Every Thing Must Go aruges that the only kind of metaphysics that can contribute to objective knowledge is one based specifically on contemporary science as it ...

The most important work of the famed German philosopher, this 1841 polemic asserts that religion and divinity are outward projections of inner human nature. Feuerbach's critique of Hegelian idealism excited immediate international attention — Marx and Engels were particularly influenced. This acclaimed translation is by the celebrated English novelist George Eliot.

As this book reveals, his vision was much more complex and interesting. He hoped that machines would release people from relentless and repetitive drudgery in order to achieve more creative pursuits.

Gehlen's core idea in Man is that humans have unique properties which distinguish them from all other species: 1. world-openness, a concept originally coined by Max Scheler, which describes the ability of humans to adapt to various environments (as contrasted with animals, which can only survive in environments which match their evolutionary specialisation). This gives us 2. the ability to shape our environment according to our intentions, and it comprises a view of language as a way of acting (Gehlen was (...) one of the first proponents of speech act theory), Human beings are also marked 3. by an excess of impulses and by 4. the ability of self-control. These properties allow us (again in contrast to all other animals) 5. to create our own (for example cultural) environments. Gehlen's philosophy has influenced many contemporary German thinkers in a range of disciplines, including Peter L. Berger, Thomas Luckmann and Niklas Luhmann in sociology, and Hans Blumenberg in philosophy. (shrink)

Originally published in French in 1997 and appearing here in English for the first time, David Lapoujade's _William James: Empiricism and Pragmatism_ is both an accessible and rigorous introduction to James's thought and a pioneering rereading of it. Examining pragmatism's fundamental questions through a Deleuzian framework, Lapoujade outlines how James's pragmatism and radical empiricism encompass the study of experience and the making of reality, and he reopens the speculative side of pragmatist thought and the role of experience in it. The (...) book includes an extensive afterword by translator Thomas Lamarre, who illustrates how James's interventions are becoming increasingly central to the contemporary debates about materialist ontology, affect, and epistemology that strive to bridge the gaps among science studies, media studies, and religious studies. (shrink)

This book is an investigation of algorithmic contingency and an elucidation of the contemporary situation that we are living in: the regular arrival of algorithmic catastrophes on a global scale. Through a historical analysis of philosophy, computation and media, this book proposes a renewed relation between nature and technics.

Available for the first time in 20 years, here are two important works from the 1920s by the best-known representative of the Vienna Circle.

At the beginning of Western philosophy, Aristotle contrasted made objects, which did not have the source of their own production within themselves, with beings formed by nature. This distinction persisted until Marx, who conceived of the possibility of an evolution of the technical object. This philosophy developed while industrialisation was in the process of overthrowing the contemporary order of social organisation, which highlighted technology's new place in philosophical enquiry. Bernard Stiegler goes back to the beginning of Western philosophy and revises (...) the Aristotelian assessment, developing a complex argument whereby the technical object can be seen as having an essential, distinctive temporality and dynamic of its own. The author engages the ideas of Rousseau, Husserl, and Heidegger, the paleo-ontologist Leroi-Gourhan, the anthropologists Vernant and Detienne, the sociologists Weber and Habermas, and the systems analysts Maturana and Varela. (shrink)

In _Without Criteria_, Steven Shaviro proposes and explores a philosophical fantasy: imagine a world in which Alfred North Whitehead takes the place of Martin Heidegger. What if Whitehead, instead of Heidegger, had set the agenda for postmodern thought? Heidegger asks, "Why is there something, rather than nothing?" Whitehead asks, "How is it that there is always something new?" In a world where everything from popular music to DNA is being sampled and recombined, argues Shaviro, Whitehead's question is the truly urgent (...) one. _Without Criteria_ is Shaviro's experiment in rethinking postmodern theory, especially the theory of aesthetics, from a point of view that hearkens back to Whitehead rather than Heidegger. In working through the ideas of Whitehead and Deleuze, Shaviro also appeals to Kant, arguing that certain aspects of Kant's thought pave the way for the philosophical "constructivism" embraced by both Whitehead and Deleuze. Kant, Whitehead, and Deleuze are not commonly grouped together, but the juxtaposition of them in _Without Criteria_ helps to shed light on a variety of issues that are of concern to contemporary art and media practices. (shrink)

Of fundamental importance to literary critics and philosophers, Difference and Repetition develops two central concepts -- pure difference and complex ...

What makes a living system a living system? What kind of biological phenomenon is the phenomenon of cognition? These two questions have been frequently considered, but, in this volume, the authors consider them as concrete biological questions. Their analysis is bold and provocative, for the authors have constructed a systematic theoretical biology which attempts to define living systems not as objects of observation and description, nor even as interacting systems, but as self-contained unities whose only reference is to themselves. The (...) consequence of their investigations and of their living systems as self-making, self-referring autonomous unities, is that they discovered that the two questions have a common answer: living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition. The result of their investigations is a completely new perspective of biological (human) phenomena. During the investigations, it was found that a complete linguistic description pertaining to the ‘organization of the living’ was lacking and, in fact, was hampering the reporting of results. Hence, the authors have coined the word ‘autopoiesis’ to replace the expression ‘circular organization’. Autopoiesis conveys, by itself, the central feature of the organization of the living, which is autonomy. (shrink)

Taken from the The Philosophy of the Common Task and Essays, this is a selection of the writings of the Russian mystic philosopher who had an influence on such contemporaries as Tolstoy and Solov'ev. His ideas, once thought far-fetched, are now found to have been prophetic. He lived at a time of intense intellectual controversy, artistic creativity and scientific development in Russia, while at the same time, there was growing world-wide militarism, civic strife and labour unrest. Fedorov was deeply distressed (...) by this state of discord and looked for a means to develop brotherly feeling and ways to divert human energies from war towards dealing more effectively with such natural disasters as floods, droughts, earthquakes and hurricanes. (shrink)

An English translation of Hegel's introduction to his lectures on the philosophy of history, based directly on the standard German edition by Johannes Hoffmeister, first published in 1955. The previous English translation, by J. Sibree, first appeared in 1857 and was based on the defective German edition of Karl Hegel, to which Hoffmeister's edition added a large amount of new material previously unknown to English readers, derived from earlier editors. In the introduction to his lectures, Hegel lays down the principles (...) and aims which underlie his philosophy of history, and provides an outline of the philosophy of history itself. The comprehensive and voluminous survey of world history which followed the introduction in the original lectures is of less interest to students of Hegel's thought than the introduction, and is therefore not included in this volume. (shrink)

The works of Gilles Deleuze -- on cinema, literature, painting, and philosophy -- have made him one of the most widely read thinkers of his generation. This compact critical volume is not only a powerful reappraisal of Deleuze's thought, but also the first major work by Alain Badiou available in English. Badiou compellingly redefines "Deleuzian, " throwing down the gauntlet in the battle over the very meaning of Deleuze's legacy. For those who view Deleuze as the apostle of desire, flu, (...) and multiplicity, Badiou's book is a deliberate provocation. Through a deep philosophical engagement with his writings, Badiou contends that Deleuze is not the Dionysian thinker of becoming he took himself to be; on the contrary, he is an ascetic philosopher of Being and Oneness. Deleuze's self-declared anti-Platonism fails -- and that, in Badiou's view, may ultimately be to his credit. "Perhaps it is not Platonism that has to be overturned, " Badiou writes, "but the anti-Platonism taken as evident throughout this entire century." This volume draws on a five-year correspondence undertaken by Badiou and Deleuze near the end of Deleuze's life, when the two put aside long-standing political and philosophical differences to exchange ideas about similar problems in their work. Badiou's incomparably attentive readings of key Deleuzian concepts radically revise reigning interpretations, offering new insights to even the veteran Deleuze reader and serving as an entree to the controversial notion of a "restoration" of Plato advocated by Badiou -- in his own right one of the most original figures in postwar French philosophy. The result is a critical tour de force that repositions Deleuze, one of the mostimportant thinkers of our time, and introduces Badiou to English-speaking readers. (shrink)

"Presents, and in part develops, a systematic philosophy as the universal science, or the theorization of the unrestricted universe of discourse, explicitly including being as such and as a whole. Argues that complete exploration of the theoretical domain requires such a science"--Provided by publisher.

A new theory is taking hold in neuroscience. It is the theory that the brain is essentially a hypothesis-testing mechanism, one that attempts to minimise the error of its predictions about the sensory input it receives from the world. It is an attractive theory because powerful theoretical arguments support it, and yet it is at heart stunningly simple. Jakob Hohwy explains and explores this theory from the perspective of cognitive science and philosophy. The key argument throughout The Predictive Mind is (...) that the mechanism explains the rich, deep, and multifaceted character of our conscious perception. It also gives a unified account of how perception is sculpted by attention, and how it depends on action. The mind is revealed as having a fragile and indirect relation to the world. Though we are deeply in tune with the world we are also strangely distanced from it. (shrink)

The notorious French philosopher, literary critic and film star First translated in 1983, Dissemination contains three of Derrida's most central and seminal works: 'Plato's Pharmacy', 'The Double Session' and 'Dissemination'. The essays provide original readings of philosophy and literature, and present a re-evaluation of the logic of meaning and the function of writing in Western discourse. This is a groundbreaking work on the relationship and interplay between language, literature and philosophy.

Where much contemporary philosophy seeks to stave off the "threat" of nihilism by safeguarding the experience of meaning--characterized as the defining feature of human existence--from the Enlightenment logic of disenchantment, this book attempts to push nihilism to its ultimate conclusion by forging a link between revisionary naturalism in Anglo-American philosophy and anti-phenomenological realism in recent French philosophy. Contrary to an emerging "post-analytic" consensus which would bridge the analytic-continental divide by uniting Heidegger and Wittgenstein against the twin perils of scientism and (...) skepticism, this book short-circuits both traditions by plugging eliminative materialism directly into speculative realism. (shrink)

Sellars argues against Nagelian instrumentalism for his version (not Feyerabend's) of scientific realism.

The writer commences:—“There was a time, when the earth was to all appearance utterly destitute both of animal and vegetable life, and when according to the opinion of our best philosophers it was simply a hot round ball with a crust gradually cooling. Now if a human being had existed while the earth was in this state and had been allowed to see it as though it were some other world with which he had no concern, and if at the (...) same time he were entirely ignorant of all physical science, would he not have pronounced it impossible that creatures possessed of anything like consciousness should be evolved from the seeming cinder which he was beholding? Would he not have denied that it contained any potentiality of consciousness? Yet in the course of time consciousness came. Is it not possible then that there may be even yet new channels dug out for consciousness, though we can detect no signs of them at present? (shrink)