En el presente artículo se abordarán los aportes de Nietzsche, Freud y Marx, como fundadores de discurso, desde la perspectiva foucaultiana. Para ello, se trabajará con la ponencia "Nietzsche, Freud y Marx" realizada por Foucault en 1964. Foucault condensa en esta ponencia una obra que resulta muy rica, debido a que sintetiza de manera clara los aportes realizados por los "maestros de la sospecha". La riqueza de la obra radica en que expone un giro en las técnicas de la interpretación (...) que permite comprender a la hermenéutica, lejos del descifrado oculto de signos, como una estrategia de producción de nuevos símbolos, en la creación de nuevos imaginarios que construyen diversos y variados sentidos (Grüner, 1995: 11). De esta manera, en el presente escrito se planteará un acercamiento al empleo de las técnicas interpretativas que han llevado a cabo Nietzsche, Freud y Marx, como una forma de acceder a la hermenéutica de la sospecha propuesta por este trío. Para el desarrollo de esta propuesta partiremos de la caracterización general de los tres fundadores de discurso, para puntualizar en la impronta propia de la hermenéutica de cada uno. (shrink)

Dole provides a thought-provoking critique for critical religious studies scholars who draw on the work of the 'masters of suspicion', as well as for anyone working in critical theory more broadly. This book revisits Paul Ricoeur's well-known classification of Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud as the 'masters of suspicion'. Whereas Ricoeur saw suspicion as a mode of interpretation, Andrew Dole argues that the method common to his 'masters' is better understood as a mode of explanation. In place of (...) Ricoeur's 'hermeneutics of suspicion' Dole presents the method of 'suspicious explanation', which claims the existence of 'hidden' phenomena that are bad in some recognizable way, and which each of the 'masters' practiced in his own way. Reconstructing Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud in this way brings their work into conversation with conspiracy theories, which are themselves a type of suspicious explanation. Dole argues that conspiracy theories and other types of suspicious explanation are cognitively ensnaring, to borrow a term from Pascal Boyer, such that 'if they are true they are importantly true, and their truth or falsity can be very difficult to ascertain'. (shrink)

El siguiente trabajo tiene como objetivo desarrollar la forma a través de la cual Marx, Freud y Nietzsche han pensado las causas del pathos humano —entendido éste en su doble valencia de sufrimiento y pasión— a partir de un abordaje materialista de las nociones de sensibilidad y afectividad. En consecuencia, se hará énfasis en el concepto de «sensibilidad práctica», adoptado por el joven Marx de los Manuscritos económicos filosóficos de 1844, y en el de «voluntad de poder», presente en el (...) esbozo de «la teoría de los afectos» en losFragmentos póstumos del último Nietzsche. Un encuentro que, pese a las distancias biográficas, teóricas e históricas, es posible trazar a partir del concepto de sensibilidad y que incluye a Freud como intermediario, ya que desde su perspectiva psicoanalítica, él también se ocupó de comprender la naturaleza indomable de nuestra constitución psíquica. (shrink)

Resumo Neste trabalho procura-se, de forma introdutória, uma via de acesso para a compreensão da condição humana a partir da leitura crítica ao iluminismo ocidental realizada por Marx, Nietzsche e Freud. Para tanto, explora-se inicialmente o problema da emergência da subjetividade iluminista no contexto da cultura grega como fenômeno agonístico e indica-se o nascimento da tradição iluminista a partir das obras de Hesíodo e Ésquilo. Em seguida, discute-se a posição da modernidade ilustrada desde a perspectiva kantiana. Desde então, elabora-se a (...) crítica à concepção iluminista a partir das ideias nucleares de Marx, Nietzsche e Freud. Nesta crítica destaca-se o papel central das relações de produção econômicas, da vontade de poder e dos instintos na determinação e na compreensão da subjetividade humana. O legado comum dessas três filosofias magnas aponta para o desmantelamento da subjetividade iluminista e, assim, para uma compreensão da condição humana, situada no horizonte de uma nova racionalidade, na qual a razão deixa de ocupar o lugar principal. Palavras-chave : condição humana, Iluminismo, inconsciente. instintos, razão, vontade de poderThis paper searches for, in an introductory way, a path toward understanding the human condition from critical reading of the Western Enlightenment presented by Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. For this purpose, the paper initially explores the problem of emergence of Enlightenment subjectivity in the context of Greek culture as an agonistic phenomenon and indicates the birth of the Enlightenment tradition from the works of Hesiod and Aeschylus. Then the position of modernity illustrated from the Kantian perspective is discussed. After that, the paper elaborates a critique of the Enlightenment conception departing from the core ideas of Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. This critique highlights the central role of economic relations of production, the will to power and instincts in determining and understanding of human subjectivity. The common heritage of these three magna philosophies points to the dismantlement of Enlightenment subjectivity and thus to an understanding of the human condition, situated on the horizon of a new rationality, in which reason ceases to occupy main place. Keywords : Enlightenment, human condition, instinct, reason, unconscious. will to power. (shrink)

El artículo investiga las distancias o cercanías entre literatura, filosofía y psicoanálisis estudiando la metáfora de la sublimación. En primer lugar, traza los vínculos de Nietzsche y Freud con la Retórica de Aristóteles, es decir, los muestra deudores de aquella tradición literaria y retórica que, según Aristóteles, se sirve de un tipo de discurso afín a las cuestiones humanas, signadas por la posibilidad y la deliberación, antes que por la necesidad y la demostración. En segundo lugar, especifica cómo para Nietzsche (...) y para Freud la literatura no puede ser entendida ya bajo el paradigma que el propio Aristóteles comparte, esto es, la idea de que la literatura enseña o place. Tanto en Nietzsche como en Freud la literatura es una forma de sublimación y no un discurso que puede ser visto a la luz de los modelos tradicionales de la enseñanza moral o de la restringida esfera del deleite estético. Ahora bien, al servirse ambos de esa metáfora para dar cuenta del proceso que la literatura pone en obra, radicalizan, de distinta manera, una experiencia moderna: la conciencia de la paulatina elaboración de las construcciones culturales. Y entienden que dichas construcciones suponen un complejo proceso de transformación de determinados elementos, más específicos y delineados en Freud, más abiertos y dúctiles en Nietzsche. En especial se destaca la concordancia con Aristóteles para tomar la literatura como un discurso afín a las acciones humanas, pero se señala el significativo giro que la experiencia moderna comporta, pues la metáfora elegida subraya comprender el ámbito de lo humano bajo el signo de la transformación. (shrink)

Looking closely at the work of such major figures as Lacan, Derrida, and Nietzsche, Goux extends the implications of Marxism and Freudianism to an interdisciplinary semiotics of value and proposes a radical concept of exchange.

Challenging the dominant scholarly consensus that Nietzsche is simply an enemy of religion, Tyler Roberts examines the place of religion in Nietzsche's thought and Nietzsche's thought as a site of religion. Roberts argues that Nietzsche's conceptualization and cultivation of an affirmative self require that we interrogate the ambiguities that mark his criticisms of asceticism and mysticism. What emerges is a vision of Nietzsche's philosophy as the enactment of a spiritual quest informed by transfigured versions of religious tropes and practices. Nietzsche (...) criticizes the ascetic hatred of the body and this-worldly life, yet engages in rigorous practices of self-denial--he sees philosophy as such a practice--and affirms the need of imposing suffering on oneself in order to enhance the spirit. He dismisses the "intoxication" of mysticism, yet links mysticism, power, and creativity, and describes his own self-transcending experiences. The tensions in his relation to religion are closely related to that between negation and affirmation in his thinking in general. In Roberts's view, Nietzsche's transfigurations of religion offer resources for a postmodern religious imagination. Though as a "master of suspicion," Nietzsche, with Freud and Marx, is an integral part of modern antireligion, he has the power to take us beyond the flat, modern distinction between the secular and the religious--a distinction that, at the end of modernity, begs to be reexamined. (shrink)

Probably no single thinker since Jesus has influenced the thoughts and lives of more people living in the Western world today than Sigmund Freud. Even agnostics like William Barrett, in Irrational Man, and atheists like Nietzsche, agree that the single most radical change in the last thousand years of Western civilization has been the decline of religion. And the four most influential critics of religion have certainly been Nietzsche, Marx, Darwin, and Freud. Of the four, Freud is by far the (...) most popular No name is more associated with, and in fact responsible for, "the sexual revolution" than Freud. And no revolution in history, at least none since the one around a cross and an empty tomb, and perhaps even none since the one around a snake and an apple, has been more life-changing, and has more potential to continue to be more radically life-changing in the future, than the sexual revolution. To see this, just read Huxley's Brave New World. (And remember that Huxley was far from being a theist.) Freud wore three hats. Freud was (1) a practicing psychoanalyst (indeed, the inventor of psychoanalysis), (2) a professional theoretical psychologist and sociologist, and (3) an amateur philosopher. This book explores only his philosophy, for that is the point of his intersection with Socrates. If Socrates is right in his deepest convictions about the power of reason and the importance of philosophy, Freud's philosophy is the ultimate source, foundation, explanation, and justification for his psychology. (shrink)

La noción de materialismo de Georges Bataille se erige como una crítica a las con cepciones metafísicas o idealistas del materialismo A partir de una reconstrucción de lo que Bataille expone en distintos lugares de sus escritos de juventud, se propone una interpretación del “bajo materialismo” de Bataille desde su particular lectura de Nietzsche y Marx, que, al intentar hacer compatibles elementos de una y otra fi losofía, desemboca en una discusión crítica con ambos autores. Esta discusión que, a su (...) vez, puede ser leída como antecedente de una deconstrucción del materialismo como la que lleva a cabo Jacques Derrida. (shrink)

Nietzsche's importance for the development of twentieth‐century hermeneutics can be traced through Martin Heidegger, Hans‐Georg Gadamer, and Paul Ricoeur's nomination of Nietzsche, alongside Marx and Freud, as a “master of suspicion”, precisely posed in the context of Nietzsche's unmasking of the text and its truths. For Nietzsche himself, hermeneutics frames his formation as a classical philologist, an archetypically hermeneutic discipline Nietzsche shared with Gadamer. Declaring that “nature's conformity to law” is no fact, Nietzsche challenges nothing less than the very dogmatic (...) possibility of scientific progress. Nietzsche's importance for the explicitly philosophical traditions of hermeneutics is well attested at the beginning of the twentieth century, and it turns out to include explicitly phenomenological elements. Studies of Nietzsche and metaphor and rhetoric, and Nietzsche's discussion of the same art, have the Diltheyan point of connection: Nietzsche's philosophical hermeneutics of history precisely conceived, as the philologist Nietzsche always conceived history, as a science. (shrink)

La noción de materialismo de Georges Bataille se erige como una crítica a las concepciones metafísicas o idealistas del materialismo A partir de una reconstrucción de lo que Bataille expone en distintos lugares de sus escritos de juventud, se propone una interpretación del "bajo materialismo" de Bataille desde su particular lectura de Nietzsche y Marx, que, al intentar hacer compatibles elementos de una y otra filosofía, desemboca en una discusión crítica con ambos autores. Esta discusión que, a su vez, puede (...) ser leída como antecedente de una deconstrucción del materialismo como la que lleva a cabo Jacques Derrida. Georges Bataille's notion of materialism can be seen as a critique of metaphysical or idealist conceptions of materialism. On the basis of the reconstruction of Bataille's statements in his different early writings, the paper provides an interpretation of Bataille's "base materialism" based on his peculiar reading of Nietzsche and Marx. The attempt to make compatible elements from both philosophies leads to a critical discussion with the authors, which, in turn, can be read as a forerunner of the deconstruction of materialism carried out by Jacques Derrida. (shrink)

"What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” Asked by the early Christian Tertullian, the question was vigorously debated in the nineteenth century. While classics dominated the intellectual life of Europe, Christianity still prevailed and conflicts raged between the religious and the secular. Taking on the question of how the glories of the classical world could be reconciled with the Bible, _Socrates and the Jews _explains how Judaism played a vital role in defining modern philhellenism. Exploring the tension between Hebraism and (...) Hellenism, Miriam Leonard gracefully probes the philosophical tradition behind the development of classical philology and considers how the conflict became a preoccupation for the leading thinkers of modernity, including Matthew Arnold, Moses Mendelssohn, Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. For each, she shows how the contrast between classical and biblical traditions is central to writings about rationalism, political subjectivity, and progress. Illustrating how the encounter between Athens and Jerusalem became a lightning rod for intellectual concerns, this book is a sophisticated addition to the history of ideas. (shrink)

First, a few words of introduction, setting the scene. IÕm not a Nietzsche scholar. IÕm not even an historian of philosophy of any stripe. I am one of the fortunate few who are paid to Ôdo philosophyÕ, but the areas I tend to do most of my work in are logic, philosophy of language and some philosophy of religion. So why am I presenting a paper on Nietzsche? Well, there are at least two reasons. Firstly, I teach philosophy of religion, (...) and in the course I have a section about distinctively modern critics of religious belief. Nietzsche, together with Freud, Feuerbach and Marx present important criticisms which form a part of the fabric of contemporary philosophy of religion, and any student of the area needs to know something about it. So, what better way for me to learn about it than to force myself to write a paper on it? However, my reasons are not just selfish Ñ I do believe that the way that Christians (and other religious believers) respond to these contemporary critics of religion is very important. So, my aim in this paper is not only to give a short introduction to what Nietzsche has to say about Christian faith, but also to examine what an appropriate response for believers might be. This then has consequences for what we take the task of ÔChristian PhilosophyÕ to be. (shrink)

Na chamada primeira geração da Teoria Crítica, a de Adorno e Horkheimer, Nietzsche, ao lado de Marx e Freud foi um interlocutor privilegiado. A crítica de Habermas, nome central da segunda geração, separou Nietzsche da Teoria Crítica, ou melhor, atribuiu a Nietzsche parte dos problemas da crítica que a primeira geração dirigiu à razão. Já a terceira geração, da qual Axel Honneth é o nome mais conhecido, volta a problematizar a relação entre Teoria Crítica e Nietzsche, por meio do pensamento (...) de Michel Foucault. Esse artigo visa mostrar alguns aspectos dessa retomada, na qual os nomes de Nietzsche – como um dos precursores – e Foucault – como um continuador – são incluídos no horizonte da Teoria Crítica. (shrink)

The suitability of a new philosophical paradigm for geography needs to be assessed in the context of the questions it was designed to address and on the basis of clearly articulated criteria. Postmodernism, the latest contender for the attention of geographers, is here assessed in relation to Collingwoodian idealism. As an intellectual movement postmodernism arose in the unique circumstances of academic life in post Second World War France. In this rigidly structured academic environment a new generation of French scholars, well (...) schooled in the philosophies of Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger and the ideas of Marx and Freud, discovered the radical nineteenth century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and drew upon his ethical and philosophical writings to address contemporary issues of power, knowledge, truth and modernity. All the central anti-humanist ideas of what was to become postmodernism are to be found in Nietzsche: a distrust of science and knowledge truth claims, the notion of multiple interpretations and the subordination of knowledge to power. This situated knowledge, set in the traditions of Continental thought, is not easily incorporated into the empiricist philosophies that have hitherto defined the mainstream of Anglo-American science and humanist scholarship including geography. Geographers need to retain a commitment to the foundational value of science, recognize human agency in the form of the conscious, thinking individual, and continue to affirm the empirical nature of human geographical research. (shrink)

While Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex is concerned with psycho-sexual development, it concomitantly presents a novel historical-political imagination. This article compares the post-Oedipal self with the selves envisioned by Nietzsche and Marx, suggesting that while these 19th-century theorists constructed selves that are able to transcend the normalizing and subjugating circumstances of modernity, Freud’s theory defines a healthy self as irredeemably embedded in the prevailing culture and life-orders. In making his case, Freud spurns the quests of Nietzsche and Marx for (...) wholeness of the individual and for self-authorship, and presents the self as structurally agonistic, riven and thoroughly molded by society. (shrink)

En este ensayo se reflexiona sobre el sentido de la interpretación nietzscheana de Grecia, que aunque problemática y filosófica, se inserta en la tradición clasicista de Occidente. Ubicando el clima intelectual en el que surgió El nacimiento de la tragedia, se postula que el pensador alemán no puede..

El desarrollo del discernimiento crítico moderno es inseparable de la introducción de signos de puntuación que permitieron distinguir niveles de discurso, distanciarse de lo enunciado y marcar las actitudes subjetivas implicadas en la enunciación. Este estudio pretende establecer los rendimientos retóricos y diferencias estilísticas de la puntuación en la obra de Nietzsche y compararlos con dos referentes del discurso crítico de la modernidad: Kant y Marx. Se realizó un análisis de las frecuencias de los signos de puntuación modales, (...) y de aquellos que secuencian y distinguen niveles de discurso en la obra de Nietzsche y en algunos escritos de Kant y Marx. Los resultados suscitan una discusión sobre el papel privilegiado de los paréntesis en Kant, de las comillas en Marx y de los guiones en Nietzsche. (shrink)

An analysis of theological and philosophical understandings of debt and its role in contemporary capitalism. Max Weber’s account of the rise of capitalism focused on his concept of a Protestant ethic, valuing diligence in earning and saving money but restraint in spending it. However, such individual restraint is foreign to contemporary understandings of finance, which treat ever-increasing consumption and debt as natural, almost essential, for maintaining the economic cycle of buying and selling. In The Debt of the Living, Elettra Stimilli (...) returns to this idea of restraint as ascesis, by analyzing theological and philosophical understandings of debt drawn from a range of figures, including Saint Paul, Schmitt and Agamben, Benjamin and Marx, Nietzsche and Freud, and Foucault. Central to this analysis is the logic of “profit for profit’s sake”—an aspect of Weber’s work that Stimilli believes has been given insufficient attention. Following Foucault, she identifies this as the original mechanism of a capitalist dispositif that feeds not on a goal-directed rationality, but on the self-determining character of human agency. Ascesis is fundamental not because it is characterized by renunciation, but because the self-discipline it imposes converts the properly human quality of action without a predetermined goal into a lack, a fault, or a state of guilt: a debt that cannot be settled. Stimilli argues that this lack, which is impossible to fill, should be seen as the basis of the economy of hedonism and consumption that has governed global economies in recent years and as the premise of the current economy of debt. Elettra Stimilli is research fellow of theoretical philosophy at Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy. Arianna Bove is the translator of many books, including Factory of Strategy: Thirty-Three Lessons on Lenin, by Antonio Negri. (shrink)

This is a critical introduction to modern French philosophy, commissioned from one of the liveliest contemporary practitioners and intended for an English-speaking readership. The dominant 'Anglo-Saxon' reaction to philosophical development in France has for some decades been one of suspicion, occasionally tempered by curiosity but more often hardening into dismissive rejection. But there are signs now of a more sympathetic interest and an increasing readiness to admit and explore shared concerns, even if these are still expressed in a very different (...) idiom and intellectual context. Vincent Descombes offers here a personal guide to the main movements and figures of the last forty-five years. He traces over this period the evolution of thought from a generation preoccupied with the 'three H's' - Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger, to a generation influenced since about 1960 by the 'three masters of suspicion' - Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. In this framework he deals in turn with the thought of Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, the early structuralists, Foucault, Althusser, Serres, Derrida, and finally Deleuze and Lyotard. The 'internal' intellectual history of the period is related to its institutional setting and the wider cultural and political context which has given French philosophy so much of its distinctive character. (shrink)

Philosophers such as Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud have developed “global hermeneutical perspectives” on human nature. This paper argues that Christian faith also provides such a perspective, which is termed the “no-neutrality thesis.” Humans were created to serve God, but they have rebelled against their rightful sovereign, and this rebellion may show itself in morality. If moral obligations are God’s requirements, then the human rebellion might provide motivation for rejecting objective moral obligations. Thus the noneutrality thesis may help us understand some (...) forms of antirealism. It may even shed light on some forms of nontheistic realism. (shrink)

"An illuminating and powerful reading of three of the most important contemporary professedly antireligious thinkers... stinging critiques of Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche."-C. Stephen Evans, Society of Christian Philosophers.

This brilliant exposition of the critique of identity is a classic in contemporary philosophy and one of Deleuze's most important works. Of fundamental importance to literary critics and philosophers,Difference and Repetition develops two central concepts—pure difference and complex repetition&mdasha;and shows how the two concepts are related. While difference implies divergence and decentering, repetition is associated with displacement and disguising. Central in initiating the shift in French thought away from Hegel and Marx toward Nietzsche and Freud, _Difference and Repetition_ moves deftly (...) to establish a fundamental critique of Western metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper attempts to reassess the standard sociological canon and sketch the outlines of a new approach by bringing together a series of thinkers whose works so far have remained disconnected. Introducing a distinction between classics and background figures who were crucial sources of inspiration, it shifts emphasis to the late, reflexive works of Durkheim and Weber. These are sources for two types of reflexive sociology: historical and anthropological. The main background figures of reflexive historical sociology are Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche (...) and Freud, while its protagonists include Foucault, Elias, Voegelin, Borkenau, Mumford, Ariès and Koselleck. A short introduction will be given to the four main fields of interest within the approach: the reconstructive histories of subjectivity, of forms of thought, of forms of knowledge, and of closed space and regulated time. (shrink)

La religion, cette névrose obsessionnelle universelle de l’humanité Freud, L’avenir d’une illusion (1927) Introduction « Sartre est … le théologien le plus important dont dispose la tradition philosophique de l’Occident ». C’est le philosophe et théologien Christos Yannaras qui s’exprime. Provocation? Plutôt : vertu de l’athéisme de l’auteur de L’être et le néant qui, bel héritier de Nietzsche et de Heidegger, produit un diagnostic au scalpel de la posture religieuse molle du piétisme du X...

Where does philosophy, the oldest academic subject, stand at the beginning of the new millennium? This remarkable volume brings together leading figures from most major branches of the discipline to offer answers. What remains of the "linguistic turn" in twentieth-century philosophy? How should moral philosophy respond to and incorporate developments in empirical psychology? Where might Continental and Anglophone feminist theory profitably interact? How has our understanding of ancient philosophy been affected by the emergence of analytic philosophy? Where does the mind-body (...) problem stand today? What role must value judgments play in science? Do Marx, Nietzsche, or Freud matter in the 21st century? These and many other questions at the cutting edge of the discipline are addressed by distinguished philosophers from Australia, Britain, Canada, and the United States. They aim not only to stimulate philosophical debate, but to introduce those in cognate disciplines--biology, classics, economics, history, law, linguistics, literary studies, mathematics, philosophy, physics, political science, psychology, among others--to what is happening in contemporary philosophy. In a substantial introduction, the editor gives an overview of the state of philosophy today and helps orient non-philosophers. List of Contributors Julia Annas: Ancient Philosophy for the Twenty-First Century Don Garrett: Philosophy and History in the History of Modern Philosophy Brian Leiter: The Hermeneutics of Suspicion: Recovering Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud Timothy Williamson: Past the Linguistic Turn? Jaegwon Kim: The Mind-Body Problem at Century's Turn David J. Chalmers: The Representational Character of Experience Alvin I. Goldman: The Need for Social Epistemology Philip Kitcher: The Ends of the Sciences Nancy Cartwright: From Causation to Explanation and Back Thomas Hurka: Normative Ethics: Back to the Future Peter Railton: Toward an Ethics that Inhabits the World Rae Langton: Projection and Objectification Philip Pettit: Existentialism, Quietism, and the Role of Philosophy. (shrink)

The problem of change recurs across Frantz Fanon's writings. As a philosopher, psychiatrist, and revolutionary, Fanon was deeply committed to theorizing and instigating change in all of its facets. Change is the thread that ties together his critical dialogue with Hegel, Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche and his intellectual exchange with Césaire, Kojève, and Sartre. It informs his analysis of racism and colonialism, négritude and the veil, language and culture, disalienation and decolonization, and it underpins his reflections on Martinique, Algeria, the (...) Caribbean, Africa, the Third World, and the world at large. Gavin Arnall traces an internal division throughout Fanon's work between two distinct modes of thinking about change. He contends that there are two Fanons: a dominant Fanon who conceives of change as a dialectical process of becoming and a subterranean Fanon who experiments with an even more explosive underground theory of transformation. Arnall offers close readings of Fanon's entire oeuvre, from canonical works like Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth to his psychiatric papers and recently published materials, including his play, Parallel Hands. Speaking both to scholars and to the continued vitality of Fanon's ideas among today's social movements, this book offers a rigorous and profoundly original engagement with Fanon that affirms his importance in the effort to bring about radical change. (shrink)

Philosophers, anthropologists and biologists have long puzzled over the question of human nature. It is also a question that Kant thought about deeply and returned to in many of his writings. In this lucid and wide-ranging introduction to Kant’s philosophy of human nature - which is essential for understanding his thought as a whole - Patrick R. Frierson assesses Kant’s theories and examines his critics. He begins by explaining how Kant articulates three ways of addressing the question ‘what is the (...) human being?’: the transcendental, the empirical, and the pragmatic. He then considers some of the great theorists of human nature who wrestle with Kant’s views, such as Hegel, Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, and Freud; contemporary thinkers such as E.O.Wilson and Daniel Dennett, who have sought biological explanations of human nature; Thomas Kuhn, Michel Foucault, and Clifford Geertz, who emphasize the diversity of human beings in different times and places; and existentialist philosophers such as Sartre and Heidegger. He argues that whilst these approaches challenge and enrich Kant’s views in significant ways, all suffer from serious weaknesses that Kant’s anthropology can address. Taking a core insight of Kant’s - that human beings are fundamentally free but finite - he argues that it is the existentialists, particularly Sartre, who are the most direct heirs of his transcendental anthropology. The final part of the book is an extremely helpful overview of the work of contemporary philosophers, particularly Christine Korsgaard and Jürgen Habermas. Patrick R. Frierson explains how these philosophers engage with questions of naturalism, historicism, and existentialism while developing Kantian conceptions of the human being. Including chapter summaries and annotated further reading, What is the Human Being? is an outstanding introduction to some fundamental aspects of Kant’s thought and a judicious assessment of leading theories of human nature. It is essential reading for all students of Kant and the philosophy of human nature, as well as those in related disciplines such as anthropology, politics and sociology. (shrink)

The atheism of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud can be called the atheism of suspicion in contrast to evidential atheism. For while the latter focuses on the truth of religious beliefs, the former inquires into their function. It asks, in other words, what motives lead to belief and what practices are compatible with and authorised by religious beliefs. The primary response of Christian philosophers should not be to refute these analyses, since they are all too often true and, moreover, very much (...) of the same sort as found in the religion critique of Jesus and the prophets. Rather, our primary response should be to show the Christian community, including ourselves, how even the truth can become an instrument of self-interest. In this way the atheism of suspicion can provide helpful conceptual tools for personal and corporate self-examination. (shrink)

The era of humanism has come to an end. Its concept has been criticised heavily, most prominentely from Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. What will follow is still an open question and one that is especially crucial for pedagogical thinking. What we do know is that humans won't stop to reinvent themselves and it becomes obvious that our tightening symbiosis with technology is a mayor evolutionary step that deserves close scutiny. This book looks from different angles onto the new field of (...) transhumanism and explores ways to liberate pedagogy from its ties to the metaphysical idea of humansism. Der Humanismus hat seine praktische Geltungskraft und seine theoretischen Begründungsansprüche verloren. An seine Stelle sind heute transhumanistische Technophantasien einer Überwindung des Menschen durch seine Symbiose mit der Maschine getreten. Das Buch nimmt die Herausforderungen des Transhumanismus auf und reflektiert ihre Bedeutung für das pädagogische Selbstverständnis und die Theorieentwicklung aus einer poststrukturalistischen Perspektive. Seit Marx, Nietzsche und Freud ist der Humanismus einer radikalen Kritik unterzogen worden; Nietzsches Begriff des Übermenschen war dabei einer der wenigen Versuche Menschenbildung jenseits seines humanistischen Verständnisses zu denken. Die hier versammelten Beiträge haben nicht den Anspruch etwas an die Stelle des Humanismus zu setzen. Vielmehr erkunden sie explorativ das neue Problemfeld zwischen Anti-, Post- und Transhumanismus, welches sich nach den "Enden des Menschen" aufgetan hat. In diesem kommen verschiedene Diskurse zusammen, die u.a. Menschen in evolutionär fortgeschrittener Symbiose mit seinen Maschinen denken. Im Humanismus verankerte Konzepte und Bemühungen wie Selbstbildung haben sich hier überlebt und machen die Suche nach posthumanistischen pädagogischen Konzepten notwendig. (shrink)

Theodor W. Adorno died in 1969 and his last major work, Ästhetische Theorie, was published a year later. Only recently, however, have his aesthetic writings begun to receive sustained attention in the English-speaking world. This collection of essays is an important contribution to the discussion of Adorno's aesthetics in Anglo-American scholarship.The essays are organized around the twin themes of semblance and subjectivity. Whereas the concept of semblance, or illusion, points to Adorno's links with Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, the concept of (...) subjectivity recalls his lifelong struggle with a philosophy of consciousness stemming from Kant, Hegel, and Lukács. Adorno's elaboration of the two concepts takes many dialectical twists. Art, despite the taint of illusion that it has carried since Plato's Republic, turns out in Adorno's account of modernism to have a sophisticated capacity to critique illusion, including its own. Adorno's aesthetics emphasizes the connection between aesthetic theory and many other aspects of social theory. The paradoxical genius of Aesthetic Theory is that it turns traditional concepts into a theoretical cutting edge. (shrink)

This book explores the nature of modern culture as a culture of anxiety, analyzing the modes in which such anxiety presents itself. Drawing on sociological and philosophical concepts of modernity, the author builds on the work of Marx, Nietzsche and Freud to offer an understanding of modern anxiety culture as the reverse side of risk culture, which stabilizes itself by concealing or making familiar the social phenomena of risk society. Through explorations of memory, politics, art, clairvoyance, notions of national community (...) and identity, this volume sheds light on the fissures in our culture where anxiety appears, thus revealing its underlying volatility. A study of the ruptures in our modern culture, Anxiety and Lucidity will appeal to scholars of sociology, social theory, anthropology and philosophy with interests in late modern culture. (shrink)

Political correctness in Canada: the McEwen report on the political science department at UBC -- The new sectarianism: gender, race, sexual orientation -- Theory 1: Marx, Freud, Nietzsche -- Theory 2: Constructionism, ideology, textuality -- Presentism: postmodernism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism -- The carceral vision: Geertz, Greenblatt, Foucault, and culture as constraint -- The liberal humanist vision: Northrup Frye and culture as freedom -- Conclusion: the hegemony of theory and the managerial university.

The magnum opus of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, is not only the most important work of 20th century French philosophy, but also provides an unprecedented opportunity for philosophers and geographers to collaborate. Although neither were professional geographers A Thousand Plateaus constitutes a “geophilosophy,” a neo-materialism, which, in linking the philosophical materialisms of Marx, Nietzsche and Freud with contemporary science, avoids the traditional bogeys of materialism: determinism and vitalism. By the same token, as a rigorous and consistent (...) materialism, A Thousand Plateaus provides an escape route from the paralyzing post-modernism that has trapped important contemporary schools of geography and philosophy. In addition, Deleuze and Guattari’s politicized stance–their historical-libidinal materialism–provides a relief from the arid scientism and naive realism to which critics of post- modernism have all too often fallen prey. (shrink)

La colección Revuelta Filosófica nos propone un retorno a pensadores que se pusieron por encima del orden filosófico establecido. Por esto mismo no nos sorprende que Kierkegaard esté en esta colección, y más bien decimos que no podía dejar de asistir a la reunión. Fiel a su pensamiento, Kierkegaard le pone el cuerpo, la pluma y el alma a sus escritos, en los cuales la literatura se entrelaza con la filosofía, y la psicología se vuelve un teatro en el que (...) uno tras otro aparecen figuras, pseudónimos y personajes que enmascaran el rostro del autor a través de la ironía. ¿Quién se encarga de darle voz a Kierkegaard? Patricia Dip, quien le ha dedicado gran parte de su vida académica a estudiar al danés, no puede ser mejor compañía. La autora presenta a Kierkegaard en dos dimensiones, la literaria y la filosófica, donde lo distintivo es la máscara, rasgo que le permiten ubicar al pensador danés entre los teóricos contemporáneos de la ideología, es decir Marx, Nietzsche y Freud. El escenario, 255 páginas, divididas en un estudio preliminar, selección de fuentes y bibliografía de referencia. El estudio preliminar del libro cuenta con cuatro apartados en los cuales la autora recorre tópicos fundamentales del pensamiento kierkegaardiano. (shrink)

""Why theories of religion?" After raising and answering this question the author begins his examination of theories of religion by first looking at the explanations given by religious believers (Revelation and Religious Experience). He then considers the view of thinkers who have sought to transform religion into philosophy (Plato, Kant and Hegel), before reviewing the theories of those who have seen religion as arising out of errors in primitive thinking (Tyler, Frazer and Levy-Bruhl) and those 'masters of suspicion', as Paul (...) Ricoeur has called them, (Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Marx and Freud) who offered what they believed to be exhaustive psychological and sociological theories of the origin and nature of religion. In the course of his discussion the author also engages with many contemporary thinkers whose discussions of religion have been based on these classical accounts."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), philosophe allemand nomme le pessimiste de Francfort, heritier de Kant, s'inspirant de la sagesse hindouiste et bouddhiste, a imprime une marque durable sur la philosophie en faisant du vouloir inconscient la moelle substantielle de l'univers et l'element determinant en l'homme. Inventeur de la demarche genealogique, il interprete toutes les manifestations humaines (comportement, texte, discours, etc.) a la lumiere d'un sens latent qu'on peut decouvrir sous le sens manifeste en remontant au type de volonte qui s'exprime dans chaque (...) manifestation. Nietzsche, Marx et Freud se souviendront de la lecon et s'attacheront a detecter les aspirations profondes qui se travestissent dans les attitudes et declarations assumees par les individus ou les groupes sociaux. A ce titre, on peut dire que Schopenhauer prefigure les penseurs du soupcon. Christophe Bouriau expose ici cette philosophie du sens en partant de son fondement metaphysique, le vouloir-vivre, pour developper ensuite la portee existentielle de cette intuition initiale. Le vouloir est en effet a la source du mal, c'est-a-dire de la souffrance (le mal subi) et de l'injustice (le mal commis). A l'encontre de ce que soutient Nietzsche, Schopenhauer n'entend pas nous disposer a la resignation face au mal. Il nous propose plutot trois voies pour le contrer: l'experience esthetique, la morale de la compassion et l'ascese. L'ouvrage se clot sur la posterite de cette pensee atypique et en particulier de son concept d' inconscient. Christophe Bouriau, Directeur du departement de philosophie de l'Universite de Lorraine et membre des Archives Poincare a Nancy, a co-edite l'ouvrage collectif Schopenhauer et l'inconscient (avec J.-C. Banvoy et B. Andrieu) et publie notamment Lectures de Kant. Le probleme du dualisme, et Le comme si. Kant, Vaihinger et le fictionalisme. (shrink)

Clayton Crockett and Jeffrey Robbins describe a number of the intellectual developments and movements that preceded and influenced radical theology. They pay special attention to the hermeneutics of suspicion of Feuerbach, Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche; the phenomenology of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty; and the linguistic structuralism of Saussure. Crockett and Robbins pay close attention to the role of Derrida’s lecture, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” in 1966 before moving on to the Death of God (...) movement. They emphasize the way Tillich’s thought was radicalized by G. Vahanian, Altizer, Daly, and others in combination with Tillich’s theology of culture and existential theology and Bonhoeffer’s influence on the early Death of God thinkers. Finally, Crockett and Robbins discuss radical theology’s hybridization with deconstruction in the work of Raschke, Mark C. Taylor, and Winquist and hybridizing RT with deconstruction. (shrink)

My topic is a long-standing tension in the interpretation of religion. On the one hand, it seems undeniable — seems almost to go without saying — that liturgical and sacrificial practices, sacred dance, divination, procession and pilgrimage are intentional actions undertaken by persons. Yet there is a distinguished tradition in the study of religion according to which religious activity is typically caused by forces over which the agent has little or no control. Visible, latter-day members of this tradition include Hume, (...) Nietzsche, Marx, Durkheim, Freud, and, in some moods, Wittgenstein, but its roster is by no means limited to the religiously unmusical. (shrink)