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Books : Nonfiction : Philosophy : Criticism
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In 1968, Robert Pirsig and his eleven-year-old son, Chris, made the cross-country motorcycle trip that would become the inspiration for Pirsig’s book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a powerful blend of personal narrative and philosophical investigation that has inspired generations.
Among the millions of readers to fall under the book’s spell was Mark Richardson, who as a young man struggled to understand Pirsig’s provocative and elusive ideas. Rereading the book decades later, Richardson, now a journalist and father of two, was moved by its portrayal of Pirsig’s complex relationship with Chris and struck by the timelessness of its lessons. So he tuned up his old Suzuki dirt bike and became a “Pirsig pilgrim,” one of the legions of fans who retrace the Pirsigs’ route from Minneapolis to San Francisco. In following this itinerary over the lonely byways of the American West, Richardson revisits the people and places from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, pondering the meaning of Pirsig’s philosophy and the answers it may offer to the questions in his own life. Richardson’s dogged reporting also gives new insight into the reclusive writer’s life, exploring Pirsig’s struggle with mental illness, his unwanted celebrity, and the tragic, brutal murder of Chris in 1979.
Published to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of Pirsig’s original trip, Zen and Now is a stirring meditation on a classic work and a passionate inquiry into the lessons it continues to teach us in the complex and bewildering world we inhabit today.
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This is a major work by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whose writings have been deeply influential on subsequent generations of philosophers. It is offered here in a new translation by Judith Norman, with an introduction by Rolf Peter Horstmann that places the work in its historical and philosophical context.
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Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1907-1961) is one of the foremost French philosophers of the 20th century. He is widely regarded for his contributions to phenomenology and the effect his work had on French existentialism and literature. His most important work and his most widely read work is Phenomenology of Perception.In Phenomenology of Perception, Maurice Merleau-Ponty examines the different associationist and intellectualist conceptions of perception. He rejects both of them on the grounds that they establish an overly rigid relation between stimulus and impression, and secondly, because the world is not entirely the work of a constituting subject. The body is not one object among many, he suggests, but rather it is our means of belonging to the world, and facing tasks. He compellingly argues that body is not geometrical, but conveys a spatiality of situation, an orientation toward a possible world. The ``body image'' is fully interrogated, and gesture, speech, and sexuality are presented as modes of expression that accrue meaning in relation to one another
The strength of M. Merleau-Ponty's masterly work lies in his concluding thoughts on Being-for-itself and Being-in-the-World. In elaborating this distinction, Merleau-Ponty's avoids the trappings of solipsistic reasoning, and makes a classic case for the field of Being- in-the-World's and Being-for-itself radical interdependence, an independence which i which is perceived has no absolute basis that is theoretically divorceable from quotidian practices. Yet, he suggests, there is never certainty, even in the inner life. Only retrospectively can calm, serenity of being be illusorily achieved as subjects are constantly in a process of self-constitution. He concludes that we choose our world, and our world chooses us.
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More than any other textbook, Moore and Parker's Critical Thinking has defined the structure and content of the critical thinking course at colleges and universities across the country--and has done so with a witty writing style that students enjoy. Now in full-color, the eighth edition brings the concepts of critical thinking to life in vivid detail, with current examples relevant to today's students.
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Dialectic of Enlightenment is undoubtedly the most influential publication of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Written during the Second World War and circulated privately, it appeared in a printed edition in Amsterdam in 1947. "What we had set out to do," the authors write in the Preface, "was nothing less than to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism."
Yet the work goes far beyond a mere critique of contemporary events. Historically remote developments, indeed, the birth of Western history and of subjectivity itself out of the struggle against natural forces, as represented in myths, are connected in a wide arch to the most threatening experiences of the present.
The book consists in five chapters, at first glance unconnected, together with a number of shorter notes. The various analyses concern such phenomena as the detachment of science from practical life, formalized morality, the manipulative nature of entertainment culture, and a paranoid behavioral structure, expressed in aggressive anti-Semitism, that marks the limits of enlightenment. The authors perceive a common element in these phenomena, the tendency toward self-destruction of the guiding criteria inherent in enlightenment thought from the beginning. Using historical analyses to elucidate the present, they show, against the background of a prehistory of subjectivity, why the National Socialist terror was not an aberration of modern history but was rooted deeply in the fundamental characteristics of Western civilization.
Adorno and Horkheimer see the self-destruction of Western reason as grounded in a historical and fateful dialectic between the domination of external nature and society. They trace enlightenment, which split these spheres apart, back to its mythical roots. Enlightenment and myth, therefore, are not irreconcilable opposites, but dialectically mediated qualities of both real and intellectual life. "Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology." This paradox is the fundamental thesis of the book.
This new translation, based on the text in the complete edition of the works of Max Horkheimer, contains textual variants, commentary upon them, and an editorial discussion of the position of this work in the development of Critical Theory.
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This introduction and commentary to Kant's least discussed work, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, is the dissertation that Michel Foucault presented in 1961 as his doctoral thesis. It has remained unpublished, in any language, until now.
In his exegesis and critical interpretation of Kant's Anthropology, Foucault raises the question of the relation between psychology and anthropology, and how they are affected by time. Through a Kantian "critique of the anthropological slumber," Foucault warns against the dangers of treating psychology as a new metaphysics, explores the possibilities of studying man empirically, and reflects on the nature of time, art and technique, self-perception, and language. Extending Kant's suggestion that any empirical knowledge of man is inextricably tied up with language, Foucault asserts that man is a world citizen insofar as he speaks. For both Kant and Foucault, anthropology concerns not the human animal or self-consciousness but, rather, involves the questioning of the limits of human knowledge and concrete existence.
This long-unknown text is a valuable contribution not only to a scholarly appreciation of Kant's work but as the first outline of what would later become Foucault's own frame of reference within the history of philosophy. It is thus a definitive statement of Foucault's relation to Kant as well as Foucault's relation to the critical tradition of philosophy. By going to the heart of the debate on structuralist anthropology and the status of the human sciences in relation to finitude, Foucault also creates something of a prologue to his foundational The Order of Things.
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In this beautifully written and brilliantly reasoned collection of essays, Ayn Rand eloquently argues that, because the moral influence of art is inescapable, art should always strive to elevate the human spirit.
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Humans have long turned to gardens—both real and imaginary—for sanctuary from the frenzy and tumult that surrounds them. Those gardens may be as far away from everyday reality as Gilgamesh’s garden of the gods or as near as our own backyard, but in their very conception and the marks they bear of human care and cultivation, gardens stand as restorative, nourishing, necessary havens.
With Gardens, Robert Pogue Harrison graces readers with a thoughtful, wide-ranging examination of the many ways gardens evoke the human condition. Moving from from the gardens of ancient philosophers to the gardens of homeless people in contemporary New York, he shows how, again and again, the garden has served as a check against the destruction and losses of history. The ancients, explains Harrison, viewed gardens as both a model and a location for the laborious self-cultivation and self-improvement that are essential to serenity and enlightenment, an association that has continued throughout the ages. The Bible and Qur’an; Plato’s Academy and Epicurus’s Garden School; Zen rock and Islamic carpet gardens; Boccaccio, Rihaku, Capek, Cao Xueqin, Italo Calvino, Ariosto, Michel Tournier, and Hannah Arendt—all come into play as this work explores the ways in which the concept and reality of the garden has informed human thinking about mortality, order, and power.
Alive with the echoes and arguments of Western thought, Gardens is a fitting continuation of the intellectual journeys of Harrison’s earlier classics, Forests and The Dominion of the Dead. Voltaire famously urged us to cultivate our gardens; with this compelling volume, Robert Pogue Harrison reminds us of the nature of that responsibility—and its enduring importance to humanity."I find myself completely besotted by a new book titled Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition, by Robert Pogue Harrison. The author . . . is one of the very best cultural critics at work today. He is a man of deep learning, immense generosity of spirit, passionate curiosity and manifold rhetorical gifts."—Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune
"This book is about gardens as a metaphor for the human condition. . . . Harrison draws freely and with brilliance from 5,000 years of Western literature and criticism, including works on philosophy and garden history. . . . He is a careful as well as an inspiring scholar."—Tom Turner, Times Higher Education"When I was a student, my Cambridge supervisor said, in the Olympian tone characteristic of his kind, that the only living literary critics for whom he would sell his shirt were William Empson and G. Wilson Knight. Having spent the subsequent 30 years in the febrile world of academic Lit. Crit. . . . I’m not sure that I’d sell my shirt for any living critic. But if there had to be one, it would unquestionably be Robert Pogue Harrison, whose study Forests: The Shadow of Civilization, published in 1992, has the true quality of literature, not of criticism—it stays with you, like an amiable ghost, long after you read it.
“Though more modest in scope, this new book is similarly destined to become a classic. It has two principal heroes: the ancient philosopher Epicurus . . . and the wonderfully witty Czech writer Karel Capek, apropos of whom it is remarked that, whereas most people believe gardening to be a subset of life, ‘gardeners, including Capek, understand that life is a subset of gardening.’”—Jonathan Bate, The Spectator
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More than any other textbook, Moore and Parker's Critical Thinking has defined the structure and content of the critical thinking course at colleges and universities across the country--and has done so with a witty writing style that students enjoy. Current examples relevant to today's students bring the concepts of critical thinking to life in vivid detail. This ninth edition offers an abundance of new exercises and examples, as well as a renewed focus on the importance of developing critical thinking skills.
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Immanuel Kant is arguably the most influential modern philosopher, but is also one of the most difficult. In this illuminating Very Short Introduction, Roger Scruton--a well-known and controversial philosopher in his own right--tackles his exceptionally complex subject with a strong hand, exploring the background to Kant's work and showing why Critique of Pure Reason has proved so enduring.
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Widely recognized as the finest definition of existentialist Philosophy, this book introduced existentialism to America in 1958. Barrett discusses the views of 19th and 20th century existentialists Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre and interprets the impact of their thinking on literature, art, and philosophy.
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The Hermeneutics of the Subject is the third volume in the collection of Michel Foucault's lectures at the Collège de France, one of the world's most prestigious institutions. Faculty at the Collège give public lectures, in which they present works-in-progress on any subject of their choosing. Foucault's wide-ranging lectures influenced his groundbreaking works like The History of Sexuality and Discipline and Punish. In the lectures comprising this volume, Foucault focuses on how the "self" and the "care of the self" were convinced during the period of antiquity, beginning with Socrates. The problems of the ethical formation of the self, Foucault argues, form the background for our own questions about subjectivity and remain at the center of contemporary moral thought. This series of lectures throws new light on Foucault's final works and shows the full depth of his engagement with ancient thought. Lucid and provocative, The Hermeneutics of the Subject reveals Foucault at the height of his powers.
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This succinct, interdisciplinary introduction to critical thinking successfully dares students to question their own assumptions and to enlarge their thinking through the analysis of the most common problems associated with everyday reasoning. The text offers a unique and effective organization: Part I explains the fundamental concepts; Part II describes the most common barriers to critical thinking; Part III offers strategies for overcoming those barriers.
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Candide, by Voltaire, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
One of the finest satires ever written, Voltaire’s Candide savagely skewers this very “optimistic” approach to life as a shamefully inadequate response to human suffering. The swift and lively tale follows the absurdly melodramatic adventures of the youthful Candide, who is forced into the army, flogged, shipwrecked, betrayed, robbed, separated from his beloved Cunégonde, and tortured by the Inquisition. As Candide experiences and witnesses calamity upon calamity, he begins to discover that—contrary to the teachings of his tutor, Dr. Pangloss—all is perhaps not always for the best. After many trials, travails, and incredible reversals of fortune, Candide and his friends finally retire together to a small farm, where they discover that the secret of happiness is simply “to cultivate one's garden,” a philosophy that rejects excessive optimism and metaphysical speculation in favor of the most basic pragmatism.
Filled with wit, intelligence, and an abundance of dark humor, Candide is relentless and unsparing in its attacks upon corruption and hypocrisy—in religion, government, philosophy, science, and even romance. Ultimately, this celebrated work says that it is possible to challenge blind optimism without losing the will to live and pursue a happy life.
Gita May is Professor of French at Columbia University. She has published extensively on the French Enlightenment, eighteenth-century aesthetics, the novel and autobiography, and women in literature, history, and the arts.
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The Parallax View is Slavoj Zizek's most substantial theoretical work to appear in many years; Zizek himself describes it as his magnum opus. Parallax can be defined as the apparent displacement of an object, caused by a change in observational position. Zizek is interested in the "parallax gap" separating two points between which no synthesis or mediation is possible, linked by an "impossible short circuit" of levels that can never meet. From this consideration of parallax, Zizek begins a rehabilitation of dialectical materialism.
Modes of parallax can be seen in different domains of today's theory, from the wave-particle duality in quantum physics to the parallax of the unconscious in Freudian psychoanalysis between interpretations of the formation of the unconscious and theories of drives. In The Parallax View, Zizek, with his usual astonishing erudition, focuses on three main modes of parallax: the ontological difference, the ultimate parallax that conditions our very access to reality; the scientific parallax, the irreducible gap between the phenomenal experience of reality and its scientific explanation, which reaches its apogee in today's brain sciences (according to which "nobody is home" in the skull, just stacks of brain meat—a condition Zizek calls "the unbearable lightness of being no one"); and the political parallax, the social antagonism that allows for no common ground. Between his discussions of these three modes, Zizek offers interludes that deal with more specific topics—including an ethical act in a novel by Henry James and anti-anti-Semitism.
The Parallax View not only expands Zizek's Lacanian-Hegelian approach to new domains (notably cognitive brain sciences) but also provides the systematic exposition of the conceptual framework that underlies his entire work. Philosophical and theological analysis, detailed readings of literature, cinema, and music coexist with lively anecdotes and obscene jokes.
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With both young and adult gamers as loyal fans, The Legend of Zelda is one of the most beloved video game series ever created. The contributors to this volume consider the following questions and more: What is the nature of the gamer’s connection to Link? Does Link have a will, or do gamers project their wills onto him? How does the gamer experience the game? Do the rules of logic apply in the game world? How is space created and distributed in Hyrule (the fictional land in which the game takes place)? How does time function? Is Zelda art? Can Hyrule be seen as an ideal society? Can the game be enjoyable without winning? The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy not only appeals to Zelda fans and philosophers but also puts video games on the philosophical map as a serious area of study.
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Countering the call by some "pro-Lacanians" for an end to the exegesis of Lacan's work—and the dismissal by "anti-Lacanians" of Lacan as impossibly impenetrable—Subjectivity and Otherness argues for Lacan as a "paradoxically systematic" thinker, and for the necessity of a close analysis of his texts. Lorenzo Chiesa examines, from a philosophical perspective, the evolution of the concept of subjectivity in Lacan's work, carrying out a detailed reading of the Lacanian subject in its necessary relation to otherness according to Lacan's orders of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real.
Chiesa emphasizes the continuity underlying apparently incompatible phases of Lacan's examination of the subject, describing Lacan's theory as a consistent philosophical system—but one that is constantly revised and therefore problematic. Chiesa analyzes each "old" theory of the subject within the framework of a "new" elaboration and reassesses its fundamental tenets from the perspective of a general psychoanalytic discourse that becomes increasingly complex. From the 1960s on, writes Chiesa, the Lacanian subject amounts to an irreducible lack that must be actively confronted and assumed; this "subjectivized lack," Chiesa argues further, offers an escape from the contemporary impasse between the "death of the subject" alleged by postmodernism and a return to a traditional "substantialist" notion of the subject. An original treatment of psychoanalytic issues, Subjectivity and Otherness fills a significant gap in the existing literature on Lacan, taking seriously the need for a philosophical investigation of Lacanian concepts.
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The present translation draws upon nearly half a century of Husserl scholarship as well as the many translations into English of other books by Husserl, occasioned by W.R. Boyce Gibson’s pioneering translation of Ideas, First Book, in 1931. Based on the most recent German edition of the original text published in 1976 by Martinus Nijhoff and edited by Dr. Karl Schuhmann, the present translation offers an entirely new rendering into English of Husserl’s great work, together with a representative selection of Husserl’s own noted and revised parts of his book. Thus the translation makes available, for the first time in English, a significant commentary by Husserl on his own text over a period of about sixteen years.
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