Deleuze and the Genesis of Representation is a systematic study of three of Deleuze's central works: Difference and Repetition, The Logic of Sense and, with Guattari, Anti-Oedipus. Hughes shows how each of these three works develops the Husserlian problem of genetic constitution. After an innovative reading of Husserl's late work, Hughes turns to a detailed study of the conceptual structures of Deleuze's three books. He demonstrates that each book is surprisingly similar in its structure and that all three function as nearly identical accounts of the genesis of representation.

In a...

The early Heidegger of Being and Time is generally believed to locate finitude strictly within the individual, based on an understanding that this individual will have to face its death alone and in its singularity. Facing death is characterized by the mood of Angst (anxiety), as death is not an experience one can otherwise access outside of one's own demise. In the later Heidegger, the finitude of the individual is rooted in the finitude of the world it lives in and within which it actualizes its possibilities, or Being. Against the standard reading that the early Heidegger places the...

Derrida wrote a vast number of texts for particular events across the world, as well as a series of works that portray him as a voyager. As an Algerian emigre, a postcolonial outsider, and an idiomatic writer who felt tied to a language that was not his own, and as a figure obsessed by the singularity of the literary or philosophical event, Derrida emerges as one whose thought always arrives on occasion. But how are we to understand the event in Derrida? Is there a risk that such stories of Derrida's work tend to misunderstand the essential unpredictability at work in the conditions of his...

Alienation After Derrida rearticulates the Hegelian-Marxist theory of alienation in the light of Derrida's deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence. Simon Skempton aims to demonstrate in what way Derridian deconstruction can itself be said to be a critique of alienation. In so doing, he argues that the acceptance of Derrida's deconstructive concepts does not necessarily entail the acceptance of his interpretations of Hegel and Marx. In this way the book proposes radical reinterpretations, not only of Hegel and Marx, but of Derridian deconstruction itself.

The critique of...

Martin Heidegger was one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. His analysis of human existence proves an inexhaustible ground for thinkers of all backgrounds who seek answers for their specific questions left open or opened up by our times. This book explores the intrinsic connection between two fundamentally human traits, language and death. Heidegger addresses each of these traits in depth, without ever explicitly outlining their relationship in a separate theory. However, in a close examination of Heidegger's magnum opus, Being and Time, Joachim L. Oberst uncovers a...

Gadamer and the Question of the Divine uncovers a neglected side of Gadamer's thought, namely his life-long concern with the question of the divine. Not only is this an issue of fundamental importance to philosophical hermeneutics, but it also contributes to what Gadamer considered to be the most urgent task of our time - a conceptual dialogue among religions. New grounds for toleration among communities must be found and Gadamer's study of the divine provides both a model and a starting-place for doing so. In setting forth a conceptual narrative for global dialogue about religious...

This book poses the question of what lies at the limit of philosophy. Through close studies of French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty's life and work, the authors examine one of the twentieth century's most interdisciplinary philosophers whose thought intersected with and contributed to the practices of art, psychology, literature, faith and philosophy. As these essays show, Merleau-Ponty's oeuvre disrupts traditional disciplinary boundaries and prompts his readers to ask what, exactly, constitutes philosophy and its others.

Featuring essays by an international team of leading...

Heidegger's Platonism challenges Heidegger's 1940 interpretation of Plato as the philosopher who initiated the West's ontological decline into contemporary nihilism. Mark A. Ralkowski argues that, in his earlier lecture course, On the Essence of Truth, in which he appropriates Plato in a positive light, Heidegger discovered the two most important concepts of his later thought, namely the difference between the Being of beings and Being as such, and the 'belonging together' of Being and man in what he eventually calls Ereignis, the 'event of appropriation'.

Ralkowski shows...

Nietzsche famously regarded Thus Spoke Zarathustra as his greatest work. However, despite Nietzsche's pervasive influence upon the philosopher and non-philosopher alike, and his own intense regard for Zarathustra, there has been relatively little serious study of Nietzsche's magnum opus.This book seeks to address this gap in the available literature by taking Thus Spoke Zarathustra seriously, not only with respect to its impact on the interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy, but also in light of the broader questions of the relationships between poetry,...

What is the self? Is it the impregnable cogito of Descartes or the shattered self of Nietzsche? Or has it become serendipitously constituted from pieces of fairy tales and novels, childhood comics and soap operas - a multitude of forces culled from fashion, modern myth, culture and recreation? Or must we still convince ourselves, like Rousseau, that the self can never be tainted; that it is, above all else, irrefrangible?

Paul Ricoeur proposed that the self is formed within the narratives we tell of ourselves, that it is itself a form of narrative. But is this enough? Could a self...