Nietzsche's perspectivism can be seen as a two-leveled cure for dogmatism. On the one hand, perspectivism amounts to the dismissal of the metaphysical world and the acknowledgement of the esential incompleteness of all knowledge insofar as knowledge is only and always perspectival. On the other hand, perspectivism is an affirmation of the central role the affects play in all interpretations of the world; consequently, it presents itself as a summary rejection of the notion of disinterested contemplation or knowledge. Nietzsche's theory (...) of interpretation results in a transcendental-experimental philosophy able to liberate humankind from the stagnating, destructive effects of dogmatism. A perspectival account of knowledge implies not only an aesthetic aspect, but also a therapeutic one. (shrink)

The Czech philosopher Jan Patocka has been called “a teacher of the stature of a Merleau-Ponty” by none less than Paul Ricoeur. In Body, Community, Language, World, Patocka substantiates Ricoeur’s assessment both by presenting an insightful overview of the positions of his philosophical predecessors and by forging his own original phenomenological thought.

Is there a crisis of sense in the world? Does it even make any sense to talk of either “sense” or a “world” that does or does not have any sense? According to Jean-Luc Nancy in The Sense of the World, it is no longer possible to speak of a “crisis of sense.” Such a way of formulating the problem of the sense of the world belongs to the past. “Today, we are beyond this: all sense has been abandoned”. A (...) crisis of sense implies a loss of sense in the world that can be regained or replaced, whereas an abandonment of sense rejects this entire setup. In this brilliant and exciting work, Nancy endeavors to elaborate this abandonment, which is not only an abandonment of sense, but also and at the same time an exposure to sense. In over thirty short but extremely insightful sections, Nancy articulates the double meaning of this abandonment through reflections on a number of thinkers and topics. He not only gathers up and focuses the strands of the respective problematics he is engaging, but he also inaugurates new, fruitful strands along which to pursue the questions and problems of sense facing us in our concrete existence. (shrink)