Michael N. Foster’s Kant and Skepticism just came out in paperback – could be of interested to anyone concerned with Kant’s response to Hume and other forms of skepticism (it doesn’t, as far as I remember, deal with Maimon, which is rather strange).
This might be interesting to those following the discussions about “mind imposing space and time” – it’s certainly going into my list of things to read:
Aristotle claims that time is not a kind of change, but that it is something dependent on change; he defines it as a kind of “number of change.” Ursula Coope argues that what this means is that time is a kind of order (not, as is commonly supposed, a kind of measure). It is universal order within which all changes are related to each other. This interpretation enables Coope to explain two puzzling claims that Aristotle makes: that the now is like a moving thing, and that time depends for its existence on the mind. Brilliantly lucid in its explanation of this challenging section of the Physics, Time for Aristotle shows his discussion to be of enduring philosophical interest.
Ursula Coope is a Tutorial Fellow in Ancient Philosophy at Corpus Christi College, Oxford
Princeton University Press has a sale – there’s some good stuff available in the Philosophy section, including some volumes of their Kierkegaard collection: Continue reading
Derrida a lu, avec passion et admiration, la tradition philosophique. Mais sa lecture est transformation et réinvention — déconstruction. C’est ce que montrent, dans leur diversité, les contributions rassemblées dans ce volume dirigé par M. Crépon et F. Worms.
Recensé : Derrida, la tradition de la philosophie, sous la direction de Marc Crépon et de Frédéric Worms, Galilée, 2008, 217 p., 30 €.
L’apposition du nom de « Derrida » à « la tradition de la philosophie » peut signifier qu’à travers un style de lecture auquel renvoie le nom de « déconstruction », Jacques Derrida aura annoncé une autre manière de penser, une autre écriture ; mais aussi, que cette annonce est lisible à travers les philosophes qu’il aura lus ou « déconstruits » en tant que figures de la « métaphysique de la présence ». Dans leur diversité, les contributions rassemblées dans ce volume (et issues d’un colloque organisé à l’ENS Paris en octobre 2005) évitent l’alternative trop simple entre rupture et continuité, pour mettre l’accent sur la manière dont Derrida s’est installé dans la structure des oppositions hiérarchisées de la métaphysique (sensible/intelligible, matériel/spirituel, vivant/non vivant, parole/écriture, etc..) en vue de les subvertir en laissant apparaître le travail du sens, une production implicite ou inconsciente d’effets de sens qui déstabilise de l’intérieur tous les systèmes conceptuels. Suivant le fil directeur de ce rapport, sont abordés les principaux thèmes de la pensée derridienne : la trace, la différance, le messianisme, la spectralité, la responsabilité, le désert. Deux repères permettent d’éclairer le rapport de Derrida à la tradition : la nécessité où il se trouve de présupposer l’identité et l’unité archéo-téléologique de la tradition philosophique pour la déployer en un récit (D. Kambouchner) ; la possibilité d’une invention d’idiomes, reposant sur le lien entre déconstruction et traduction (M. Crépon). Si Derrida identifie la tradition, il ne la laisse pas intacte, il la transforme, la réinvente, et ce, à chaque lecture. Peut-être y a-t-il plus d’une tradition philosophique ? Peut-être, en chaque acte de réinvention, Derrida est-il, chaque fois, « la » tradition » ? C’est une des pistes de réflexion suggérée par un colloque dont les analyses, dans leur richesse et leur minutie, ne se laissent pas résumer. On se contentera d’esquisser une topographie des différentes stratégies de lecture.
Read the rest of the review here.
For the information about the conference, go here.
Sorry about all these “new book” posts but there’s just so many good ones that came to my attention and I feel affected enough to share – this new collection of essays on Kant and the early moderns looks like a good read:
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Kant and the Early Moderns
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New book on Hegel – another introduction, you say? Mark Alznauer thinks it’s worth the read:
The Philosophy of HegelAllen Speight, The Philosophy of Hegel, Acumen, 2008, 166pp., $22.95 (pbk), ISBN 9781844650699.
Reviewed by Mark Alznauer, Sweet Briar College
With so much of quality already to choose from, one might suspect that another introduction to Hegel would be superfluous. But Speight’s book sets itself apart in an ingenious way by proceeding with an unusually self-conscious attention to its own place within the existing literature on Hegel. Rather than offering a standard overview of the basics of Hegelian thought, or giving a controversial interpretation of Hegel that would need more defense than the space a short book would allow, Speight focuses on those passages and themes which have loomed large in the reception history of Hegelian philosophy, deftly identifying rival interpretations and occasionally pointing to possible directions for future scholarship. Instead of providing a didactic summary, he has chosen to introduce the reader to the vigorous, ongoing conversation about Hegel that has continued, almost without interruption, since his death in 1831.
Read the whole review here.
A new book on Giordano Bruno coming out in a couple of days, here’s a long and interesting review from New Yorker:
At seventeen, [Bruno] entered the Dominican monastery of San Domenico Maggiore, in Naples, a learned institution staffed with sons of the nobility. That didn’t mean that they behaved any better than other priests—or noblemen—of the period. During Bruno’s time, friars of San Domenico were involved in cases of assault, theft, and forgery, not to mention the chronic problem of fornication. But this rich monastery was useful to Bruno. There, Rowland writes, he learned to move among the ruling class. He also acquired intellectual rigor. San Domenico was a conservative institution. It taught Scholastic philosophy—the world of Aristotle, revived and Catholicized by St. Thomas Aquinas and other scholars of the Middle Ages—as if no other philosophies existed. They did exist. From the early Renaissance onward, that world picture—limited, tidy, and comforting—had been challenged by a rebirth of the ideas of Plato, who had a very different slant on things: visionary, poetic. After Bruno’s Scholastic training at San Domenico, Rowland says, he encountered Neoplatonism, and it transformed his thinking.
Here’s a couple of books about Derrida coming out from Fordham University Press:
Derrida Vis-à-vis Lacan
Interweaving Deconstruction and Psychoanalysis
Andrea Hurst
$35.00
ISBN: 9780823228751
Book (Paperback)
Fordham University Press
351 pages
OUT: May 15th, 2008
“Hurst brokers the relationship between Derrida and Lacan with great delicacy. Through patient, sympathetic, and often eye-opening readings of both, she maintains the separateness of these titans of French thought even as she draws them convincingly close together.”
—Joan Copjec, The University at Buffalo, SUNY
Derrida and Lacan have long been viewed as proponents of two opposing schools of thought. This book argues, however, that the logical structure underpinning Lacanian psychoanalytic theory is a complex, paradoxical relationality that corresponds to Derrida’s “plural logic of the aporia.”
Andrea Hurst begins by linking this logic to a strand of thinking (in which Freud plays a part) that unsettles philosophy’s transcendental tradition. She then shows that Derrida is just as serious and careful a reader of Freud’s texts as Lacan. Interweaving the two thinkers, she argues that the Lacanian Real is another name for Derrida’s différance and shows how Derrida’s writings on Heidegger and Nietzsche embody an attitude toward sexual difference and feminine sexuality that matches Lacanian insights.
Attempting to heal a long-standing divide between Derrideans and Lacanians, she brings out a deep theoretical accord between thinkers who both recognize the power of psychoanalysis to address contemporary political and ethical issues.
ANDREA HURST is a Research Associate and Lecturer in Philosophy at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.
To redeem myself for the earlier blunder, here’s another “new book” post – this one looks interesting in terms of possibly announcing a type of “commentary age” when it comes to Derrida’s work. I mean we already have some books dedicated to “the philosophy of Derrida” and various attempts to summarize or organize his thinking in terms of themes or pervasive and recurrent questions, but I don’t think I’ve seen too many books dedicated to commenting on specific works.
Indiana University Press is about to publish Arthur Bradley‘s book on Of Grammatology and announces it as “a concise introduction to Derrida’s Of Grammatology” – interesting… The book appears to be an introductory text and in 200 pages it will quickly introduce an amateur reader to the ideas of Of Grammatology. One blurb for the book (and the series) states:
The books in this series are specifically written for students reading philosophy for the first time. Focussing on passages most frequently taught at university level each book is a step-by-step guide to help you read the key texts from the history of philosophy with confidence and perception. Each book offers: a summary of the text; an overview of its key ideas; historical context; and a guide to further reading and study.Everything you need to know about “Derrida’s Of Grammatology” is in one volume. Jacques Derrida was one of the most famous and influential philosophers of the later twentieth century. First published in 1967, “Of Grammatology” is his best known text, introducing many fundamental concepts relating to linguistics and writing which he would develop in his later work. This book provides a commentary on “Of Grammatology” which can be read alongside – rather instead of – the text itself by students encountering Derrida for the first time.
Is that really so? Is Of Grammatology Derrida’s “best known text”? Or is it more like “best known of text” or “frequently mentioned as read text” or “frequently used to make an appropriate impression text”… Does “best known text” mean “the most influential”?
Perverse Egalitarianism 