Kategoria BISAC: Philosophy >> Criticism

Film noir is a classic genre characterized by visual elements such as tilted camera angles, skewed scene compositions, and an interplay between darkness and light. Common motifs include crime and punishment, the upheaval of traditional moral values, and a pessimistic stance on the meaning of life and on the place of humankind in the universe. Spanning the 1940s and 1950s, the classic film noir era saw the release of many of Hollywood's best-loved studies of shady characters and shadowy underworlds, including Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep, Touch of Evil, and The Maltese Falcon. Neo-noir...

"Thoreau's Living Ethics" is the first full, rigorous account of Henry Thoreau's ethical philosophy. Focused on "Walden" but ranging widely across his writings, the study situates Thoreau within a long tradition of ethical thinking in the West, from the ancients to the Romantics and on to the present day. Philip Cafaro shows Thoreau grappling with important ethical questions that agitated his own society and discusses his value for those seeking to understand contemporary ethical issues.

Cafaro's particular interest is in Thoreau's treatment of virtue ethics: the branch of ethics...

While There Have Been Many Essays devoted to comparing the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty with that of Jacques Derrida, there has been no sustained book-length treatment of these two French philosophers. Additionally, many of the essays presuppose an oppositional relationship between them, and between phenomenology and deconstruction more generally. Jack Reynolds systematically explores their relationship by analyzing each philosopher in terms of two important and related issues - embodiment and alterity. Focusing on areas with which they are not commonly associated (e.g., Derrida on the...

Is there life after theory? If the death of the Author has now been followed by the death of the Theorist, what's left? Indeed, who's left? To explore such riddles Life. After.Theory brings together new interviews with four theorists who are left, each a major figure in their own right: Jacques Derrida, Frank Kermode, Toril Moi, and Christopher Norris.

Framed and introduced by Michael Payne and John Schad, the interviews pursue a whole range of topics, both familiar and unfamiliar. Among other things, Derrida, Kermode, Moi and Norris discuss being an outsider, taking responsibility,...

What is required of the idea of critique if it is to overcome indifference? This question addresses core themes in modern, post-Kantian and European philosophy, challenging theory's resignation in the face of contemporary political and economic formations. If indifference is to be overcome, critique must be demarcated in its purity, as an idea of critique in and of itself. For the idea of critique to become pure we must view critique as the construction of difference--only pure critique, as the construction of difference, can overcome our current age of indifference.

The Idea of Pure...

What is required of the idea of critique if it is to overcome indifference? This question addresses core themes in modern, post-Kantian and European philosophy, challenging theory's resignation in the face of contemporary political and economic formations. If indifference is to be overcome, critique must be demarcated in its purity, as an idea of critique in and of itself. For the idea of critique to become pure we must view critique as the construction of difference--only pure critique, as the construction of difference, can overcome our current age of indifference.

The Idea of Pure...

Henri Lefebvre has been celebrated as one of the most influential social theorists of the twentieth century. Understanding Henri Lefebvre places Lefebvre in his historical and intellectual context and analyzes the extraordinary range of his work, across politics, philosophy, history, literature and culture.

Particular emphasis is given to Lefebvre's trilogy of inspirational thinkers--Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche; his links to contemporaries such as Heidegger, Axelos and the Situationalists; and his critiques of existentialism and structuralism. Analysis of his writings on cities are...

Henri Lefebvre has been celebrated as one of the most influential social theorists of the twentieth century. Understanding Henri Lefebvre places Lefebvre in his historical and intellectual context and analyzes the extraordinary range of his work, across politics, philosophy, history, literature and culture.

Particular emphasis is given to Lefebvre's trilogy of inspirational thinkers--Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche; his links to contemporaries such as Heidegger, Axelos and the Situationalists; and his critiques of existentialism and structuralism. Analysis of his writings on cities are...

This is the first comparative study of the pioneering work on language of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Hans-Georg Gadamer.
The book focuses on how Wittgenstein and Gadamer treat language in their accounts of language as game and their major writings on the subject--Philosophical Investigations and Truth and Method, respectively. Chris Lawn goes on to offer a critique of Wittgenstein's account of linguistic rules, drawing upon Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, particularly his emphasis upon tradition, temporality, historicality, and novelty. The text demonstrates how paying attention to...

Descartes held that only ideas are immediately perceived, and that all ideas are really identical to mental states. Yet certain passages in the Meditations seem to assert that some extramental individuals -- the sun, for example, or a piece of wax -- can be immediately perceived (not by the senses, but by the intellect). If so then Descartes was committed to the seemingly absurd claim that extramental things can be really identical to mental states. But the claim is not absurd; as this book shows, it is based on a coherent doctrine of intentional representation that was taught at the...