the exhibition, along with Szarkowski's original wall text, press release, installation views and an abundance of archival material. Essays by curator Sarah Hermanson Meister and critic Max Kozloff, who originally reviewed the exhibition for The Nation in 1967, critically situate the exhibition and its reception, and examine its lasting influence on the field of photography.
Madness, sexuality, power, knowledge--are these facts of life or simply parts of speech? In a series of works of astonishing brilliance, historian Michel Foucault excavated the hidden assumptions that govern the way we live and the way we think. The Archaeology of Knowledge begins at the level of things aid and moves quickly to illuminate the connections between knowledge, language, and action in a style at once profound and personal. A summing up of Foucault's own methodological assumptions, this book is also a first step toward a genealogy of the way we live now. Challenging, at times infuriating, it is an absolutely indispensable guide to one of the most innovative thinkers of our time.
The Achitecture of Happiness is a dazzling and generously illustrated journey through the philosophy and psychology of architecture and the indelible connection between our identities and our locations.One of the great but often unmentioned causes of both happiness and misery is the quality of our environment: the kinds of walls, chairs, buildings, and streets that surround us. And yet a concern for architecture is too often described as frivolous, even self-indulgent. Alain de Botton starts from the idea that where we are heavily influences who we can be, and argues that it is architecture's task to stand as an eloquent reminder of our full potential.
One of the great but often unmentioned causes of both happiness and misery is the quality of our environment: the kinds of walls, chairs, buildings and streets that surround us.
And yet a concern for architecture and design is too often described as frivolous, even self-indulgent. "The Architecture of Happiness" starts from the idea that where we are heavily influences who we can be, and it argues that it is architecture's task to stand as an eloquent reminder of our full potential.
Whereas many architects are wary of openly discussing the word beauty, this book has at its center the large and naive question: What is a beautiful building? It is a tour through the philosophy and psychology of architecture that aims to change the way we think about our homes, our streets and ourselves.
And yet a concern for architecture and design is too often described as frivolous, even self-indulgent. "The Architecture of Happiness" starts from the idea that where we are heavily influences who we can be, and it argues that it is architecture's task to stand as an eloquent reminder of our full potential.
Whereas many architects are wary of openly discussing the word beauty, this book has at its center the large and naive question: What is a beautiful building? It is a tour through the philosophy and psychology of architecture that aims to change the way we think about our homes, our streets and ourselves.
In his latest work, Jacques Derrida deftly guides us through an extended meditation on remembrance, religion, time, and technology - all fruitfully occasioned by a deconstructive analysis of the notion of archiving. The archival concept has of late played a pivotal role in critical debate. A place of origin, yet of perpetuity, a place of stasis and order, yet of discovery, the notion of archive houses a fascinating complex of diverse, and often disparate, meanings. As a depository of civic record and social history whose very name derives from the Greek word for town hall, the archive would seem to be a public entity, yet it is stocked with the personal, even intimate, artifacts of private lives. It is this inherent tension between public and private which inaugurates, for Derrida, an inquiry into the human impulse to preserve, through technology as well as tradition, both a historical and a psychic past. What emerges is a marvelous expansive work, engaging at once Judaic mythos, Freudian psychoanalysis, and Marxist materialism in a profound reflection on the real, the unreal, and the virtual. Intrigued by the evocative relationship between technologies of inscription and psychic processes, Derrida offers for the first time a major statement on the pervasive impact of electronic media, particularly e-mail, which threaten to transform the entire public and private space of humanity. Plying this rich material with characteristic virtuosity, Derrida constructs a synergistic reading of archives and archiving, both provocative and compelling.
German-Jewish political philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-75) fled from the Nazis to New York in 1941, and during the next thirty years in America she wrote her best-known and most influential works, such as The Human Condition, The Origins of Totalitarianism, and On Revolution. Yet, despite the fact that a substantial portion of her oeuvre was written in America, not Europe, no one has directly considered the influence of America on her thought--until now. In Arendt and America, historian Richard H. King argues that while all of Arendt's work was haunted by her experience of totalitarianism, it was only in her adopted homeland that she was able to formulate the idea of the modern republic as an alternative to totalitarian rule. Situating Arendt within the context of U.S. intellectual, political, and social history, King reveals how Arendt developed a fascination with the political thought of the Founding Fathers. King also re-creates her intellectual exchanges with American friends and colleagues, such as Dwight Macdonald and Mary McCarthy, and shows how her lively correspondence with sociologist David Riesman helped her understand modern American culture and society. In the last section of Arendt and America, King sets out the context in which the Eichmann controversy took place and follows the debate about "the banality of evil" that has continued ever since. As King shows, Arendt's work, regardless of focus, was shaped by postwar American thought, culture, and politics, including the Civil Rights Movement and the Cold War. For Arendt, the United States was much more than a refuge from Nazi Germany; it was a stimulus to rethink the political, ethical, and historical traditions of human culture. This authoritative combination of intellectual history and biography offers a unique approach for thinking about the influence of America on Arendt's ideas and also the effect of her ideas on American thought.
Joe Sachs has followed up his brilliant translation of Aristotle's Physics with a new translation of Metaphysics. Sachs's translations bring distinguished new light onto Aristotle's works, which are foundational to history of science. Sachs translates Aristotle with an authenticity that was lost when Aristotle was translated into Latin and abstract Latin words came to stand for concepts Aristotle expressed with phrases in everyday Greek language. When the works began being translated into English, those abstract Latin words or their cognates were used, thus suggesting a level of jargon and abstraction, and in some cases misleading interpretation, which was not Aristotle's language or style. These important new translations open up Aristotle's original thought to readers.
Martin Heidegger's reading of Aristotle was one of the pivotal influences in the development of his philosophy. First published in German in 1981 as volume 33 of Heidegger's Collected Works, this book translates a lecture course he presented at the University of Freiburg in 1931. Heidegger's careful translation and his probing commentary on the first three chapters of Book IX of Metaphysics show the close correlation between his phenomenological interpretation of the Greeks (especially of Aristotle) and his critique of metaphysics. Additionally, Heidegger's confrontation with Aristotle's Greek text makes a significant contribution to contemporary scholarship on Aristotle, particularly the understanding of potentiality in Aristotle's thought. Finally, the book exemplifies Heidegger's gift for teaching students how to read a philosophical text and how to question that text in a philosophical way.
The Nicomachean Ethics is one of Aristotle's most widely read and influential works. Ideas central to ethics--that happiness is the end of human endeavor, that moral virtue is formed through action and habituation, and that good action requires prudence--found their most powerful proponent in the person medieval scholars simply called "the Philosopher." Drawing on their intimate knowledge of Aristotle's thought, Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins have produced here an English-language translation of the Ethics that is as remarkably faithful to the original as it is graceful in its rendering.
Aristotle is well known for the precision with which he chooses his words, and in this elegant translation his work has found its ideal match. Bartlett and Collins provide copious notes and a glossary providing context and further explanation for students, as well as an introduction and a substantial interpretive essay that sketch central arguments of the work and the seminal place of Aristotle's Ethics in his political philosophy as a whole. The Nicomachean Ethics has engaged the serious interest of readers across centuries and civilizations--of peoples ancient, medieval, and modern; pagan, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish--and this new edition will take its place as the standard English-language translation.
The Nicomachean Ethics is one of Aristotle's most widely read and influential works. Ideas central to ethics--that happiness is the end of human endeavor, that moral virtue is formed through action and habituation, and that good action requires prudence--found their most powerful proponent in the person medieval scholars simply called "the Philosopher." Drawing on their intimate knowledge of Aristotle's thought, Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins have produced here an English-language translation of the Ethics that is as remarkably faithful to the original as it is graceful in its rendering.
Aristotle is well known for the precision with which he chooses his words, and in this elegant translation his work has found its ideal match. Bartlett and Collins provide copious notes and a glossary providing context and further explanation for students, as well as an introduction and a substantial interpretive essay that sketch central arguments of the work and the seminal place of Aristotle's Ethics in his political philosophy as a whole. The Nicomachean Ethics has engaged the serious interest of readers across centuries and civilizations--of peoples ancient, medieval, and modern; pagan, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish--and this new edition will take its place as the standard English-language translation.
From renowned classicist Edith Hall, ARISTOTLE'S WAY is an examination of one of history's greatest philosophers, showing us how to lead happy, fulfilled, and meaningful lives Aristotle was the first philosopher to inquire into subjective happiness, and he understood its essence better and more clearly than anyone since. According to Aristotle, happiness is not about well-being, but instead a lasting state of contentment, which should be the ultimate goal of human life. We become happy through finding a purpose, realizing our potential, and modifying our behavior to become the best version of ourselves. With these objectives in mind, Aristotle developed a humane program for becoming a happy person, which has stood the test of time, comprising much of what today we associate with the good life: meaning, creativity, and positivity. Most importantly, Aristotle understood happiness as available to the vast majority us, but only, crucially, if we decide to apply ourselves to its creation--and he led by example. As Hall writes, If you believe that the goal of human life is to maximize happiness, then you are a budding Aristotelian. In expert yet vibrant modern language, Hall lays out the crux of Aristotle's thinking, mixing affecting autobiographical anecdotes with a deep wealth of classical learning. For Hall, whose own life has been greatly improved by her understanding of Aristotle, this is an intensely personal subject. She distills his ancient wisdom into ten practical and universal lessons to help us confront life's difficult and crucial moments, summarizing a lifetime of the most rarefied and brilliant scholarship.