Download or read book Merleau Ponty and the Foundation of Existential Politics written by Kerry H. Whiteside and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on previously unexplored sources, Kerry H. Whiteside presents the political theory of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), one of France's best-known twentieth-century philosophers. Whiteside argues that Merleau-Ponty's objective in his political writings was to make existentialism into the foundation for a philosophically consistent mode of political thinking. This study discusses the inadequacies Merleau-Ponty found in the traditional philosophies of empiricism and idealism, and then examines the subject-object dualism that he believed deprived previous forms of existentialism of political significance. Whiteside shows how Merleau-Ponty overcame these problems by grounding political reasoning in a theory of consciousness that emphasized both its individuality and its need for socially created meaning. After explaining Merleau-Ponty's modifications of the views of Sartre, Aron, and others, the book investigates how he applied his political theory in editorial exchanges with Communists and liberals. Throughout this study, Whiteside traces and criticizes the changes in the philosopher's concept of Marxism and points to his many ideas that bear on current controversies in political theory. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book Merleau Ponty and Modern Politics After Anti Humanism written by Diana Coole and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2007-08-28 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this important new book, Diana Coole shows how existential phenomenology illuminates and enlivens our understanding of politics. Merleau-Ponty’s focus on embodied experience allows us to approach political life in a manner that is both critical and engaged. With breadth of vision and penetrating insight, Coole demonstrates that political questions were always central to Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical project. Her examination of his complete body of work presents us with a rigorous philosophy that maintains our capacities for agency despite moving beyond a philosophy of the subject. Merleau-Ponty and Modern Politics after Anti-humanism is the first major work on Merleau-Ponty’s political philosophy in over two decades. Coole presents his later philosophy of flesh as the outline for a new understanding of the political, which forms the basis for reconsidering humanism after, but also through, anti-humanism. She also shows how Merleau-Ponty’s concern with contingency anticipated arguments by thinkers such as Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze, while sustaining a robust sense of politics as the domain of collective life. The result is a philosophical analysis that speaks to our contemporary concerns in which we seek a coherent account of our actions, our environment and ourselves, such that we might become exemplary political actors within a complex and uncertain world.
Download or read book The Banality of Evil written by Bernard J. Bergen and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 1998 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Takes its point of departure from Hannah Arendt's "Eichmann in Jerusalem." Focuses neither on Eichmann nor the Holocaust, but on what Bergen sees as the political and philosophical consequences of the "banality of evil." These derive from the human failure to develop the thought, will, and judgment that are necessary to prevent the kind of evil committed by the Nazis. Like Arendt, Bergen is more concerned with totalitarianism than antisemitism, often referring to her work "The Origins of Totalitarianism."
Download or read book The Debate Between Sartre and Merleau Ponty written by Jon Stewart and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 1998-10-28 with total page 686 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays provides a portrait of the intellectual relationship between these two men. It addresses several points of contact and covers themes of the debate from the different periods in their shared history.
Download or read book Merleau Ponty s Existential Phenomenology and the Realization of Philosophy written by Bryan A. Smyth and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-12-19 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing to light the essential philosophical role of Marxism within Merleau-Ponty's reinterpretation of transcendental phenomenology, this book shows that the realization of this project hinges methodologically upon a renewed conception of the proletariat qua universal class-specifically, that it rests upon a humanist myth of incarnation which, substantiated by Merleau-Ponty's notion of 'heroism', locates an objective historical purposiveness in the habituated organism of the modern subject. Foregrounding the phenomenological priority of history over corporeality in this way, Smyth's analysis recovers the 'militant' character of Merleau-Ponty's existential phenomenology. It thus sheds critical new light on his early thought, and challenges some of the main parameters of existing scholarship by disclosing the intrinsic normativity of his basic methodological commitments.
Download or read book Merleau Ponty written by Rosalyn Diprose and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-05 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Having initially not had the attention of Sartre or Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty's work is arguably now more widely influential than either of his two contemporaries. "Merleau-Ponty: Key Concepts" presents an accessible guide to the core ideas which structure Merleau-Ponty's thinking as well as to his influences and the value of his ideas to a wide range of disciplines. The first section of the book presents the context of Merleau-Ponty's thinking, the major debates of his time, particularly existentialism, phenomenology, the history of philosophy and the philosophy of history and society. The second section outlines his major contributions and conceptual innovations. The final section focuses upon how his work has been taken up in other fields besides philosophy, notably in sociology, cognitive science, health studies, feminism and race theory.
Download or read book Merleau Ponty Hermeneutics and Postmodernism written by Thomas W. Busch and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book opens up new dimensions in the philosophical thought of Merleau-Ponty and addresses contemporary issues concerning interpretation theory and postmodernity. In Part I the authors employ the texts of Merleau-Ponty to challenge many of assumptions that operate in the current field of hermeneutics. They find in Merleau-Ponty the outline of a hermeneutics of ambiguity that incorporates his accounts of the human body, language, and temporality in working out the concepts of interpretation, context, perspective, truth, and interpersonal transgression. Merleau-Ponty thus enters into a productive dialogue with contemporary thinkers such as Gadamer, Ricoeur, Habermas, Levinas, and Derrida. Part II engages Merleau-Ponty with the "many voices" of postmodernism. Some of the most able Merleau-Ponty interpreters reveal the richness of his work through variant readings. Can Merleau-Ponty be construed as a postmodern thinker, or as a critic of postmodernism? To what extent can the concepts of flesh, reversibility, and ecart be made to function as deconstructive non-concepts? What can Merleau-Ponty contribute toward a postmodern politics? These essays move the discussion from Derrida to Deleuze, Foucault, and Lyotard.
Download or read book Volume 9 Kierkegaard and Existentialism written by Jon Stewart and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There can be no doubt that most of the thinkers who are usually associated with the existentialist tradition, whatever their actual doctrines, were in one way or another influenced by the writings of Kierkegaard. This influence is so great that it can be fairly stated that the existentialist movement was largely responsible for the major advance in Kierkegaard's international reception that took place in the twentieth century. In Kierkegaard's writings one can find a rich array of concepts such as anxiety, despair, freedom, sin, the crowd, and sickness that all came to be standard motifs in existentialist literature. Sartre played an important role in canonizing Kierkegaard as one of the forerunners of existentialism. However, recent scholarship has been attentive to his ideological use of Kierkegaard. Indeed, Sartre seemed to be exploiting Kierkegaard for his own purposes and suspicions of misrepresentation and distortions have led recent commentators to go back and reexamine the complex relation between Kierkegaard and the existentialist thinkers. The articles in the present volume feature figures from the French, German, Spanish and Russian traditions of existentialism. They examine the rich and varied use of Kierkegaard by these later thinkers, and, most importantly, they critically analyze his purported role in this famous intellectual movement.
Download or read book The Merleau Ponty Reader written by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2007-10-19 with total page 509 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title offers a comprehensive view of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's work, this selection collecting in one volume the foundational essays necessary for understanding the core of this critical 20th-century philosopher's thought.
Download or read book The Aesthetico Political written by Mart�n Plot and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-10-23 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study uses new arguments to reinvestigate the relation between aesthetics and politics in the contemporary debates on democratic theory and radical democracy. First, Carl Schmitt and Claude Lefort help delineate the contours of an aesthetico-political understanding of democracy, which is developed further by studying Merleau-Ponty, Ranci�re, and Arendt. The ideas of Merleau-Ponty serve to establish a general "ontological" framework that aims to contest the dominant currents in contemporary democratic theory. It is argued that Merleau-Ponty, Arendt, and Ranci�re share a general understanding of the political as the contingently contested spaces and times of appearances. However, the articulation of their thought leads to reconsider and explore under-theorized as well as controversial dimensions of their work. This search for new connections between the political and the aesthetic thought of Arendt and Merleau-Ponty on one hand and the current widespread interest in Ranci�re's aesthetic politics on the other make this book a unique study that will appeal to anyone who is interested in political theory and contemporary continental philosophy.
Download or read book Negativity and Politics written by Diana Coole and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-01-04 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 2000. Although frequently invoked by philosophers and political theorists, the theory of negativity has received remarkably little sustained attention. Negativity and Politics: Dionysus and dialectics from Kant to poststructuralism is the first full length study of this crucial problematic within philosophy and political theory. Diana Coole clearly and skilfully shows how the problem of negativity lies at the heart of philosophical and political debate. First, she explores the meaning of negativity as it appears in modern and postmodern thinking. Second, she sets out the significance of negativity for politics and our understanding of what constitutes the political. A key theme of Negativity and Politics is the recurring hostility between the dialectical use of negativity found in Hegel and running through Marxism and critical theory, and the Dionysian use of negativity as developed by Nietzsche and found in important strands of French thought. Diana Coole shows how the appropriation of negativity in both cases threatens but also informs our understanding of politics and the political. A fascinating and bold intervention in political theory and philosophy, Negativity and Politics will be of interest to all those in politics, philosophy and contemporary social theory.
Download or read book Elements of Responsible Politics written by B.P. Dauenhauer and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays draws together work done during a period of more than fifteen years. In the course of these years much has changed, including much about politics. Patterns of political activity have been trans formed. Ways in which we had been accustomed to construe politics have been substantially modified and sometimes replaced. Some apparently in tractable conflicts have been resolved. Other, apparently more manageable, conflicts have shown shocking durability. A number of political doctrines once considered indefinitely serviceable have lost all relevance. And the material and technical resources at our disposal look strikingly different than they did just a few years ago. Practical politics of whatever stripe encounters at every turn ever more grave environmental degradation. But, or so this collection assumes, not everything political has changed. Some political issues, both "theoretical" and "practical," remain persistently trenchant. Questions like the following demand ever renewed consideration. What is the point and worth of belonging to a political community? What entitlements and responsibilities follow upon such membership? Or even more fundamentally, what conditions are required for there to be politics at all? Taken together, the essays collected in this volume propose a way both to understand and to engage in politics which is properly responsive both to perennial political issues and to the peculiar exigencies of our era. Some of them present criticisms of widely held, warmly cherished ways of addressing political matters. Others propose constructive alternatives.
Download or read book Merleau Ponty and the Paradoxes of Expression written by Donald A. Landes and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-10-10 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Merleau-Ponty and the Paradoxes of Expression offers a comprehensive reading of the philosophical work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a central figure in 20th-century continental philosophy. By establishing that the paradoxical logic of expression is Merleau-Ponty's fundamental philosophical gesture, this book ties together his diverse work on perception, language, aesthetics, politics and history in order to establish the ontological position he was developing at the time of his sudden death in 1961. Donald A. Landes explores the paradoxical logic of expression as it appears in both Merleau-Ponty's explicit reflections on expression and his non-explicit uses of this logic in his philosophical reflection on other topics, and thus establishes a continuity and a trajectory of his thought that allows for his work to be placed into conversation with contemporary developments in continental philosophy. The book offers the reader a key to understanding Merleau-Ponty's subtle methodology and highlights the urgency and relevance of his research into the ontological significance of expression for today's work in art and cultural theory.
Download or read book Philosophic Classics Volume V written by Forrest Baird and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-05-31 with total page 555 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For courses in 20th-century Philosophy, recent Continental Philosophy, Anglo-American Philosophy; as part of courses in Contemporary Philosophy; or courses on Epistemology or Metaphysics that take a historical approach. This anthology in 20th-century philosophical classics includes recent European and American philosophers, and contains texts that are presently seen as classics or as emerging classics. It features complete works or complete sections of works. Includes introductions to each philosopher, an abundance of drawings, diagrams, photographs, and a timeline.
Download or read book Merleau Ponty in Contemporary Context written by Douglas Low and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a great philosopher and social theorist of mid-twentieth century, as a viable alternative to both modernism and postmodernism. Douglas Low argues that Merleau-Ponty's philosophy offers explanations and solves problems that other philosophies grapple with, but do not resolve, given their respective theoretical presuppositions and assumptions. Low brings the work of Merleau-Ponty into critical contact with important thinkers, including Sartre, Heidegger, Derrida, and Marx. He highlights Merleau-Ponty's connection to the early Hegel, especially with regard to the criticism of modernism's "representational consciousness" and its subsequent skepticism with regard to our being in the world. Merleau-Ponty made a concerted effort to solve the problems that come about due to a wide variety of Western dualisms: body and mind, perception and conception, self and other, etc. He frequently does so by demonstrating the connection between these disparate terms, the connection of perception with affect and interest, fact with value, and a broadened view of science with moral and philosophical judgment. Merleau-Ponty's unique contribution is his focus on the lived-through perceiving body and its relationship to abstract thought and language. In his detailed analysis of the work of Merleau-Ponty, Low brings attention to a twentieth-century master capable of altering the landscape of modern and social philosophy in the twenty-first century.
Download or read book The Routledge Dictionary of Twentieth Century Political Thinkers written by Robert Benewick and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-09-11 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edtion has been revised and extended to include eleven new entries on Berlin, Chomsky, Derrida, Rorty and many others. Comprising 169 entries, it also includes non-Western political thinkers.
Download or read book The Merleau Ponty Dictionary written by Donald A. Landes and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-06-06 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) is one of the central figures of 20th-century Continental philosophy, and his work has been hugely influential in a wide range of fields. His writings engage in the study of perception, language, politics, aesthetics, history and ontology, and represent a rich and complex network of exciting ideas. The Merleau-Ponty Dictionary provides the reader and student of Merleau-Ponty with all the tools necessary to engage with this key thinker: a comprehensive A to Z that provides summaries of all his major texts and articles, clear and straightforward explanations of his terminology and innovative concepts, and detailed discussions of the figures and philosophies that influenced his work. The book also includes a philosophical introduction, a chronology of Merleau-Ponty's life and works, and suggestions for further reading. This dictionary is the ideal reading and research companion for students at all levels.
