In this reissused work, first published in 1991, John Rajchman isolates the question of ethics in the work of Foucault and Lacan and explores its ramifications and implications for the present day. He demonstrates that the question of ethics was at once the most difficult and the most intimate question for these two authors, offering a complex point of intersection between them. As such, he argues that it belongs to the great tradition that is concerned with the passion or eros of philosop...

As virulent nationalism increases in Europe and th debate surrounding political correctness continues to rage in the US, this volume provides a theoretical analysis of these events and the questions they raise for critical theory.

A watershed event in the field of sociology, this text introduced "a major breakthrough in the sociology of knowledge and sociological theory generally" (George Simpson, American Sociological Review ).In this seminal book, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann examine how knowledge forms and how it is preserved and altered within a society. Unlike earlier theorists and philosophers, Berger and Luckmann go beyond intellectual history and focu...

The first volume in the eminent philosopher's three-part examination of time and narrative, exploring their relationship in the context of historical writing.Time and Narrative builds on Paul Ricoeur's earlier analysis, in The Rule of Metaphor, of semantic innovation at the level of the sentence. Ricoeur here examines the creation of meaning at the textual level, with narrative rather than metaphor as the ruling concern.Ricoeur finds a "heal...

What does it mean to be truthful? What role does truth play in our lives? What do we lose if we reject truthfulness? No philosopher is better suited to answer these questions than Bernard Williams. Writing with his characteristic combination of passion and elegant simplicity, he explores the value of truth and finds it to be both less and more than we might imagine.Modern culture exhibits two attitudes toward truth: suspicion of being deceived (no one wants to be fooled) and skepti...

Catherine Malabou, Antonio Negri, John D. Caputo, Bruno Bosteels, Mark C. Taylor, and Slavoj Zizek join seven others—including William Desmond, Katrin Pahl, Adrian Johnston, Edith Wyschogrod, and Thomas A. Lewis—to apply Hegel's thought to twenty-first-century philosophy, politics, and religion. Doing away with claims that the evolution of thought and history is at an end, these thinkers safeguard Hegel's innovations against irrelevance and, importantly, reset the distinction of secular an...

What does it mean to lead a moral life?In their first extended study of moral philosophy, Judith Butler offers a provocative outline for a new ethical practice—one responsive to the need for critical autonomy yet grounded in the opacity of the human subject.Butler takes as their starting point one’s ability to answer the questions “What have I done?” and “What ought I to do?” They show that these questions can be answered only by asking a prior question, “Who is this ‘I’ wh...

Antonio Negri, one of the world's leading scholars on Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) and his contemporary legacy, offers a straightforward explanation of the philosopher's elaborate arguments and a persuasive case for his ongoing relevance. Responding to a resurgent interest in Spinoza's thought and its potential application to contemporary global issues, Negri demonstrates the thinker's special value to politics, philosophy, and related disciplines.Negri's work is both a return to and...

Deconstruction and pragmatism constitute two of the major intellectual influences on the contemporary theoretical scene; influences personified in the work of Jacques Derrida and Richard Rorty. Both Rortian pragmatism, which draws the consequences of post-war developments in Anglo-American philosophy, and Derridian deconstruction, which extends and troubles the phonomenological and Heideggerian influence on the Continental tradition, have hitherto generally been viewed as mutually exclusiv...

Although Bernard Lonergan is known primarily for his cognitional theory and theological methodology, he long sought to formulate a modern philosophy of history free of progressive and Marxist biases. Yet he never addressed this in any single work, and his reflections on the subject are scattered in various writings.In this pioneering work, Thomas McPartland shows how Lonergan’s overall philosophical position offers a fresh and comprehensive basis for considering historiography. Tak...

In Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism, Gary Steiner illuminates postmodernism's inability to produce viable ethical and political principles. Ethics requires notions of self, agency, and value that are not available to postmodernists. Thus, much of what is published under the rubric of postmodernist theory lacks a proper basis for a systematic engagement with ethics.Steiner demonstrates this through a provocative critique of postmodernist approaches to the moral statu...

The essays in this volume gather together Gellner's thinking on the connection between philosophy and life and they approach the topic from a number of directions: philosophy of morals, history of ideas, a discussion of individuals including R. G. Collingwood, Noam Chomsky, Piaget and Eysenck and discussions on the setting of philosophy in the general culture of England and America.