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Seeking new forms of democracy, progressive politics raises a fundamental question: what is the alternative to the allegedly coherent, self-contained liberal subject that represents the project of modernity? Exploring the themes of nature, race, and the divine, this book identifies the more realistic alternative in the “relational subject”: a subject that is inseparable from the global field of relations through which it emerges and yet distinct from that field because it lives a life that no one else ever has. Recognizing ourselves as such subjects allows us not only to rethink politics, but, more profoundly, to envision sovereignty as the means by which we each rejuvenate ourselves and the polities we constitute with others.

The book aims to bring together these three themes - the world, the flesh and the subject - to resolve many of the puzzles that beset contemporary philosophy of mind.

Aristote affirmait que « si rien n'y fait obstacle, chacun se porte vers son lieu propre », un contenant qui est son propre contenu et que ne dispute aucune aliénation. Depuis la nuit des temps, l'humanité quête le moyen de se sauver dans ce contenant propitiatoire. Mais la rupture introduite par le langage a métamorphosé le rapport de l'humain au monde et l'a obligé, non plus à s'adapter à son environnement, mais à le transformer, avec « l'aide » de la puissance technicienne, le forçant ainsi à faire le deuil du lieu propre. Tel Ulysse cherchant son île (Ithaque), l'homme n'en a pas fini de ruser pour saisir l'objet de sa quête. La crise actuelle qui fait osciller l'époque entre l'absurdité et l'apocalypse (climatique, atomique, sanitaire, etc.) rend impossible un tel lieu, sauf peut-être à fuir dans le Métavers. Au carrefour de la philosophie, de la psychologie, de la psychanalyse, de la sociologie et de la médecine, cet ouvrage collectif propose, au cœur même des troubles des temps présents, d'oser nous réinventer sans cesse envers et contre tout.

Esta obra analiza el lugar que ha ocupado el problema del sujeto en la filosofía de Michel Foucault. En ese marco interpretativo, toda la obra va dirigida a cuestionar la lectura que ha realizado Jürguen Habermas y Axel Honneth sobre el pensamiento de Michel Foucault, quienes consideran, desde su punto de vista, una “muerte del sujeto” o “cancelación del sujeto”. La aportación de la obra consiste en haber forjado la categoría del “sujeto descentrado”, que a diferencia del “sujeto barrado” de Lacan, o el “sujeto ausente” de Žižek o el “sujeto vacío” de Balibar, o el “sujeto/pensamiento débil” de Vattimo, permitió al autor reconstruir todo el pensamiento de Michel Foucault evitando una lectura convencionalmente aceptada. Con este concepto, se aboga por un sujeto ambivalente, constituido-constituyente que puede generar una acción transformadora en la construcción de vidas otras y un mundo otro donde quepan muchos mundos.

Judith Butler und Michel Foucault haben der katholischen Theologie wesentliche Einsichten zu vermitteln, denn sie betonen - mit je eigener Schwerpunktsetzung - die Notwendigkeit einer genauen Machtanalyse. Dabei wird dem Gender und damit dem Körper, insbesondere auch in der sprachlosen Performativität, ein angemessener Raum gegeben. So kann Freiheit als Grundlage kreativen und kritischen menschlichen Handelns gedacht und für die Theologie umgesetzt werden. Die Problematiken dieser Themen innerhalb des katholischen Diskursraumes sind einerseits aktuell, andererseits haben sie eine Entstehungs- wie Rezeptionsgeschichte. Die Theologin und Dogmatikerin Gunda Werner erkundet, wie die Genderdiskurse zur Prägung des Subjektes Judith Butlers und Michel Foucaults Diskurskonzept der Parrhesia, des Wahrsprechens, für eine Theologie der Freiheit fruchtbar gemacht werden können. In mehreren Casestudies zeigt sie, wie die Trias Freiheit - Gender (Körper) - Macht (Kritik) die Kategorien und Strukturelemente einer Theologie der Freiheit bilden kann.

Now in paperback, this collection of Foucault's lectures traces the historical formation and contemporary significance of the hermeneutics of the self. Just before the summer of 1982, French philosopher Michel Foucault gave a series of lectures at Victoria University in Toronto. In these lectures, which were part of his project of writing a genealogy of the modern subject, he is concerned with the care and cultivation of the self, a theme that becomes central to the second, third, and fourth volumes of his History of Sexuality. Foucault had always been interested in the question of how constellations of knowledge and power produce and shape subjects, and in the last phase of his life, he became especially interested not only in how subjects are formed by these forces but in how they ethically constitute themselves. In this lecture series and accompanying seminar, Foucault focuses on antiquity, starting with classical Greece, the early Roman empire, and concluding with Christian monasticism in the fourth and fifth centuries AD. Foucault traces the development of a new kind of verbal practice—“speaking the truth about oneself”—in which the subject increasingly comes to be defined by its inner thoughts and desires. He deemed this new form of “hermeneutical” subjectivity important not just for historical reasons, but also due to its enduring significance in modern society.

Dieter Henrich (•1927) ist neben Jürgen Habermas und Ernst Tugendhat die bedeutendste Stimme der deutschen Nachkriegsphilosophie. Mit seinen Beiträgen zu einer Theorie des Selbstbewusstseins hat er vor allem in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren dem herrschenden Antisubjektivismus der Heidegger-Gadamer-Tradition, aber auch der rein sprachphilosophischen Verengung der analytischen Philosophie kraftvoll widersprochen. Henrich ist der einzige lebende deutsche Philosoph, dem es in legendären-Vorlesungen (Harvard 1973) gelungen ist, die bedeutendsten Köpfe der dann bald „Philosophy of Mind“ genannten jüngsten Entwicklung der analytischen Philosophie für idealistische Theorien (vor allem für Fichte) zu interessieren. Der Sammelband bietet die erste und einzige Darstellung der Grundthesen Henrichs und der Heidelberger Schule, durchaus auch in kritischer Einstellung, und setzt das von Henrich eingeleitete Gespräch mit den amerikanischen Kollegen fort.

La situation de crise que nous traversons laisse craindre ou espérer un changement profond. C'est aussi celle des mots et des images. Et si les frontières de l'oeuvre d'art ne sont pas clairement définies, celles du sujet ne le sont pas davantage. Ses frontières sont malléables, dépendantes des contrées extérieures auxquelles il se frotte sans cesse. C'est un sujet en mouvement dans une société toujours plus rapide, plus performante, plus financiarisée. Cependant, l'agitation qui l'habite n'a pas pour seule origine un univers sociétal économique. Les espaces ou objets esthétiques, naturels ou méditatifs influent également. Qu'il soit créateur ou spectateur, le sujet se confronte à l'oeuvre d'art. Les arts et la littérature sont ici convoqués pour penser le rapport du sujet à son identité et au monde. En quoi les arts contribuent-ils à la construction du sujet? En quoi la rencontre avec l'oeuvre agit-elle sur son identité? Comment le sujet est-il'à l'oeuvre'lorsqu'il rencontre ou crée des oeuvres?

Slavoj Zizek, the maverick philosopher, author of over 30 books, acclaimed as the'Elvis of cultural theory', and today's most controversial public intellectual. His work traverses the fields of philosophy, psychoanalysis, theology, history and political theory, taking in film, popular culture, literature and jokes-all to provide acute analyses of the complexities of contemporary ideology as well as a serious and sophisticated philosophy. His recent films The Pervert's Guide to the Cinema and Zizek! reveal a theorist at the peak of his powers and a skilled communicator. Now Verso is making his classic titles, each of which stand as a core of his ever-expanding life's work, available as new editions. Each is beautifully re-packaged, including new introductions from Zizek himself. Simply put, they are the essential texts for understanding Zizek's thought and thus cornerstones of contemporary philosophy.The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology: A specter is haunting Western thought, the specter of the Cartesian subject. In this book Slavoj Zizek unearths a subversive core to this elusive specter, and finds within it the indispensable philosophical point of reference for any genuinely emancipatory project.

Mit dem Begriff des Subjekts soll ein logisch nicht hintergehbares Erkenntnissubjekt bezeichnet werden. Der Sinn dieses Unternehmens liegt darin, ein Emanzipationspotential für eine Kritische Gesellschaftstheorie auszuweisen. Dazu muss freilich gezeigt werden können, dass das Subjekt mehr ist als reine Theorie. Es muss über einen Gesellschaftsbezug verfügen können.'Die Politik des Subjekts“ versucht diesen Bezug auszuweisen und gleichzeitig auszuloten, welche normativen Grundlagen eine Theorie des Politischen für eine Kritische Theorie anbieten kann.

The Subject of Human Rights is the first book to systematically address the'human'part of'human rights.'Drawing on the finest thinking in political theory, cultural studies, history, law, anthropology, and literary studies, this volume examines how human rights—as discourse, law, and practice—shape how we understand humanity and human beings. It asks how the humanness that the human rights idea seeks to protect and promote is experienced. The essays in this volume consider how human rights norms and practices affect the way we relate to ourselves, to other people, and to the nonhuman world. They investigate what kinds of institutions and actors are subjected to human rights and are charged with respecting their demands and realizing their aspirations. And they explore how human rights shape and even create the very subjects they seek to protect. Through critical reflection on these issues, The Subject of Human Rights suggests ways in which we might reimagine the relationship between human rights and subjectivity with a view to benefiting human rights and subjects alike.

Moi, je, ego, personne, individu, autant de termes par lesquels nous désignons le sujet substantiel que nous croyons être. Seulement, peut-on trouver en nous une quelconque unité singulière et constante? Contre toute attente, certains philosophes osèrent en douter, mais c'est surtout le Bouddha qui fit peser les plus graves soupçons sur notre prétendue subjectivité. Si le sage indien ne nia pas l'existence de notre moi empirique, il remit en cause l'idée qu'il s'agissait d'une substance. Le moi existerait donc sans pour autant être réel. Comprendre la nature de cet ego permettrait de se libérer des souffrances qu'il engendre. Il en va ainsi de notre bonheur.

Die Beiträge des Bandes orientieren sich an der Leitfrage: Wie kann die Psychoanalyse das Subjekt in seiner Singularität weiterhin unterstützen angesichts des heutigen Unbehagens und der Veränderungen, in denen sich unsere Zivilisation zu befinden scheint? Für die psychoanalytische Theoriebildung ergeben sich aktuelle Fragen, die neben anderen im Buch diskutiert werden: • Um welches Subjekt geht es in der Psychoanalyse? Wie ist es möglich, wissenschaftlich von einem unbewussten Subjekt zu sprechen? • Welchen Einfluss kann das psychoanalytische Verständnis vom Subjekt auf heutige Bildungs- und Erziehungsprozessen haben? • In welcher Weise innovativ muss pädagogisches und therapeutisches Arbeiten heute sein, um dem unbewussten Subjekt als Garant von Freiheit und Kreativität Raum zu gewähren?

Dans les métiers de l'éducation au sens large, la difficulté de savoir qui s'adresse à qui suscite un désarroi. Toute incitation dominante découpe dans les personnes concernées par l'interaction un « sujet » d'un certain type qui, à peine instauré, s'effrite sous l'effet de ses propres ambivalences et sombre souvent dans l'indétermination ou la caricature des labellisations qui visent à éviter la complexité de ses composantes internes pour réduire le désarroi. Successivement, la face active, par trop valorisée, puis la face passive, souvent assimilée à l'inertie, sont ici éclairées par des orientations de pensée fécondes pour les praticiens et leurs formateurs.

La presente obra, Pensando el sujeto: Aristóteles y Quine, aborda una de las cuestiones centrales de toda la filosofía actual: la cuestión del sujeto. Ciertamente este tema ha sido desarrollado con múltiples enfoques por las diversas corrientes contemporáneas, que se centran preferentemente en el sujeto humano. Sin embargo, en todos estos planteamientos, subyace un problema previo: la eterna cuestión por aclararse sobre las unidades reales del mundo, por saber qué es un sujeto sin más.El presente libro se retrotrae hasta los últimos aspectos de esta cuestión. Se trata, pues, de una investigación metafísica, que, como toda indagación de este tipo, intenta ser radical: no da nada por supuesto, ni siquiera la mera existencia de los sujetos; ni mucho menos si el sujeto es esto o aquello y su dinámica es así o asá.Aunque se trata de una tarea especulativa –intenta comprender la realidad–, ésta se ha llevado a cabo de la mano de dos autores que han destacado por la radicalidad de su pensamiento sobre el sujeto: Aristóteles y Quine. El libro enfoca la cuestión desde una doble perspectiva lógica y ontológica en cada uno de dichos autores. De este modo, consigue un doble resultado: por un lado, comprender a fondo el pensamiento sobre la ousía de Aristóteles y sobre los objetos de Quine y, por otro, ofrecer una respuesta, que puede ser provisional pero ciertamente relevante, sobre la eterna cuestión del sujeto, de las unidades reales del mundo.

Kathi Weeks suggests that one of the most important tasks for contemporary feminist theory is to develop theories of the subject that are adequate to feminist politics. Although the 1980s modernist-postmodernist debate put the problem of feminist subjectivity on the agenda, Weeks contends that limited debate now blocks the further development of feminist theory.Both modernists and postmodernists succeeded in making clear the problems of an already constituted, essentialist subject. What remains as an ongoing project, Weeks contends, is creating a theory of the constitution of subjects to account for the processes of social construction. This book presents one such account. Drawing on a number of different theoretical frameworks, including feminist standpoint theory, socialist feminism and poststructuralist thought, as well as theories of peformativity and self-valorisation, the author proposes a nonessential feminist subject, a theory of constituting subjects.

Cómo salir de un estado en el cual fluyes sin tomar las riendas de tu vida, débil frente a las adversidades; esa fue la pregunta que originó este texto. Desde Deleuze, María Eugenia Restrepo descubre a un hombre vital, sumido en el devenir propio del rizoma y al responder la pregunta bajo su perspectiva se abre camino a “una vida afortunada”, una en la cual la conciencia de lo que se es capaz de ser y hacer coincide con el incremento en la potencia de actuar para desplegar todo lo que el cuerpo puede. Este libro va dirigido a aquellos que se han hecho el mismo cuestionamiento, además de ayudar a entender la propuesta ontológica de Deleuze.

Marcus Steinwegs neues Buch kreist um zwei Grundbegriffe der philosophischen Tradition: Subjekt und Wahrheit. In über 300 Bemerkungen zu ›Positivismusfalle‹, ›Aktive Indifferenz‹, ›Kopflos denken‹, ›Karate (空手)‹, ›Wittgensteins Herz‹, ›Lieblingstier‹, ›Politidiotie‹, ›Chinesische Romantik‹, ›Gespensterliebe‹ oder ›Zoologische Irritation‹ geht es ebenso um die kritische Infragestellung dieser Kategorien wie um die Insistenz auf ihrer Unverzichtbarkeit. Immer hält sich Steinwegs Denken im Spannungsfeld von Konsistenz und Inkonsistenz, Vertrautheit und Unvertrautheit, Immanenz und Transzendenz.

This book initiates the discussion between psychoanalysis and recent humanist and social scientific interest in a fundamental contemporary topic – the nonhuman. The authors question where we situate the subject (as distinct from the human) in current critical investigations of a nonanthropoentric universe. In doing so they unravel a less-than-human theory of the subject; explore implications of Lacanian teachings in relation to the environment, freedom, and biopolitics; and investigate the subjective enjoyments of and anxieties over nonhumans in literature, film, and digital media. This innovative volume fills a valuable gap in the literature, extending investigations into an important and topical strand of the social sciences for both analytic and pedagogical purposes.

Since the early seventies, European thinkers have departed notably from their predecessors in order to pursue analytical programs more thoroughly their own. Rethinking the Subject brings together in one volume some of the most influential writings of Foucault, Habermas, Bourdieu, Pizzorno, Macfarlane, and other authors whose ideas have had a worldwide influence in recent social theory. This anthology is testament to the central importance of three contemporary themes, each familiar to earlier thinkers but never definitively formulated or resolved. The first two concern the nature and modalities of power and legitimacy in society. The third, and most fundamental, deals with the nature and modalities of the'self'or'subject.'These themes owe their special contemporary relevance to an array of events— from the collapse of colonialism to the birth of test-tube babies. James Faubion's introduction traces the historical context of these influential events and themes. It also traces the lineaments of a still inchoate intellectual movement, of which the anthology's contributors are the vanguard. Whether'modernist'or'post-modernist,'this movement leads away from a'world-constituting subject,'which in one guise or another has served as the ontological ground of social reflection and research since Kant. It points instead toward ontological pluralism and toward polythetic diagnostics of heterogeneous forces that constitute a multiplicity of worlds and subjects.

Se trata de un libro-corolario, lugar de llegada de la aventura investigativa de un colectivo que se propone desmontar las lógicas desde las cuales se produce una subjetividad particular en un ámbito específico: juventud y universidad. En este sentido, la propuesta pasa por'problematizar la posibilidad de decir algo sobre los y las jóvenes que hay en la universidad', en el intento de desmontar aquellos discursos que permitieron a los jóvenes aparecer y devenir jóvenes en la universidad; es decir, mostrar las formas de como ellos imprimen su huella subjetiva en la experiencia de habitar y ser habitados por la universidad. Desde el registro fenoménico más directo, es evidente que existe cierta coincidencia entre la juventud como una etapa etariamente considerada y la condición de estudiante universitario. Ahora bien, ¿es conveniente asumir'naturalmente'que los estudiantes'son'jóvenes?, ¿desde cuál concepción de'juventud'puede justificarse esto?

What can the universals of political philosophy offer to those who experience'the living paradox of an inegalitarian construction of egalitarian citizenship'? Citizen Subject is the summation of Étienne Balibar's career-long project to think the necessary and necessarily antagonistic relation between the categories of citizen and subject. In this magnum opus, the question of modernity is framed anew with special attention to the self-enunciation of the subject (in Descartes, Locke, Rousseau, and Derrida), the constitution of the community as “we” (in Hegel, Marx, and Tolstoy), and the aporia of the judgment of self and others (in Foucualt, Freud, Kelsen, and Blanchot).After the “humanist controversy” that preoccupied twentieth-century philosophy, Citizen Subject proposes foundations for philosophical anthropology today, in terms of two contrary movements: the becoming-citizen of the subject and the becoming-subject of the citizen. The citizen-subject who is constituted in the claim to a “right to have rights” (Arendt) cannot exist without an underside that contests and defies it. He—or she, because Balibar is concerned throughout this volume with questions of sexual difference—figures not only the social relation but also the discontent or the uneasiness at the heart of this relation. The human can be instituted only if it betrays itself by upholding “anthropological differences” that impose normality and identity as conditions of belonging to the community.The violence of “civil” bourgeois universality, Balibar argues, is greater (and less legitimate, therefore less stable) than that of theological or cosmological universality. Right is thus founded on insubordination, and emancipation derives its force from otherness.Ultimately, Citizen Subject offers a revolutionary rewriting of the dialectic of universality and differences in the bourgeois epoch, revealing in the relationship between the common and the universal a political gap at the heart of the universal itself.

Inventing Agency addresses some of the most central and pressing concerns in criticism, theory, and philosophy today. As new metaphysics of the realia of power and independently animated objects have replaced ancient conceptualizations of substance, being, and causation, the question of the “subject”-of the capability for just such conceptual change, for acting to any effect whatsoever-has reemerged with fresh critical urgency. Writing on theories and fictions of the subject from Aristotle to Althusser and Fielding to Flaubert, the contributors to Inventing Agency explore the unprecedented productions of the subject as agent-of cognition, aesthetic experience and judgment, imagination and representation, and moral and political action-that together define the “revolution” in reflection that Kant called “the Age of Critique.” Informed by expertise in such interrelated fields as continental and analytic philosophy and literary history, Marxian and utopian theory, poetics and cultural criticism, moral theory and theory of sensibility, and feminist and disability studies, Inventing Agency addresses the invention of subjecthood by philosophical and literary conceptions of the specifically human capacities that continue to reveal the prospect of social-individual and historical-agency in action. This collection on the productions of the subject is vital reading for anyone engaged in thinking about where the categories of contemporary theory come from, and where they might lead next.

The studies in this volume focus on works of art that generate bafflement, and that make that difficulty of reading part of their rhetorical structure. These are works whose subjects are not easily identifiable or can be readily associated with more than one subject at the same time; works that take a subject into a new genre or format (pagan into Christian, for example, or vice versa), and thus destabilize the subject itself; works that concentrate on the marginal rather than the central episode; and works that introduce elements of the preparatory phase-the indeterminacy that are native to the sketch or drawing, for example-into the realm of finished works. Unable to settle on a single reading, the effort of interpretation doubles back on its own procedures. This aporia, according to Aristotle, serves as the initial impulse to philosophical inquiry. Although the works studied here are in many ways exceptional, the aporias they raise register larger structural problems belonging to the artistic culture as a whole. Between 1400 and 1700, we see the emergence of new formats, new genres, new subjects, and new techniques, as well as new venues for the display of art. It is an implicit thesis of this book that the systemic shifts occurring in the early modern period made the emergence of aporetic works of art, and of aporia as a problem for art, a structural inevitability.

In recent decades, what is known as'the subject'has been problematized by various old and new materialisms and today appears as decentered in and by language, split by the unconscious, deformed by social forces, governed by ideology and is either seen to have succumbed to the postmodern condition or to never have existed in the first place. Every materialist theory of the subject depends on a conception of materiality, which can delineate the character of what the material reality, which de-centers or constitutes the subject consists of. Materiality and Subject in Marxism, (Post-)Structuralism, and Material Semiotics investigates the relation between materiality and the subject in the materialist approaches of Marxism, (post-)structuralism, and material semiotics. None of these approaches subscribes to a reductionist materialism; rather, they conceive of materiality as multiple, complex, and not reducible to tangible matter. For each approach, the modalities of materiality of the respective materialism are defined. The relationship between the multiple materialities and the subject constituted and decentered in this relationship are presented as specific to the theoretical approaches discussed.

This book outlines a new conception of the cyborg in terms of consciousness as the parallax gap between physical and digital worlds. The contemporary subject constructs its own internal reality in the interplay of the Virtual and the Real. Reinterpreting the work of Slavoj Žižek and Gilles Deleuze in terms of the psychological and ontological construction of the digital, alongside the philosophy of quantum physics, this book offers a challenge to materialist perspectives in the fluid cyberspace that is ever permeating our lives. The inclusion of the subject in its own epistemological framework establishes a model for an engaged spectatorship of reality. Through the analysis of online media, digital art, avatars, computer games and science fiction, a new model of cyborg culture reveals the opportunities for critical and creative interventions in the contemporary subjective experience, promoting an awareness of the parallax position we all occupy between physical and digital worlds.

In 1980, Michel Foucault began a vast project of research on the relationship between subjectivity and truth, an examination of conscience, confession, and truth-telling that would become a crucial feature of his life-long work on the relationship between knowledge, power, and the self. The lectures published here offer one of the clearest pathways into this project, contrasting Greco-Roman techniques of the self with those of early Christian monastic culture in order to uncover, in the latter, the historical origin of many of the features that still characterize the modern subject. They are accompanied by a public discussion and debate as well as by an interview with Michael Bess, all of which took place at the University of California, Berkeley, where Foucault delivered an earlier and slightly different version of these lectures. Foucault analyzes the practices of self-examination and confession in Greco-Roman antiquity and in the first centuries of Christianity in order to highlight a radical transformation from the ancient Delphic principle of “know thyself” to the monastic precept of “confess all of your thoughts to your spiritual guide.” His aim in doing so is to retrace the genealogy of the modern subject, which is inextricably tied to the emergence of the “hermeneutics of the self”—the necessity to explore one's own thoughts and feelings and to confess them to a spiritual director—in early Christianity. According to Foucault, since some features of this Christian hermeneutics of the subject still determine our contemporary “gnoseologic” self, then the genealogy of the modern subject is both an ethical and a political enterprise, aiming to show that the “self” is nothing but the historical correlate of a series of technologies built into our history. Thus, from Foucault's perspective, our main problem today is not to discover what “the self” is, but to try to analyze and change these technologies in order to change its form.

This book aims to re-think the way in which the subject is inscribed in the modern political, and does so by exploring the potentiality of Lacano-Deleuzian theoretical framework. It concerns a different ontology and a non-dualist understanding of political and legal existence, by focusing on questions such as how to think alternative notions of political existence and what kind of political, social and legal order do these come to create.This investigation into political appearance of subjects through concepts of law, body and life is led and influenced by the thought of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Lacan, as well as Alain Badiou, Antonio Negri and Slavoj Žižek. The book takes on various conceptualisations of life, explores the relationship between law and life and develops an alternative notion of legal and political existence in particular in the context of rights. On the back of Guantánamo's legal and political discourses this work aims to show why and how the problems of world politics or the limitations of (human) rights discourse require an engagement with questions such as what it means to exist as a human being, what forms of life are politically recognised, which are not, and why this distinction.By pointing to a different ontology for thinking and understanding global politics and demonstrating how a trans-disciplinary and philosophical approaches can foster the debates in world politics, this book will be of interest to postgraduates and scholars working on critical normative ideas in international politics, critical security studies and critical legal studies.

Some may consider that the language and concepts of philosophy will eventually be superseded by those of neuroscience. This book questions such a naïve assumption and through a variety of perspectives and traditions, the authors show the possible contributions of philosophy to non-reductive forms of neuroscientific research. Drawing from the full range and depth of philosophical thought, from hylomorphism to ethics, by way of dynamical systems, enactivism and value theory, amongst other topics, this edited work promotes a rich form of interdisciplinary exchange.Chapters explore the analytic, phenomenological and pragmatic traditions of philosophy, and most share a common basis in the Aristotelian tradition. Contributions address one or more aspects of subjectivity in relation to science, such as the meaning and scope of naturalism and the place of consciousness in nature, or the relation between intentionality, teleology, and causality. Readers may further explore the nature of life and its relation to mind and then the role of value in mind and nature.This book shows how philosophy might contribute to real explanatory progress in science while remaining faithful to the full complexity of the phenomena of life and mind. It will be of interest to both philosophers and neuroscientists, as well as those engaged in interdisciplinary cooperation between philosophy and science.

Long-expected translation of the Portuguese academic bestseller Grande Hotel AbismoIn the last two decades recognition - arguably one of the most central notions of the dialectical tradition since Hegel - has once again become a crucial philosophical theme. Nevertheless, the new theories of recognition fail to provide room for reflection on transformation processes in politics and morality. This book aims to recover the disruptive nature of the dialectical tradition by means of a severe critique of the dominance of an anthropology of the individual identity in contemporary theories of recognition. This critique implies a thorough rethinking of basic concepts such as desire, negativity, will and drive, with Hegel, Lacan and Adorno being our main guides. The Marxist philosopher György Lukács said that the Frankfurt School (Horkheimer, Adorno, etc.) left us with nothing but negativity towards the state of the world. Their work failed to open up a concrete possibility of practical engagement in this world. All too eager to describe the impasses of reason, the Frankfurt philosphers remained trapped in a metaphorical Grand Hotel Abyss (Grand Hotel Abgrund). It was as living and being guardian of lettered civilization in a beautiful and melancholy grand hotel, of which the balconies face a gaping abyss. But perhaps in this way Lukács gave – and no doubt without realizing it himself – a perfect definition of contemporary philosophy, namely to confront chaos, to peer into what appears to a certain rationality as an abyss and to feel good about it. Touching Hegelian dialectics, critical theory and psychoanalysis, Grand Hotel Abyss gives a new meaning to the notion of negativity as the first essential step for rethinking political and moral engagement. This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

Lässt sich die kulturelle Dimension der Geschlechterdifferenz untersuchen, ohne »Kultur«, »Geschlecht« und ein Subjekt vorauszusetzen? Diese Studie nimmt die in neueren feministischen und postkolonialen Arbeiten formulierte Essentialismus-Kritik auf und weist einen Ausweg über die Diskurstheorie Foucaults. Sie eröffnet einen methodisch innovativen Zugang, indem sie die Anwendung der Diskursanalyse auf Interviewtexte vorführt. Außerdem zeigt sie auf, wie die Subjektpositionen für »Mann« und »Frau« im westlichen und im muslimischen Diskurs reguliert werden - und bietet damit eine neue Perspektive auf Fragen von hoher politischer Brisanz.

In this monograph Nicholas Georgalis further develops his important work on minimal content, recasting and providing novel solutions to several of the fundamental problems faced by philosophers of language. His theory defends and explicates the importance of ‘thought-tokens'and minimal content and their many-to-one relation to linguistic meaning, challenging both ‘externalist'accounts of thought and the solutions to philosophical problems of language they inspire. The concepts of idiolect, use, and statement made are critically discussed, and a classification of kinds of utterances is developed to facilitate the latter. This is an important text for those interested in current theories and debates on philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and their points of intersection.

Angesichts der gegenwärtig zu beobachtenden Veränderungen der Gesellschaft, die in den Sozialwissenschaften unter Stichworten wie »Zweite Moderne«, »Spätmoderne«, »Postmoderne« etc. verhandelt werden, steht das »Subjekt« als Basiskategorie sozialwissenschaftlicher Theoriebildung zur Debatte. Ist die Konzeption eines relativ autonom handelnden, sein Leben selbst bestimmenden und gestaltenden Individuums - und das war ja mit dem »Subjekt« einmal gemeint - noch sinnvoll angesichts sozialer Verhältnisse, die durch Prozesse zunehmender Individualisierung und Globalisierung gekennzeichnet sind? Hier setzt der vorliegende Band an: Es geht darum, wie verschiedene sozialwissenschaftliche Theorieansätze Subjektivität heute thematisieren; im Zentrum steht dabei die Frage, ob - und wenn ja, wie - diese verschiedenen Ansätze aktuelle gesellschaftliche Wandlungsprozesse in ihre Theoriebildung mit einbeziehen, und ob sie sie zum Anlass für Veränderungen ihrer jeweiligen Subjektkonzeption nehmen. Entstanden ist ein plurales Spektrum höchst unterschiedlicher Antworten auf diese Frage.

Bei allen Differenzen ist man sich in aktuellen und traditionellen philosophischen Debatten einig, die Wahrnehmung vorwiegend als sinnliche Erkenntnis zu untersuchen. Auf diese Weise gerät jedoch aus dem Blick, dass wahrzunehmen auch bedeutet, eine Einwirkung durch das Wahrgenommene zu erleiden, die als angenehm oder unangenehm erlebt wird. Das Wahrgenommene ist nicht nur z. B. ›grün‹ oder ›rund‹; es ist auch ›lecker‹, ›stechend‹ oder ›ekelhaft‹. Dieses Buch unternimmt zunächst eine phänomenologische Beschreibung des Wahrgenommenen, insofern es dem Wahrnehmenden widerfährt und wendet sich auf dieser Grundlage der Frage zu, was das leibliche Subjekt sein muss, wenn es unter der Wahrnehmung leiden oder sich an ihr erfreuen kann. Zum einen wird dafür argumentiert, die innerhalb der Leibphilosophie einschlägige Konzeption von Leib-sein und Körper-haben durch die dritte Dimension des ›Vom-Körper-Gehabtwerdens‹ zu ergänzen. Zum anderen wird phänomenologisch aufgewiesen, inwiefern nicht nur die Welterfahrung leiblich, sondern umgekehrt auch die Selbst- und Leiberfahrung weltlich vermittelt ist.