Download or read book The Dialectic of Essence written by Allan Silverman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-09 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Dialectic of Essence offers a systematic new account of Plato's metaphysics. Allan Silverman argues that the best way to make sense of the metaphysics as a whole is to examine carefully what Plato says about ousia (essence) from the Meno through the middle period dialogues, the Phaedo and the Republic, and into several late dialogues including the Parmenides, the Sophist, the Philebus, and the Timaeus. This book focuses on three fundamental facets of the metaphysics: the theory of Forms; the nature of particulars; and Plato's understanding of the nature of metaphysical inquiry. Silverman seeks to show how Plato conceives of "Being" as a unique way in which an essence is related to a Form. Conversely, partaking ("having") is the way in which a material particular is related to its properties: Particulars, thus, in an important sense lack essence. Additionally, the author closely analyzes Plato's idea that the relation between Forms and particulars is mediated by form-copies. Even when some late dialogues provide a richer account of particulars, Silverman maintains that particulars are still denied essence. Indeed, with the Timaeus's introduction of the receptacle, there are no particulars of the traditional variety. This book cogently demonstrates that when we understand that Plato's concern with essence lies at the root of his metaphysics, we are better equipped to find our way through the labyrinth of his dialogues and to better appreciate how they form a coherent theory.
Download or read book The Dialectic of Essence written by Allan Jay Silverman and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Dialectic of Essence offers a systematic new account of Plato's metaphysics. Allan Silverman argues that the best way to make sense of the metaphysics as a whole is to examine carefully what Plato says about ousia (essence) from the Meno through the middle period dialogues, the Phaedo and the Republic, and into several late dialogues including the Parmenides, the Sophist, the Philebus, and the Timaeus. This book focuses on three fundamental facets of the metaphysics: the theory of Forms; the nature of particulars; and Plato's understanding of the nature of metaphysical inquiry. Silverman seeks to show how Plato conceives of "Being" as a unique way in which an essence is related to a Form. Conversely, partaking ("having") is the way in which a material particular is related to its properties: Particulars, thus, in an important sense lack essence. Additionally, the author closely analyzes Plato's idea that the relation between Forms and particulars is mediated by form-copies. Even when some late dialogues provide a richer account of particulars, Silverman maintains that particulars are still denied essence. Indeed, with the Timaeus's introduction of the receptacle, there are no particulars of the traditional variety. This book cogently demonstrates that when we understand that Plato's concern with essence lies at the root of his metaphysics, we are better equipped to find our way through the labyrinth of his dialogues and to better appreciate how they form a coherent theory.
Download or read book Philosophies of Essence written by David H. DeGrood and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1976-01-01 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophies of essence provides a critical evaluation of the concept of 'essence' from the Pre-Socratics to the present, as well as indicating the social roots of the various developments. Further, it shows the fruitfulness the concept still has for a scientific materialistic outlook. In addition, a new dual formulation of the concept is given.--Preface.
Download or read book Dialectics of Human Nature in Marx s Philosophy written by M. Tabak and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-07-16 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A scholarly exploration of Marx's thought without any favorable or critical ideological agendas, this book opposes the compartmentalization of Marx's thought into various competing doctrines, such as historical materialism, dialectical materialism, and different forms of economic determinism.
Download or read book Marx and Hegel on the Dialectic of the Individual and the Social written by Sevgi Dogan and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-08-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marx and Hegel on the Dialectic of the Individual and the Social is a detailed investigation of the major works of Hegel and the young Marx exploring how the concept of the individual is positioned within their ontologies and how this positioning is reflected in their related political views.
Download or read book Dialectics of the Ideal written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-11-28 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Dialectics of the Ideal: Evald Ilyenkov and Creative Soviet Marxism Levant and Oittinen provide a window into the subterranean tradition of ‘creative’ Soviet Marxism, which developed on the margins of the Soviet academe and remains largely outside the orbit of contemporary theory in the West. With his ‘activity approach’, E.V. Ilyenkov, its principal figure in the post-Stalin period, makes a substantial contribution toward an anti-reductionist Marxist theory of the subject, which should be of interest to contemporary theorists who seek to avoid economic and cultural reductionism as well as the malaise of postmodern relativism. This volume features Levant’s translation of Ilyenkov’s Dialectics of the Ideal (2009), which remained unpublished until thirty years after the author’s tragic suicide in 1979. Contributors include: Evald Ilyenkov, Tarja Knuuttila, Alex Levant, Andrey Maidansky, Vesa Oittinen, Paula Rauhala, and Birger Siebert.
Download or read book Heidegger and Marcuse written by Andrew Feenberg and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book Plato s Essentialism written by Vasilis Politis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-08 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Vasilis Politis argues that Plato's Forms are essences, not merely things that have an essence. Politis shows that understanding Plato's theory of Forms as a theory of essence presents a serious challenge to contemporary philosophers who regard essentialism as little more than an optional item on the philosophical menu. This approach, he suggests, also constitutes a sharp critique of those who view Aristotelian essentialism as the only sensible position: Plato's essentialism, Politis demonstrates, is a well-argued, rigorous, and coherent theory, and a viable competitor to that of Aristotle. This book will appeal to students and scholars with an interest in the intersection between philosophy and the history of philosophy.
Download or read book Hegel for Social Movements written by Andy Blunden and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-06-17 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hegel for Social Movements by Andy Blunden is an introduction to the reading of Hegel for social change activists, focusing a non-metaphysical reading of the Logic and the Philosophy of Right.
Download or read book Substance and Essence in Aristotle written by Charlotte Witt and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-31 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Substance and Essence in Aristotle is a close study of Aristotle's most profound—and perplexing—treatise: Books VII-IX of the Metaphysics. These central books, which focus on the nature of substance, have gained a deserved reputation for their difficulty, inconclusiveness, and internal inconsistency. Despite these problems, Witt extracts from Aristotle's text a coherent and provocative view about sensible substance by focusing on Aristotle's account of form or essence. After exploring the context in which Aristotle's discussion of sensible substance takes place, Witt turns to his analysis of essence. Arguing against the received interpretation, according to which essences are classificatory, Witt maintains that a substance's essence is what causes it to exist. In addition, Substance and Essence in Aristotle challenges the orthodox view that Aristotelian essences are species-essences, defending instead the controversial position that they are individual essences. Finally, Witt compares Aristotelian essentialism to contemporary essentialist theories, focusing in particular on Kripke's work. She concludes that fundamental differences between Aristotelian and contemporary essentialist theories highlight important features of Aristotle's theory and the philosophical problems and milieu that engendered it.
Download or read book Being Essence and Substance in Plato and Aristotle written by Paul Ricoeur and published by Polity. This book was released on 2013-09-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) was one of the outstanding French philosophers of the 20th century and his work is widely read in the English-speaking world. This unique volume comprises the lectures that Ricoeur gave on Plato and Aristotle at the University of Strasbourg in 1953-54. The aim of these lectures is to analyse the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle and to discern in their work the ontological foundations of Western philosophy. The relation between Plato and Aristotle is commonly portrayed as a contrast between a philosophy of essence and a philosophy of substance, but Ricoeur shows that this opposition is too simple. Aristotelian ontology is not a simple antithesis to Platonism: the radical ontology of Aristotle stands in a far more subtle relation of continuity and opposition to that of Plato and it is this relation we have to reconstruct and understand. Ricoeur’s lectures offer a brilliant analysis of the great works of Plato and Aristotle which has withstood the test of time. They also provide a unique insight into the development of Ricoeur’s thinking in the early 1950s, revealing that, even at this early stage of his work, Ricoeur was focused sharply on issues of language and the text.
Download or read book Valences of the Dialectic written by Fredric Jameson and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 910 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After half a century exploring dialectical thought, renowned cultural critic Fredric Jameson presents a comprehensive study of a misunderstood yet vital strain in Western philosophy. The dialectic, the concept of the evolution of an idea through conflicts arising from its inherent contradictions, transformed two centuries of Western philosophy. To Hegel, who dominated nineteenth-century thought, it was a metaphysical system. In the works of Marx, the dialectic became a tool for materialist historical analysis. Jameson brings a theoretical scrutiny to bear on the questions that have arisen in the history of this philosophical tradition, contextualizing the debate in terms of commodification and globalization, and with reference to thinkers such as Rousseau, Lukcs, Heidegger, Sartre, Derrida, and Althusser. Through rigorous, erudite examination, Valences of the Dialectic charts a movement toward the innovation of a "spatial" dialectic. Jameson presents a new synthesis of thought that revitalizes dialectical thinking for the twenty-first century.
Download or read book Dialectic and Difference written by Alan Norrie and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-12-04 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dialectic and Difference is the first systematic exploration of Roy Bhaskar’s dialectical philosophy and its implications for ethics and justice. This text is essential reading for all serious students of social theory, philosophy, and legal theory.
Download or read book Being and Dialectic written by Brian Jonathan Wolk and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2016-10-07 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Existential dialectical materialism is the philosophic synthesis of Marxism (dialectical materialism) and existentialism, providing the delineation of a new philosophic paradigm based on a more adequate view of humanity and the nature of human reality. Being and Dialectic sets forth the core principles of the philosophy. Among other insights, the new and intriguing law of politicoeconomic entropy is shown to naturally arise from the philosophys deductive structure. Existential dialectical materialism is at once both a philosophy of revolution and conservativisim, being the rational result of the necessary dialectic development of political-philosophical theory and thought
Download or read book The Dialectic of Historicity in Modernist Fiction a Study Based on Select Works of O V Vijayan and M Mukundan written by Swapna Gopinath and published by Partridge Publishing. This book was released on 2017-12-15 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modernism when viewed through the spectacles of Marxian aesthetics emerges as a problematic artistic movement, especially when placed within the context of social structures that define the cultural practices at any given point in time. The much discussed debate within the Marxist canon regarding the dialectic relationship between society and art in the context of modernism had stalwarts of Marxist criticism deliberating this relationship between art and society. From Europe, modernism spread to other parts of the world, including India where it captured the imagination of the writers of regional languages as well. In Kerala, with its staunch Marxian perspectives and its supporters including a faithful political network of leaders and followers, modernism invited heated debates of a similar nature. A debate was triggered off challenging the ideological frameworks of modernist aesthetics with a large part of the intelligentsia actively participating in it. Kerala Kaumudi magazine published these arguments as a series, leading to further discussions in the cultural and political discourses that shaped the sensibility of the times. This book is an attempt to explore this relationship with these debates and discussions as referral points. To substantiate the arguments, four texts that emerged as iconic texts are studied - O V Vijayan's The Legends of Khasak (1969)and The Saga of Dharmapuri (1985)and M Mukundan's On the Banks of Mayyazhi (1974) and God's Mischief (1989).
Download or read book Dance of the Dialectic written by Bertell Ollman and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bertell Ollman has been hailed as "this country's leading authority on dialectics and Marx's method" by Paul Sweezy, the editor of Monthly Review and dean of America's Marx scholars. In this book Ollman offers a thorough analysis of Marx's use of dialectical method. Marx made extremely creative use of dialectical method to analyze the origins, operation, and direction of capitalism. Unfortunately, his promised book on method was never written, so that readers wishing to understand and evaluate Marx's theories, or to revise or use them, have had to proceed without a clear grasp of the dialectic in which the theories are framed. The result has been more disagreement over "what Marx really meant" than over the writings of any other major thinker. In putting Marx's philosophy of internal relations and his use of the process of abstraction--two little-studied aspects of dialectics--at the center of this account, Ollman provides a version of Marx's method that is at once systematic, scholarly, clear and eminently useful. Ollman not only sheds important new light on what Marx really meant in his varied theoretical pronouncements, but in carefully laying out the steps in Marx's method makes it possible for a reader to put the dialectic to work in his or her own research. He also convincingly argues the case for why social scientists and humanists as well as philosophers should want to do so.
Download or read book The Monstrosity of Christ written by Slavoj Zizek and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-02-25 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A militant Marxist atheist and a “Radical Orthodox” Christian theologian square off on everything from the meaning of theology and Christ to the war machine of corporate mafia. “What matters is not so much that Žižek is endorsing a demythologized, disenchanted Christianity without transcendence, as that he is offering in the end (despite what he sometimes claims) a heterodox version of Christian belief.”—John Milbank “To put it even more bluntly, my claim is that it is Milbank who is effectively guilty of heterodoxy, ultimately of a regression to paganism: in my atheism, I am more Christian than Milbank.”—Slavoj Žižek In this corner, philosopher Slavoj Žižek, a militant atheist who represents the critical-materialist stance against religion's illusions; in the other corner, “Radical Orthodox” theologian John Milbank, an influential and provocative thinker who argues that theology is the only foundation upon which knowledge, politics, and ethics can stand. In The Monstrosity of Christ, Žižek and Milbank go head to head for three rounds, employing an impressive arsenal of moves to advance their positions and press their respective advantages. By the closing bell, they have not only proven themselves worthy adversaries, they have shown that faith and reason are not simply and intractably opposed. Žižek has long been interested in the emancipatory potential offered by Christian theology. And Milbank, seeing global capitalism as the new century's greatest ethical challenge, has pushed his own ontology in more political and materialist directions. Their debate in The Monstrosity of Christ concerns the future of religion, secularity, and political hope in light of a monsterful event—God becoming human. For the first time since Žižek's turn toward theology, we have a true debate between an atheist and a theologian about the very meaning of theology, Christ, the Church, the Holy Ghost, Universality, and the foundations of logic. The result goes far beyond the popularized atheist/theist point/counterpoint of recent books by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and others. Žižek begins, and Milbank answers, countering dialectics with “paradox.” The debate centers on the nature of and relation between paradox and parallax, between analogy and dialectics, between transcendent glory and liberation. Slavoj Žižek is a philosopher and cultural critic. He has published over thirty books, including Looking Awry, The Puppet and the Dwarf, and The Parallax View (these three published by the MIT Press). John Milbank is an influential Christian theologian and the author of Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason and other books. Creston Davis, who conceived of this encounter, studied under both Žižek and Milbank.
