Book Description
This brilliant study of the stages in the mind's necessary progress from immediate sense-consciousness to the position of a scientific philosophy includes an introductory essay and a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of the text to help the reader understand this most difficult and most
influential of Hegel's works.
Customer Reviews:
A Translation which could use more care.......2007-09-24
Unfortunately there is an oft repeated caution when approaching any translated text, but I might argue it is a particularly pernicious problem in the case of Hegel. Much of what Hegel is attempting to accomplish in this piece is break down Kantian categories and give them new dimensionality. In the German, for instance, Hegel uses the word "sein" (being) in various constructions brilliantly woven together to help the reader pick at the different linguistic formulations of what it means "to be". Unfortunately, Miller has given no clues to the reader to get to Hegel's meaning in the German, and instead often come across as bizarre instead of piercing.
Hegeling it up.......2007-09-11
Hegel starts with the scepticism of Hume and the phenomenology of Kant's critique, and then claims that neither went far enough with their probings into knowledge and truth.
A dubious landmark.......2007-09-06
Before you get overawed by his reputation, its worth remembering that a healthy portion of philosophers, especially in the English speaking world, think that Hegel wrote a lot of nonsense, and its historical influence, in my opinion, is not overwhelmingly positive. I've been suspicious of it ever sense I wrote what I thought was a fairly dubious paper on its first section and yet still got an A on it. A lot of the prose reads like some sort of Burroughs-esque prank. Most contemporary analytic philosophy thinks early philosophers were too ambitious in gaining elaborate knowledge through reason alone, but Hegel seems to think they basically weren't ambitious enough. Essentially, if you channeled the rationalists through a megalomaniac, you might get something like this.
Take my pulse, please.......2007-03-15
Phenomenology of Spirit is not a book to be tossed aside lightly; it should be hurled with great force.
Utterly worthless drivel.
Written first but should maybe be read last.......2006-07-04
Okay, so it isn't literally the first thing Hegel wrote, but it is indisputably the work of the young Hegel. I've read this book through twice and have given detailed readings of it in papers, etc. But if I had to do it over again, I would recommend starting with the "mature" Hegel of the encyclopedia - this is a three volume set: the Encyclopedia Logic, i.e. "the little logic", the philosophy of nature, and the philosophy of spirit/mind/geist (not to be confused with the phenomenology). Why start there? For one thing Hegel goes to great lengths to define his method, the dialectic, to situate his work in the history of thought, and to spell it all out in a consistent format. Basically these books resemble legal constitutional writings, with addenda that, in an engaging way, critique "ordinary" thinking on the most basic and enduringly relevant matters. But if you have to start here, savor the preface, it's slow going after that. Also you might want to consider reading Sophocles' Antigone and Rameau's Nephew by Diderot, I was pleasantly surprised the first time I read this by the extent to which he close reads these texts. Someone else mentions Plato's Parminedes, but that is really more relevant to the Logic than to this.
Book Description
This entirely new translation of Critique of Pure Reason is the most accurate and informative English translation ever produced of this epochal philosophical text. Though its simple, direct style will make it suitable for all new readers of Kant, the translation displays a philosophical and textual sophistication that will enlighten Kant scholars as well. This translation recreates as far as possible a text with the same interpretative nuances and richness as the original.
Customer Reviews:
a good translation.......2007-03-23
I find this translation straightforward and transparent, in that one is not forced to disentangle the philosophical content from the personal idiosyncracies of the author and/or translator. I do not read German, so I am unable to compare with the original, but whether Kant intended it or not, he himself, as an individual with a particular voice, disappears from the work, leaving only the philosophy. This "effect," when the philosophy takes over and the individual disappears, I find very helpful, especially so in regard to a work this complex. Highly recommended, as is the Guyer Critique of Judgement. I have not read the C. of Practical Reason yet, but it is most likely of comparable quality. These are obviously my opinions, as are the statements of other reviewers.
seminal work of the greatest of philosophers.......2006-10-05
I am an avid reader of philosophical books and without any doubt i consider Immanuel Kant as the greatest mind who has ever written on such abstract subjects.This work is a real copernican revolution,putting forth the structure of our cognitive systems and the way we perceive the world around us.At least it changed my own worldview,making me recognize that i am the creator of my thoughts and not a simple observer.For this reason i consider it one of the most important books i have ever read.
Poor translation.......2006-07-05
I read the long but fruitful review about the results of different translations of this text. So I went to my in-law who is German and she read a few paragraphs from the German. When I showed her the parallel text in English by Guyer and Wood, she was appalled at how inaccurate it was. She said the German was beautiful prose whereas the translation was aweful and didn't reflect the style of the German at all. She thought that the NK Smith was good English, but that it wasn't very accurate either. Unfortunately, I didn't get her opinion on the other translations.
The only reason I can think of for Cambridge using the utterly untalented efforts of Guyer and Wood is because of their privileged chairs in their respective University. Once again, power and privileged has done the public disservice in the academic world.
A Very Poor Translation.......2005-12-20
Please note that I am reviewing only the Guyer-Wood translation, not the work itself.
There are four previous English translations of this work: Francis Haywood (1838, revised 1848); JMD Meiklejohn (1855); F Max Müller (1881, revised 1896); and NK Smith (1929). All of these (save the first) have considerable merit. Meiklejohn shows considerable skill in making Kant speak idiomatic English. As Müller points out, however, Meiklejohn not infrequently flounders in Kant's monstrous gothic sentences, and loses the thread of meaning. As a native German speaker and scholar of language, Müller's 1881 version set the standard for this work for intelligibility, clarity, and readability.
Smith's version has been standard for many years, but even a cursory comparison of Smith with Müller will show that the latter often has a clearer grasp of the German, and provides a better expression of the key concepts. Smith had also come under the influence of the radical neo-Kantians, and his translation suffers severely from that.
Prospective readers of a great philosopher's work come to the work with certain expectations. They have the right to expect - nay demand - prose that reflects that greatness. Kant's great work is a work of literature, and must be respected as any other work of literature. He often employs literary devices (such as metaphor) to make his point clearer. Sensitivity to idiomatic English style must be paramount in the translation of so difficult a work as this.
In short: Translating a work of this kind calls for special talents. Guyer and Wood, unfortunately, do not possess these talents.
They have no credentials in literary translation, translation theory, or semiotics. Despite this, they have installed themselves as General Editors of the Cambridge Kant translation series.
They expressly affirm that they have tried not to 'interpret' as they translate, but to translate 'literally', and leave interpretation to the reader. The difficulty is that such a stance is ideological, rather than practical, and as such it is unsupportable.
Their translation follows the original in a slavish, word-for-word fashion. The results are wooden and unnatural, and often unintelligible. For a truly successful translation of a work such as this, it is absolutely necessary to interpret, and to rewrite the interpretation in idiomatic English, specifically late 18th-century philosophical English. Often, complete reconstruction of the sentence is necessary. Guyer and Wood never do this, and are in fact incapable of doing this.
There is no excuse for allowing a translation to be unintelligible or unidiomatic. If there are textual problems in the original (and in this text there are many) the translator must attempt to resolve them. Simply passing them along for the reader to dispose of (even though the reader may be utterly incapable of 'interpreting' the resulting gibberish), in the name of 'accuracy', is a mistaken notion. It does no-one any good. The translator, not the author, will be blamed.
As a consequence, the Guyer-Wood translation is the worst ever of this work, except for the very first one from 1838, by Francis Haywood, and for the same reasons, cited by JMD Meiklejohn in his translation of the Critique, published in 1855. Speaking of Haywood's primitive, literal, word-for-word approach, Meiklejohn remarks:
"A translator ought to be an interpreting intellect between the author and the reader; but in this case the only interpreting medium has been the dictionary."
The same can be said of the Guyer and Wood translation. It is interesting that Guyer and Wood, in their preface, praise the very Haywood translation denounced by Meiklejohn, because (they say) it was so 'literal' (folks, I'm not making this up!).
This is quite revealing of the incompetence of these two translators. The best translation of this work was that of F. Max Müller, in 1881/1896. How do I know? I checked them all!
For example, the Guyer-Wood team show their insensitivity to English usage by translating the expression "gewöhnliches Schicksal" as "customary fate", which is un-idiomatic and totally absurd. 'Fate' has nothing to do with 'custom'; in fact, this is an oxymoron. Fate has to do with things that are beyond men's control. What is 'customary' has to do with what men habitually do. (The correct choices include "usual fate" or perhaps "common fate".) This absurdity appears to be a direct consequence of Guyer and Wood's stated preference for using a single English term to render a single German term. But it results in absurdities like 'customary fate'.
Translation of one language into another requires thought and interpretation. It is not a mechanical process. The words are not numbers that can be processed as if through a computer, though Guyer and Wood approach it that way. For that reason, Guyer and Wood simply have no business translating anything. They are incompetent; among other things, they import medieval meanings into Kant's text, something for which they have no legitimate basis. This work demands a sensitivity to language, and an ability to write in an English style that is readable. Guyer and Wood lack that ability.
They have stated that their translation is intended for academics and scholars. No translation, though, can ever take the place of the original for scholarly purposes, no matter how carefully and scrupulously the work is performed. Translations are suitable only for introductory to intermediate classes. Anyone attempting serious study of a work of this kind must refer to the original, and that means learning to cope with Kant's somewhat idiosyncratic German.
Because Guyer and Wood do not understand the limitations of the process of translation, their work is misguided. That in turn has led them to make unfortunate choices in their translation. For this reason, and because they themselves have no apparent literary talent, this translation cannot be recommended.
----------NOT RECOMMENDED------------
A foundation stone for modern philosophy.......2005-10-09
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is considered one of the giants of philosophy, of his age or any other. It is largely this book that provides the foundation of this assessment. Whether one loves Kant or hates him (philosophically, that is), one cannot really ignore him; even when one isn't directly dealing with Kantian ideas, chances are great that Kant is made an impact.
Kant was a professor of philosophy in the German city of Konigsberg, where he spent his entire life and career. Kant had a very organised and clockwork life - his habits were so regular that it was considered that the people of Konigsberg could set their clocks by his walks. The same regularity was part of his publication history, until 1770, when Kant had a ten-year hiatus in publishing. This was largely because he was working on this book, the 'Critique of Pure Reason'.
Kant as a professor of philosophy was familiar with the Rationalists, such as Descartes, who founded the Enlightenment and in many ways started the phenomenon of modern philosophy. He was also familiar with the Empiricist school (John Locke and David Hume are perhaps the best known names in this), which challenged the rationalist framework. Between Leibniz' monads and Hume's development of Empiricism to its logical (and self-destructive) conclusion, coupled with the Romantic ideals typified by Rousseau, the philosophical edifice of the Enlightenment seemed about to topple.
Kant rode to the rescue, so to speak. He developed an idea that was a synthesis of Empirical and Rationalist ideas. He developed the idea of a priori knowledge (that coming from pure reasoning) and a posterior knowledge (that coming from experience) and put them together into synthetic a priori statements as being possible. Knowledge, for Kant, comes from a synthesis of pure reason concepts and experience. Pure thought and sense experience were intertwined. However, there were definite limits to knowledge. Appearance/phenomenon was different from Reality/noumena - Kant held that the unknowable was the 'ding-an-sich', roughly translated as the 'thing-in-itself', for we can only know the appearance and categorial aspects of things.
Kant was involved heavily in scientific method, including logic and mathematical methods, to try to describe the various aspects of his development. This is part of what makes Kant difficult reading for even the most dedicated of philosophy students and readers. He spends a lot of pages on logical reasoning, including what makes for fallacious and faulty reasoning. He also does a good deal of development on the ideas of God, the soul, and the universe as a whole as being essentially beyond the realm of this new science of metaphysics - these are not things that can be known in terms of the spatiotemporal realm, and thus proofs and constructs about them in reason are bound to fail.
Kant does go on to attempt to prove the existence of God and the soul (and other things) from moral grounds, but that these cannot be proved in the scientific methodology of his metaphysics and logic. This book presents Kant's epistemology and a new concept of metaphysics that involves transcendental knowledge, a new category of concepts that aims to prove one proposition as the necessary presupposition of another. This becomes the difficulty for later philosophers, but it does become a matter that needs to be addressed by them.
As Kant writes at the end of the text, 'The critical path alone is still open. If the reader has had the courtesy and patience to accompany me along this path, he may now judge for himself whether, if he cares to lend his aid in making this path into a high-road, it may not be possible to achieve before the end of the present century what many centuries have not been able to accomplish; namely, to secure for human reason complete satisfacton in regard to that with which it has all along so eagerly occupied itself, though hitherto in vain.' This is heavy reading, but worthwhile for those who will make the journey with Kant.
Amazon.com
Jean-Paul Sartre, the seminal smarty-pants of mid-century thinking, launched the existentialist fleet with the publication of Being and Nothingness in 1943. Though the book is thick, dense, and unfriendly to careless readers, it is indispensable to those interested in the philosophy of consciousness and free will. Some of his arguments are fallacious, others are unclear, but for the most part Sartre's thoughts penetrate deeply into fundamental philosophical territory. Basing his conception of self-consciousness loosely on Heidegger's "being," Sartre proceeds to sharply delineate between conscious actions ("for themselves") and unconscious ("in themselves"). It is a conscious choice, he claims, to live one's life "authentically" and in a unified fashion, or not--this is the fundamental freedom of our lives.
Drawing on history and his own rich imagination for examples, Sartre offers compelling supplements to his more formal arguments. The waiter who detaches himself from his job-role sticks in the reader's memory with greater tenacity than the lengthy discussion of inauthentic life and serves to bring the full force of the argument to life. Even if you're not an angst-addicted poet from North Beach, Being and Nothingness offers you a deep conversation with a brilliant mind--unfortunately, a rare find these days. --Rob Lightner
Customer Reviews:
Being and Nothingness.......2007-09-18
I began reading this book for a course in college. I keep coming back to it and read tidbits. I think this book was banned by the Catholic Church because Jean-Paul is in my opinion the boldest man to ever live. Very sharp book--some of the sentences make me think over and over and over again. This book is not to be strived at.
Excellent service........2007-06-14
Haven't read book yet. Quality as expected and described.
Being and Nothingness.......2007-03-09
First of all, to read this book one needs a thorough grounding in modern western philosophy. Without that, don't even bother buying it. Seriously, the amount of esoteric jargon, while justified, as the ideas communicated are complex, is something that needs to be fully understood BEFORE opening this book. That means you need to read Heidegger, Husserl, Kant, Hegel, etc... before this. This is recent stuff and draws on a lot of material.
That small warning out of the way, Sartre's metaphysics suck. I mean like first-rate Hoover action. He's just wrong. Quite simply, he makes Neo-Cartesian (or Neo-Kantian, if you want to be generous, which I don't) errors that nobody who's taken an intro to philosophy course should be taken in by. Sartre has volitionalist ideas and the most radical concept of human liberty ever, then builds a metaphysics around them. His phenomenology is suspect, with the descriptions he gives being too vague. The idea of human consciousness being a sort of "nothingness" which is pure function is totally incoherent and falls into the aforementioned Cartesian metaphysical dualism. He just didn't know his stuff.
That being said, Sartre makes some very insightful comments about existential authenticity and self-deception. The book is worth reading simply for those insights.
In conclusion, if you want to read a really good treatment of phenomenology and the question of Being itself, I suggest you read Being and Time by Martin Heidegger. Very difficult to read, let alone to understand, but well worth it when you're through. B&N is good psychology, but really bad metaphysics, good for those who want to hang around in cafes smoking too many cigarettes and trying to impress the ladies, but a bit of a joke for anyone interested in really good philosophy.
difficult? yes. worthwhile? possibly........2006-02-11
With so much inauthenticity inherent in modern societies, difficult a read as this is, it is worth the plowing. And plowing we must. There are many paths to the mountaintop of self-actualization. The renowned philosopher points a studied finger. I would contrast this classic with his lesser known autobiography, "The Words"...unimaginably poignant poetry guised in the cloak of prose.
The Bible Of Existentialism !.......2005-11-18
"Being And Nothingness" is definitely an old time classic. It is Sartre's Chef D'oeuvre. This book belongs in every library and on every book shelf. I would highly recommend it for every person that harbors an interest and passion for stimulating thoughts and philosophy.
Book Description
Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals ranks alongside Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics as one of the most profound and influential works in moral philosophy ever written. In Kant's own words its aim is to search for and establish the supreme principle of morality, the categorical imperative. This edition presents the acclaimed translation of the text by Mary Gregor, together with an introduction by Christine M. Korsgaard that examines and explains Kant's argument.
Customer Reviews:
A Cornerstone in Thinking about Ethics.......2007-07-05
There were only 9 reviews on this book . . . what can one say. . . either something brings you to this book or it does not. . . if you are reading these reviews, then buy it.
This book is one of the most important and influential works on ethics. It is dense, not an easy read, the structure is loose and troublesome at times, but it is groundbreaking and brilliant.
There are many internet resources to guide you along the reading,. so do not be intimidated. Much of future work will rest on the contributions by Kant.
great introduction, expensive version.......2006-02-25
This version of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals provides a clear and concise introduction. You will find it useful to understand how Kant's moral philosophy fits within his general philosophy and to get acquainted with some of the debates around his work. Although this book is rather expensive for what it is, it is useful and worth buying if you are really interested in this topic.
Cornerstone of Modern Ethical Thinking.......2005-10-31
'Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals' by Immanuel Kant is easily the most important work devoted exclusively to thinking about morality in the history of Philosophy, especially considering it's size.
The cornerstone of the work, and the end result of Kant's analysis is the categorical imperative which says that a moral law are only those for which you can state should be true of all people.
In one fell swoop, Kant marginalizes all thinking about relativism in morality and at the same time distinguishes moral from religious thinking.
If you pair this up with St. Paul's statements in his letter to the Romans (3:19-28) which states strongly that adherance to the law has virtually nothing to do with salvation, it should make things pretty clear to all concerned.
Unfortunately, things are rarely that simple. As important as Kant's conclusion is, it is necessary but not sufficient for a complete analysis of morality.
One excuse may be that this work is really Kant's version of 'Cliff Notes' to his moral argument. His full presentation comes in the 'Critique of Practical Reason', which, however, is not often read.
Note that contrary to another review of this edition, the translator and commentator is the noted Kant scholar of 70 years ago, H. J. Paton.
To people who are not used to reading philosophy, I will not hide the fact that Kant is tough going. He may not be quite as tough as Hegel, the Existentialists, or the ancient Greeks, but he is definitely harder to understand than any modern nonfiction book I can think of.
The biggest argument against the 'Groundwork' and the categorical imperative is usually the fact that it does not rule out trivial rules, such as 'you must always eat a starch at least once a day'. This rule is physically possible for anyone living anywhere in the world, yet it is certainly not a moral law. It is not even a very good dietary law, but that's neither here nor there. A second argument is that Kant's argument seems a bit circular, when he says that the only thing which unqualifiedly good is a good will.
For anyone who has been vexed by moral questions, an honest reading of this work will at the very least give you hope that with the right amount of thought, one can make sense of moral issues.
A truly great book.
It is Imperative to read this..........2005-10-07
As translator H.J. Paton states in his introduction, 'Kant's "Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals" is one of the small books which are truly great' despite the unapproachability of the title. Many rank this book alongside Aristotle's 'Ethics' and Plato's 'Republic'. Its main topic is the supremacy of morals and moral action, and Paton gives a section by section analysis of Kant's book. The purpose of this work is not to work out all of the implications and difficulties with the a priori part of ethics, but rather to set a foundation of the supreme principle of morality.
The centerpiece of the Groundwork is Kant's most famous proposition, the Categorical Imperative. While this is often equated with the Golden Rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you), the Categorical Imperative argues for a more universal set of moral action - for example, if one does not mind being lied to, then lying does not become a problem, according to the Golden Rule, but for Kant, this would be unacceptable as it is a violation of the rational principles of what morals are.
Kant proceeds to look at issues of law, duty, free will and the good will, and autonomy of action. Kant argues strongly for the need for philosophy to guard against whim, taste and personal desire from becoming normative agents in the way we construct the moral universe. He argue for objective principles to govern the will, and categorises these as either hypothetical or categorical. 'All imperatives command either hypothetically or categorically. Hypothetical imperatives declare a possible action to be practically necessary as a means to the attainment of something else that one wills (or that one may will). A categorical imperative would be one which represented an action as objectively necessary in itself apart from its relation to a further end.'
Kant goes from this discussion to the formulation of universal law and the way in which rational agents should formulate and view this kind of law. The final section of this work introduces ideas that will be more fully developed in Kant's 'Critique of Practical Reason', the second of his three-volume Critiques. He also covers some of the arguments from 'Critique of Pure Reason', but not very fully; as Paton states in his analysis, 'Kant cannot assume the elaborate arguments of the "Critique of Pure Reason" to be familiar to his readers nor can he attempt to repeat these elaborate arguments in a short treatise on ethics.' The finite, rational person must regard himself or herself both as a member of the world of experience/perception and also as a member of the world of ideas/rationality. This is the essence of the Empiricist/Rationalist split that Kant synthesises together in the first Critique.
This is not easy going - the original 'Groundwork' had 128 pages, contained here in less than 100 (allowing for type-face differences as well as translation). Paton's version has 40 pages of analysis, endnotes, an index, and a statement about the translation - it is the 40 pages of analysis, keyed to section-by-section sequence, that makes this a very useful edition. This is perhaps the best first text of Kant to read to get a sense of his style, thought, and the foundation of what has become known as his most important principle.
Moral Philosophy.......2005-07-29
Immanuel Kant is truly one of the most influential moral philosophers in history; and with this book, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, he positioned himself far further.
In this book you will find things to be deeply contemplated, about "good will", the moral value of conduct and its metaphysical aspects.
This translation of the Kant's original Grundlegung von Metaphysik der Sitten to English is quiet easy to understand, so it is relatively an easy-reading book.
Book Description
One of the most important philosophical works of our time -- a work that has had tremendous influence on philosophy, literature, and psychology, and has literally changed the intellectual map of the modern world.
Customer Reviews:
Need to learn german language........2007-09-26
I think that this is the most important work into XX century philosophy. But if you really want to understand "Sein und Zeit" is very important that you read the book in Heidegger's maternal language: german.
Disappointed with service........2007-06-14
Within minutes of entering the order, thinking I had not yet done so, I emailed the company asking to delete this order. I received no reply. Book itself is excellent; unfortunately I ordered it twice, and this agent failed even to respond to my request [I admit AFTER I mistakenly entered the order] to delete.
PHENOMENOLOGY RADICALLY CHANGED THE WAY I CONCEIVE OF EXISTENCE.......2007-02-28
Without understanding phenomenology, most of BEING AND TIME will fly over your head. Phenomenology is the study of phenomena. For Heidegger in BEING AND TIME, phenomena are what appear by way of the logos (or understanding) of Da-sein. Now, in relation to phenomena, ask yourself what we mean by "the world." According to Heidegger, phenomena don't exist "out there," outside of our understanding; it's the understanding that gives them their everyday existence as meaningful entities, as things that signify. Heidegger's phenomenology begins with "everydayness." A scientist or philosopher who wants to study human existence might start with a conception of man that is theoretical and/or categorical, such as man as zoological being or rational animal. But a phenomenologist, at least a Heideggerian one, starts with something that comes BEFORE such theoretical views of what a human being is. Everydayness is the way we experience the world in our most primordial mode of existence. This does not mean that we are studying "primitive mindsets" the way anthropologists do. Rather, we are asking about what is basic both for primitive man and also for the most sophisticated person in so far as both are Da-sein. (By the way, I join Stambaugh in not capitalizing "Being" because by being Heidegger does not mean some supreme "Being" like God. Neither does he mean beings in the sense of "things," although he sometimes uses the word in that sense. Fundamentally, he means the being OF beings, their "is-ness.")
One Amazon reviewer criticizes Heidegger for never providing any real world examples in BT. Actually, while the concepts he deals with are admittedly general in so far as they are the most fundamental, Heidegger also explores several "real life" situations, but they are simple, basic things like hammering, driving a car, entering a room, viewing a work of art, running into a friend in public, experiencing phenomenological time on a road trip where different people experience the "length" or duration of the trip differently, and therefore time differently (for one person the trip seems to take forever, while for another it goes by relatively quickly), while a clock records the same length of "objective" time passing for all of them. This is an example of the difference between the way phenomenologists conceive of time and how scientists think about and measure it. Heidegger draws a similar distinction for space. For example, say someone is intently looking at a painting, absorbed by it. That same person is wearing glasses (or today it might be contact lenses). The person completely forgets about the glasses or contact lenses. They are simply absorbed in the painting. Phenomenologically speaking, that painting is nearer to the being of the person who is looking at it than the glasses/contact lenses are. To a scientist this conception of space is nonsensical; a scientist will tell you that the glasses/lenses are closer to the subject and to prove it the scientist will measure the distance. This calculating of exact distance comes limping behind primordial existence. Calculation is derivative and founded upon the priordial phenomenal structure of Da-sein's already being there. Another example Heidegger gives is walking down the street and spotting a friend striding towards you. At that moment, your friend is closer to you than the pavement right under your feet. I like to give a similar example. You're walking down a crowded city street. You spot somebody you know, who is standing twenty feet away. That person you spot who is twenty feet away is closer to you than a stranger walking right behind you whom you don't even notice. Remember, phenomenology deals with your immediate existence, not with "objective reality." Dasein is "in each case mine."
Primordially, phenomenal entities don't occur individually as though, say, a chair or table existed in a complete vacuum all by itself. Rather, phenomena are always part of a total context of relations. This "referential context" Heidegger defines in HISTORY OF THE CONCEPT OF TIME as "basically correlations of meaning, meaningful contexts" (p. 203). This "referential context" constitutes an important concept in BEING AND TIME and should be thought of in terms of the phenomenal understanding of space and time we already described. In everydayness, individual entities exist within and emerge from the total meaningful context, which is not static but dynamic. The referential context doesn't exist "out there" in an objective sense. Rather, it is an intrinsic aspect of our being there in a world to begin with. For instance, signs refer to other things and, as being-in-the-world, we understand them because we already exist within the context of referential relations that are meaningful. Phenomenally, the "worldhood" of the world is made up not of objects but of these referential relations that allow objects to have meaning AS what they ARE (table, rock, tree) to begin with in our pre-reflective, pre-ontological involvement with them, an involvement that is posible only because of this initial circumspect discovery of whatever the specific phenomenon IS due to its being within the referential context, which is what equiprimordially first endows language with meaning (a single word is possible only based on the prior disclosedness of the total referntial context of pre-ontological meaning). Phenomenologically understood, the world is not primarily an assemblage of things; neither is it simply "nature." It isn't the realm of physics or biology. These things are secondary and even tertiary modes of experiencing and understanding the world founded upon our primary way of being. Rather, while not thematically or explicitly obvious to it, everydayness is comprised of references that allow things to exist as phenomena--that is, as the phenomena they ARE, MEANINGFUL entities. In a definite sense, world is what happens "between" or "among" entities, and it is this "among" that makes individual entities what they are. It's not a matter of positing a hammer and then adding nails to the hammer and shelves. World isn't a mere manifold or conglomeration of physical things. Instead, it's the REFERENCES among things that gives things significance, and these references exist because there is a being, Dasein, which we ourselves are, for which the being of entities is a concern, and they are ultimately of concern because of Dasein's concern with its OWN existence. Hence CARE appears as an important constituent of world. Objects such as specimens that are isolated for scientific or theoretical research are always already founded upon the referential context that we always already dwell in in everydayness and care. The scientific/theoretical attitude is not our primordial way of being; it's not phenomenologically primary. Scientific/theoretical modes of experiencing reality, such as mathematical calculation or exact measurement (e.g., the division of time into seconds, minutes, etc., or the precise measuring of distances) are derived from our more basic everyday encounter with phenomena, which at first is very different from the theoretical viewpoint of philosophy or the objective calculations of science. Our primordial way of determining distance and time is rather "rough and ready" and has nothing to do, at least initially, with quantitative precision. Philosophy gave birth to science, but according to Heidegger philosophy has been corrupted by science where the being of beings is concerned. Heidegger's thinking seeks independence from any sort of objective calculation. Science deals with beings, not with the being of those beings as philosophy, in the form of fundamental ontology, should. Western philosophy, in accord with science, posited that bodily presence and/or physical extension in space had primordiality. This had led to a "crisis" in philosophy and in the sciences in general. Thinking didn't seem to be properly grounded in what was most basic to human existence. Thinkers such as Kierkegaard and Husserl had been trying to "ground" thinking, but it was Heidegger who finally laid bare that ground, combining Husserl's phenomenology with Kierkegaard's call to authentic existence. What is most basic and primordial is not a being's bodily presence or its extension in space but the BEING of that being, the BEING of anything in general. Heidegger doesn't deny or refute science. His aim is rather to "inquire into the ontological possibility of how the sciences have their source in Dasein's state of being." That is, how is it that science exists AT ALL as a possibility--as a way for us "to be"? How did science emerge out of our primordial being?
To get at what is primordial, Heidegger explores simple, nontheoretical, common ways of being, what we've called "everydayness." For instance, he discusses tools (equipment) because work (considered broadly so that even opening a door or getting into bed or any use of entities is understood as work) is the primary way we encounter and indeed discover the world. A hammer is primarily not simply this mere thing with bodily presence. In terms of the existence of this phenomenal entity called a "hammer," bodily presence is not the most basic thing about it. It is not primarily a substance, or a thing extended in space, as Descartes would have said. Rather, the primary being of the hammer as a phenomenal entity (i.e., in its significance as a hammer) lies in hammering. In the everyday work-world, the hammer exists as a meaningful phenomenon through its USE. Relative to the total referential totality, its phenomenal "involvements" (the "towards-which," "with-which," "for which") are what make a hammer what it is in its BEING. But it could never be free for this being without that being who uses the hammer, the being of DASEIN, who has a "there" in which the hammer can be what it is. The hammer by itself has no "there" in which it can be. Everything that is "ready-to-hand" has meaning only from within this relational context of lived experience--the work itself and all the understanding assignments and connections it entails. If you are building a bookshelf, the hammer exists (i.e., has meaning) in relation to the nails and boards and indeed to your whole working environment, which is in turn oriented toward what you want to accomplish, a "what-for" and ultimately a "for whom" (for Heidegger, the world is anything but impersonal). It's the referential context--the worldhood of the world--and not any individual thing within that context, that is primary. Here we spot the problem that Heidegger had with Husserl, who often started his phenomenological reductions by isolating objects and therefore not acknowledging everydayness, the primary way that objects are encountered via our concern with them within the referential context. Instead, Husserl starts from a theoretical standpoint that for Heidegger is simply not primordial, not basic, not "the ground" that phenomenology should lay bare. By so doing, Husserl passes over the worldhood of the world and thus also the primary phenomenological structure of existence. That is, by passing over the original structure, Husserl also passes over the possibility of encountering the being of beings. Heidegger studies beings as they exist in our everyday lives, in the most primordial way of encountering, discovering, and knowing things, because this primary encounter is what originally occludes the being of beings. To approach the being of beings we must first be able to see how it is that it gets obscured in the first place (in everydayness), and then further obscured by theory and science. For all the complexity of his writing, Heidegger's goal is to get you to see and think about very basic structures and modes of existence--things that are so close to us that we overlook them.
While it was Husserl who developed the phenomenological method of reduction, Heidegger believed that Husserl missed the opportunity for reawakening the fundamental question of being to which phenomenology provides a path. As for the phenomenological method itself (and it is primarily a method, a way of approaching pure existence), it requires a special and systematic approach toward phenomena so that we gain access to the things themselves as they show themselves in themselves from themselves. Even if you could deny that the external world is really as you perceive it or that it exists at all, nobody can deny their own PERCEPTIONS, whether they be imaginary or otherwise, and it is this direct accessibility to the irrefutable phenomenal "world" of our own immediate experience that phenomenology explores. In this sense, even dreams, hallucinations, and things we imagine cannot be denied their existence; they are real and true as phenomena. Because phenomenology deals with immediate experience, it is "I myself" who have access to that experience. We are each our own best phenomenologist. Notice also the implicit Cartesianism here, an aspect of Husserl's phenomenology that Heidegger spends time "destructing." In any case, the phenomenological method lets us discover ontological structures so basic to our being that we live our lives totally overlooking them just as human beings have been overlooking them for all history (though according to Heidegger the Greeks, particularly the presocratics, came close to uncovering being).
Perception and reflection, says Husserl, are acts. For instance, I can think about (reflect upon), a chair or a table, or even upon an abstract idea or concept that is not part of the "external" world, so that every reflection has its object, whether real or ideal, about which the reflection is properly and intentionally a reflection. Phenomenology requires us to step back to grasp not merely the primary objects of everyday reflection but to catch reflection itself in the act of reflecting and to examine this act as well as its object in its phenomenological structure so that the "object" of phenomenology is not merely this or that external entity or immanent idea but rather the phenomenon itself in its being as it emerges from the intentional act of reflection/experience, in order to see how it comes into being as what it is in pure givenness. But Heidegger points out the subject/object dichotomy explicit in the above. He supersedes Husserlian phenomenology by locating something more fundamental: being-in-the-world. Heidegger wants you to see not merely the world, but the worldhood of the world. Not just what things are, but THAT they are and how it is that they are.
BT explores the Cartesian dichotomy that served as a foundation for Husserl's thinking and of modern metaphysical thinking in general: the distinction between inner and outer, the idea that consciousness is something immanent "inside" us while the world is "outside," and how the two come together in transcendence. Heidegger argues that mind and body--our being and the existence of the world--aren't separate things that must be put together; rather, they are together to begin with and it is only upon this primordial unitary PHENOMENOLOGICAL structure of existence that the Cartesian duality is founded. Heidegger does not so much refute Descartes as he grounds Cartesian--and indeed all--philosophy in an underlying structure that is more basic than anything hitherto imagined. Heidegger will show you how this dichotomy between inner and outer is deceptive, how it is more properly founded upon Da-sein, whose basic mode of existence has the ontological structure of being-in-the-world, which is the invisible and indeed indivisible structure of existence, prior even to the Cartesian subject. This a priori unitary phenomenal structure (and what Heidegger ultimately means by "world" is phenomenological) underlies the concept of mind/body (subject/object; form/content) that tries to explain existence in terms of the metaphysical bifurcation that creates a gulf between immanent consciousness and external reality, between us and the world. For Heidegger, the world isn't what's "out there." Rather, world is the "there" that being discloses (thus we are dasein, which is German for "there-being"). For Heidegger, the phenomenon of everydayness is more original than traditional metaphysics or science, and hence prior to the subject/object distinction, which, as theory, is possible only on the basis of this prior everyday way of existence. Now at this point some might raise the following objection: the brain is literally inside the body; therefore isn't it simply an empirical fact that our consciousness or mind must be inside us and indeed that that is the case and in a physical sense? My rejoinder is the following: picture a vessel, say a box, with something in it, a sweater, book or any other object. That sweater is inside the box, and yet both the box AND the sweater are "out there" in the world that is seemingly outside of you and is also empirically outside the box. But aren't both box and sweater part of the same world as you and your consciousness? Doesn't the box simply delineate A REGION of the world which is actually NOT outside or separate from the world? The sweater is not in any sense outside of, beside, apart, or even distinct from the world just by virtue of the fact that it is inside the box. Similarly, our mind might seem to be apart from the world by virtue of being inside of us, but is it really beside or apart or distinct from the world? Now that's an ontic way of thinking about it; the real trick is to understand it ontologically--not in terms of physical space but phenomenological space. According to Heidegger, our consciousness isn't primarily inside us in everydayness but already "out there" interacting with the world to begin with. In a very real sense, consciousness IS the world because without the MEANINGFUL referential context of worldhood there could be no world, at least not as a phenomenon. The referential context assumes the existence of understanding and understanding assumes a conscious being. (I should note, however, that Heidegger avoids traditional terms like "mind" and "consciousness." I'm using them here as a sort of shorthand, but strictly speaking I should be saying "Dasein" and "being-in-the-world," etc., except that I don't want to assume too much prior knowledge of these terms by the reader.) It's not so much that theoretical thinking or the scientific way of understanding the world are wrong; it's that they are secondary phenomena that emerge from our everyday way of being in the world, and what Heidegger leads us back to, both through his brilliant dismantling of the philosophical tradition and his examination of everydayness on his way to a discovery (or rediscovery) of being, is this everyday way of encountering the world.
What is the world? Heidegger answers this question in one of the most fascinating explications I have ever encountered in all my years of reading. He ends up showing nothing less than the basic structure of our existence, not in an evolutionary sense (by going back in time to trace how we evolved and from what, or how we were first created), but rather how it is that we exist right here right now and at all times. The fundamental structure of existence is grounded in time, but Heidegger offers a novel way of thinking about time. Time can never be measured by any clock. Time is something that first of all must be lived. We ARE our own time. I won't go into it now, but the idea of time is inextricably bound with the notion that we realize our own existence by being finite. We can't understand time in a phenomenological sense without taking death into consideration. Death and "the nothing" play a major part in Heidegger's thinking, though his thinking is ultimately not nihilistic. Anyhow, this is the problem with starting to explain Heidegger: I can go on and on, but will force myself to stop. I haven't even gone into the main part of Heidegger's thinking, such as his conception of history and his analysis of authentic and inauthentic existence. But by now you should at least have a clue about how to approach Heidegger. You can disagree with him, of course, but certainly the people who claim that his writing is vague and unclear just don't know what they are talking about. I can finally say this with certainty. Of course, phenomenologically I can't deny the existence of the vagueness these people experience/perceive, but they shouldn't blame it on Heidegger. To really study Heidegger is to learn to understand just how clearly he saw things and how lucidly he explained them.
One last thought. Although both atheists and theists can, to a point, safely approach BT, Heidegger's "destruction" of Descartes' work on immanent existence and external reality got me thinking about the Cartesian idea of God being the uncreated substance that exists independently of his creation, so that we have a structure that posits a creator separate and distinct from his creation, and conversely a creation (world) that is external to (albeit dependent on) the creator who made it--and in much the same way that Descartes describes the world being outside of and apart from our own mind as existing subjects. The res cogitans (the thinking thing) is distinct from the physical thing of external reality that is merely extended in space (res extenso). These entities are so distinct to Descartes that, according to him, the mind can exist even if there were no world at all (hence the Cartesian correlation between mind and spirit). To Heidegger, the notion that mind could exist without world is absurd since to him being and world are indivisible aspects of existence. Our being is Da-sein, which means "there-being" or "being-there," and THERE implies a world. The sense I have now is that, if God exists and is conscious of both his own existence and that of his creation, he would inform existence in a way that goes beyond the mere physical act of creating an external reality. What would properly exist would not be the creation outside of him but rather the phenomenon that exists by virtue of his apprehension of it. Otherwise, as Heidegger says, there would be no existence at all without Da-sein. Then again, if God exists, he is Da-sein also.
A philosophical classic.......2006-11-16
Martin Hiedigger is one of the most controversial philosophers from the 20th century. Certainly at the very least a very dark shadow is cast over him by his association with the Nazi party in the 1930's, as well as several dispicable actions which he deserves infamy for, most notably his cruel actions towards his benefactor and mentor Edmund Husserl, himself one of the finest philosophers of the 20th century.
Added to this is the terrible obscurity of much of Heidigger's tortured writing. Like many German philosophers he seemed to not take much care with clear and logical expression, something more valued in the UK and the English speaking world. Sometimes the works of Heidigger can seem as impenetrable as the Amazon rainforest.
However, with some patience, Heidigger in my view is saying something deep and profound in Being and Time, as well as his other works. He does, despite his shortcomings, deserve to remain considered a great philosopher, not for how he behaved, but for what he thought.
Being and time is probably his most important work and is basically an attempt to rethink the problem of human existence after the collapse of religious belief and metaphysics. What meaning can ultimately be given to our existence in the world? What point do we start from, if God doesn't exist?
It is hard to pin down Heidigger in terms of religious belief, and it could be said he might be trying to work out a philosophy of Being and existence which will make it possible for us to regain the wonder of existence held by the ancient Greeks like Parmenides or Heraclitus, without falling into dogmatism. The starting point for Heidigger is our temporality, that is, the fact we exist as beings in time. There is no flight from our world to another world where there is no time; to properly understand ourselves philosophically we must take our temporality as a given. There is no static humanity; hence no essence preceding existence. The second key point is the giveness of the world, and the third is being human, we are always concerned for this world and the things in it. All these three things are integral and one; none can exist without the other.
Our fundamental mode of existence in this world is one of 'care.' Because of our concern for other things and people, the world is not a formless nothing but instead reveals itself as something 'present to hand', something which arouses our interest and curiosity. This basic fact of our existence is what creates the impulse to wonder, and hence our impulses to religion, to philosophy, and to science.
Another critical idea in Heidigger is our relation to death. Because we are concious of our death, we know our being is finite and is completed by death. However, to Hiedigger it is vitally important we don't run away from our mortality but accept it and make it a part of who we are; our greatest possibility is our possibility not to be.
Of course Heidigger's thought is immensely complex and there is more to it than just these ideas. While we may criticize his existential analysis of our being, in my view his insights are very interesting and still worth considering, and it will be some time before the meaning of these thoughts become entirely clear.
The Philosophy of Relevance .......2006-11-04
As philosophy spirals into irrelevance and vacuousness with the analytic dominance, Heidegger's Being and Time is more important than ever. If Kant gave us a Medusa with an iron rod rammed through as a transcendental ego, Heidegger presents us with living, breathing humanity. There can be no doubt that this is among the most important books of the 20th century. Those who deny this are almost invariably the ones who don't understand it.
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We may talk of virtual reality and speak in virtual conversations, but we simply can't help actually occupying a concrete place. Long marginalized by philosophers, the idea of place is here rescued from the dustbins of philosophical history in a meticulous tracing of the idea of place from the immanent categories of Aristotle, to the Enlightenment dissolution of place into space, and to Martin Heidegger's reclamation of place from space. Edward Casey leads us through rocky and challenging terrain to a destination that already has been profitably mined for its literary riches by the likes of Gary Snyder and William Kittredge. The Fate of Place is a welcome addition and sure to be influential.
Book Description
In this imaginative and comprehensive study, Edward Casey, one of the most incisive interpreters of the Continental philosophical tradition, offers a philosophical history of the evolving conceptualizations of place and space in Western thought. Not merely a presentation of the ideas of other philosophers, The Fate of Place is acutely sensitive to silences, absences, and missed opportunities in the complex history of philosophical approaches to space and place. A central theme is the increasing neglect of place in favor of space from the seventh century A.D. onward, amounting to the virtual exclusion of place by the end of the eighteenth century.
Casey begins with mythological and religious creation stories and the theories of Plato and Aristotle and then explores the heritage of Neoplatonic, medieval, and Renaissance speculations about space. He presents an impressive history of the birth of modern spatial conceptions in the writings of Newton, Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant and delineates the evolution of twentieth-century phenomenological approaches in the work of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Bachelard, and Heidegger. In the book's final section, Casey explores the postmodern theories of Foucault, Derrida, Tschumi, Deleuze and Guattari, and Irigaray.
Book Description
Long recognized as one of the greatest medieval philosophical theologians, John Duns Scotus made his most innovative theoretical contributions in the area of metaphysics. A careful and detailed study of his argument for the existence of God and the theory of knowledge that makes this possible provides the most direct access to his basic ideas. Unlike the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas or Anselm's famous Proslogion argument, Scotus's proof is of another order of complexity and amounts to a little "summa" of his metaphysics. Among those theologians to accept Aristotle's scientific theory, Scotus is perhaps the first to realize fully its negative consequences if the philosophical doctrines of divine illumination and the analogical concept of being interact. His treatment of the God-question is distinguished for its deliberatively holistic approach to what was conventionally a series of unrelated topics.
Customer Reviews:
The Mind that Rivals Aquinas.......2001-07-23
This is not a book for the philosopher timid of heart. Blessed John Duns Scotus is one of the greatest minds that the Franciscan school of thought has produced. He has inspired so much of the work of the Franciscan philosophers and theologians; although it must be said that the Franciscans are very free thinkers. The book contains both selections from the metaphysical texts of Scotus and a commentary by William Frank and Allan Wolter, who have brilliantly unwoven the tightly knit thought of this logical mastermind. Scotus can prove a great challenge for the sheer depth of his work and also because of the modern mind's distance from the time, place, and style within which Scotus wrote. These two commentators provide the avid philosopher ample tools for the successful comprehension of the Scotistic vision of metaphysics, including his highly contraversial theory of univocity (Thomists, please read this with an open mind).
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- The brilliance of Deleuze
- Grounding a Philosophy of Difference
- Deleuze is a monster
- The Crux of Thought
- Deleuze wasn't messing around here, seriously.
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Difference and Repetition
Gilles Deleuze
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ASIN: 0231081596 |
Book Description
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--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.
Customer Reviews:
The brilliance of Deleuze.......2006-01-14
Difference and Repetition is the most brilliant work of philosophy I have read. However the book does rely on a huge amount of background knowledge which took my over a year and a half to compile. My advice for any reader attempting to read D&R is to read Manuel DeLanda's Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy. All of the obscure references to mathematical and scientific concepts are throuroughly explicated in DeLandas book. I can honestly say that if it were not for Intensice Philsosophy and Virtual Science I would not have been able to comprehend the key philosophical concepts deployed in D&R such as singlarities as pre-individual attractors and the nature of the virtual.
D&R is a work which may require intense effort from the reader, as none of the concepts are adequately explained by deleuze himself. But the challenge is most rewarding as the book gives you the concepts to think about a world without pre established identities and stabilities. Only now is science beginning to comprehend the universe as inherently random and dynamical which gives rise to complex self organizing systems.
A classic of modern philosophy and a brilliant achievement by an author who thought outside all contemporary philosophical trends to overthrow the 'father' of philosophy: Plato.
Much worth the effort, if a 19 year old Undergraduate can make sense of this book then anyone with enough time, patience and conceptualisation should be able to master this brilliant work.
Grounding a Philosophy of Difference.......2003-12-30
This is (arguably) the most important work written by Deleuze for a reason that seems to me is often obscured or merely forgotten: it is (maybe) the only work that seeks to lay the foundation for a systematic treatment of `difference' and by ex-tension (or in-tension) `repetition'. It does not seek to derive `difference' and `repetition' (simply) from identity and the in-dividual. It seeks to think of `difference' and `repetition' in themselves. And this is what is important here: thinking (and not some petty play of figures and words in the frontal attacks or soul mating with particular thinkers) in its rhizomatic form rather than its arborescent one.
What is therefore central in this work is `idea', and (therefore) `perception'. In simple terms, Deleuze has managed to provide us with some foundational links with the philosophies of mind, language and time (and moreover besides). He has given to the philosophy of difference a central and unifying role (across such and other disciplines) to play.
In this sense `difference' and `repetition' are not only (simply) linked between them (in the sense that one leads to the other), but also linked with other important notions usually discussed and developed in other (philosophical) disciplines. Let me provide some brief indications.
Chapter 1 is concerned with `difference', not as mere `diversity', `otherness' or `negation', bur rather as `general' or `specific' difference, where the latter refers to the moment when difference is reconciled with the concept in general. In this manner, Deleuze sees `difference' as a concept of reflection in relation to `representation' that involves `movement'. He further discusses the notion of `eternal return' and questions the adoption of a `meta-viewpoint' for thinking about `difference' and `repetition' - the latter being the relation between originals and simulacra.
In chapter 2, Deleuze lays out the relation between (the dualities) `repetition' and `sensing', `habit', and `difference', under the guise that "difference inhabits repetition", in that it "lies between two repetitions" (p.76). He also makes the distinction between `natural' and `artificial' signs, hence the distinction between two types of `difference', one being the expression of the other. In parallel, he distinguishes `active' from `passive' synthesis (relative to time) in that "the activity of thought applies to a receptive being, to a passive subject" (p.86). Finally drawing on Bergson, he distinguishes the `real' centre from where emanates a series of `perception-images' from a `virtual' centre from where emanates a series of `memory-images'.
Chapter 3 is for Deleuze the most important (sic) because the thinking of `difference' and `repetition' is based on a dogmatic image of thought characterised by eight postulates, each with a dual form, the artificial and the natural.
In Chapter 4, this duality underlies the development of the notion of `idea' in that it is problematic, hence dialectical, an "n-dimensional, continuous, defined multiplicity" (p.182) in a `perplication' as the distinctive and coexistent state of ideas. Each `idea' is thus linked with `difference' and `representation' in that "the representation of difference refers to the identity of the concept as its principle" (p.178). In this manner he makes the claim for the superiority of problematic-questioning approach over the (traditional) hypothetico-apodictic approach because questions are imperatives.
Chapter 5 starts with the claim that "difference is not diversity. Diversity is given, but difference is that by which the given is given, that by which the given is given as diverse" (p.222). Difference is therefore (a given) `intensity' expressed as `extensity'. There is `depth' that unites intensity and extensity. Therefore, `depth' is the intensity of being from where emerge at once extensity and the qualities of being. In this manner Deleuze accepts a dual condition of difference: one natural and one artificial.
In the concluding chapter Deleuze argues that 'representation' is a site of transcendental illusion which comes in four interrelated forms relative to `thought', `sensibility', `idea' and `being'. Hence the problematic of 'grounding' representation and his argument (or Idea) for 'groundlessness', and the justification of the use of (systems of) 'simulacra' as sites for the actualisation of ideas. Hence that of `difference' and `repetition' where the former is not only located between the levels and degrees of the latter, but also has two faces, namely, habit and memory.
Overall, despite the difficulty of the text itself as it takes for granted knowledge of the philosophies of some other thinkers (e.g. Bergson), it is a central text in the philosophy of difference and for just this reason, a text one must have read!
Deleuze is a monster.......2003-06-20
Difference and repetition struck me as nothing I've ever read before has struck me. The fun thing about "reading" it, is that, when you think about it, the act of reading itself makes understanding parts of this work more clear. Reading this becomes a "machinic" activity as it were: immediate, affective, with its own unpredictability, with many gaps, moments of insight, despair, and so on. It seems contradictory, because I think it is the most rigorous and analytic of all of Deleuzes works. But it is immensely dense, as other reviewers also say.
It is certainly the crucial work in his oeuvre. Really if you have tried it a few times, you will notice that many ideas of his later work are based on the crucial notions of this grand exploration. Anti-Oedipe is such a delight to read and easy to understand after this one.
And I think it is good for those who want to approach Deleuze's thought, to start with the Anti-Oedipus and Mille Plateaux, then read some of the smaller and intensive works (What is philosophy, Leibniz et le Baroque). Then try this book. You will get many references and want to read all others once again.
It is clearly in this work that you will find the first monstrous and frontal attack against Hegel's dialectic. The fun thing is that this is a complete "anti-work". Every conceivable concept of modern philosophy (from the concept of "common sense", "history", or "being") gets an "anti", with which Deleuze consistently builds his grand idea of the immediate, the pre- or non-representational and the virtual--against any metaphysics. It is moreover his first, and I think also his last work where he builds his philosophy in a consistent manner.
After this one, I think he started exploring fragments of his thought more deeply, in his other works, which are derivatives so to speak. This is his goodbye to classic French philosphy (strong tradition of exploring the "history of philosophy") and his entrée into his own experimentation with the concepts he just developed.
To conclude, just some practical notes. The problem with the book is that, unlike his other works, you have to read all of it (because it is so consistent). This makes it a project for months, or even years. Good luck.
The Crux of Thought.......2003-02-12
It took me reading Deleuze's books on Kant, Bergson, Nietzsche, Foucault and his collaborations with Guattari in Thousand Plateaus and Anti-Oedipus to finally get through this book . Difference and Repetion explains all the others, but is incredibly dense and in no way an introduction to his thinking. If you're familiar with his project, however, then this brings the rest of his readings into focus.
It's in this book that Deleuze gets as close as he ever comes to replying to Hegel, and in that sense it's here that he contends with the master and the dialectic--a battle or contest characteristic of his French compatriots (see Vincent Descombes' fantastic book: Modern French Philosophy; and Michael Hardt's summary of the early Deleuzian projects: Gilles Deleuze: An Apprenticeship in Philosophy). Difference and repetition are such an alternative to the dialectic that they're difficult to grasp without a serious grounding in metaphysics (see his books on Kant and Hume especially), Spinoza, and Bergson.
Deleuze wants to show that there is a materiality of expression that is also a movement within time, an unfolding that is also a becoming ( and in this sense in contrast to Being). This movement image (which founds his analysis in the Cinema books) grounds for Deleuze a transcendental empiricism, which is to say a non-conceptual and material, positive and affirmative idea of thought. Read his books on Kant and Hume first for an overview of his critique of representation.
I think this book is stunning, and i hope to read it over and over. The first three chapters are incredible, and amount to nothing short of a complete undoing of representational thought, or what he characterizes as a logic of the same.
Deleuze wasn't messing around here, seriously........2002-11-14
Many people consider this to be the cornerstone of Deleuze's body of work, and in many ways it is. In many ways it is also invaluable, and perhaps the most significant piece of philosophy to emerge in the last half-century (though I don't think so, but I also don't think we're ready for this book yet, so I await Deleuze's Kojeve eagerly). Difference and Repetition is a front to back masterpiece, and on every page Deleuze's colossal creative genius is on full display. But, that doesn't mean you'll like it--in fact, I bet you (in your heart of hearts) won't. And I'm not challenging anyone--I don't even like it. Even stronger: I can't really fathom how it is POSSIBLE to like it. Let me tell you why, if you haven't already tried the beast a few times (in which case you know already).
D&R runs at a pace and a level of sophistication that perhaps no one in the world besides Deleuze himself could completely follow. It is assumed that not only are you familiar with the ins and outs of some of the most obscure aspects of people like Kant, Leibniz, and Bergson--but that you also be familiar with Deleuze's take on those aspects (which I just dont see how you could grasp in any way but superficially from this book). It's also assumed that you have experience in differential calculus and its theoretical underpinnings (granted mostly from Leibniz and Structuralism, but come on, who can really explain what a "singular point" is without it?). And to top all of that off, it is, very apparently (I won't say really) unwieldy and circulates between all of the above mentioned and more and much more in the snap of a finger. No doubt part of the book's affect and greatness, but, no doubt, more than part of the reason why no one can (under)stand it.
I'm not kidding when I say this: D&R is indisputably the most difficult piece of philosophy I've ever read. It will run off 15-20 dense pages at a time that are not just prolix and turgid, but sometimes senselessly so. Yeah, you wrestle with it about three or four times, you have your moments of lucidity, little chunks here and there that are admittedly shining examples of what sort of a writer Deleuze was and would become. But I repeat: you think Kant, Heidegger, Whitehead, Derrida, Jameson, and Hegel are difficult? I swear before everything holy and unholy this book that you might buy today is infinitely more difficult than anything any of them ever wrote.
But don't take my word for it. Try it, and be honest with yourself. Don't just get it so you can say "oh, come on, it's not that bad." Try and explain it, try and give accounts for your explanations, try and tie it all together, or not. Until I see a lucid exposition of this book (like Holland's for AO), I refuse to believe that anyone really likes it or understands its SPIRIT (not of course the letter, which anyone can get, and parrot). Yet--undoubtedly worth every minute of your time. Such is the enigma of Deleuze...
Book Description
Martin Heidegger is now widely recognized alongside Wittgenstein as one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. He redefined the central task of philosophy as the investigation of the nature of being, and has exerted a profound impact on literary theory, theology, psychotherapy, political theory, aesthetics, environmental studies, as well as mainstream philosophy. His thought has contributed to the recent turn to hermeneutics in philosophy and the social sciences, and to current post-modern and post-structuralist developments. The disclosing of his deep involvement in the ideology of Nazism has provoked much debate about the relation of philosophy to politics. This volume contains both overviews of Heidegger's life and works and analysis of his most important work, Being and Time. In addition there are discussions of Heidegger's thought in relation to mysticism, traditional theology, ecology, psychotherapy, and the philosophy of language. The volume also contains the first in-depth study of what has been called Heidegger's second greatest work, the Beitrage zur Philosophie.
Customer Reviews:
Fairly Helpful.......2006-06-12
This is a competent guide for new students of Heidegger, though it is necessarily crude to have to simplify and reorganize his thinking. The chapter death, time, and history is probably the most helpful, for it is some of Heidegger's most challenging material. Also included are essays on Heidegger's thoughts on psychotherapy, ecology, Buddhism, and technology. Although the essay on Heidegger's politics is fairly amateurish. An average text on the whole.
An interesting guide for new readers and non-specialists........2001-10-09
THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO HEIDEGGER. Edited by Charles Guignon. 389 pp. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1993 and reprinted. ISBN 0-521-385970-0 (Pbk).
This excellent collection of articles for students and the general reader contains, in addition to an extremely clear and useful 40-page introductory overview of Heidegger's thought and career by Charles Guignon, the following thirteen pieces:
1. The Question of Being: Heidegger's Project - DOROTHEA FREDE; 2. Reading a life : Heidegger and hard times - THOMAS SHEEHAN; 3. The unity of Heidegger's thought - FREDERICK A. OLAFSON; 4. Intentionality and world : Division I of 'Being and Time' - HARRISON HALL; 5. Time and phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger - ROBERT J. DOSTAL; 6. Heidegger and the hermeneutic turn - DAVID COUZENS HOY; 7. Death, time, history : Division II of 'Being and Time' - PIOTR HOFFMAN; 8. Authenticity, moral values, and psychotherapy - CHARLES B. GUIGNON; 9. Heidegger, Buddhism, and deep ecology - MICHAEL E. ZIMMERMAN; 10. Heidegger and theology - JOHN D. CAPUTO; 11. Heidegger on the connection between nihilism, art, technology, and politics - HUBERT L. DREYFUS; 12. Engaged agency and background in Heidegger - CHARLES TAYLOR; 13. Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and the reification of language - RICHARD RORTY.
Although many of these contributors are distinguished Heidegger scholars, most do seem to have successfully pitched their discussion at a level suited to the non-specialist, and although this book is by no means a 'Heidegger Made Simple' (a certain amount of background in both philosophy and Heidegger would be useful) most readers should come away with an enhanced understanding of Heidegger and a desire to know more. The absolute beginner, however, might prefer - after reading Charles Guignon's Introduction, and before plunging into the articles - to read a more extended general introduction such as George Steiner's 'Martin Heidegger' (1987).
Besides helping the general reader and non-specialist, the Companion will also be of use to more advanced students as providing a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of Heidegger, and here the inclusion of Zimmerman's excellent article is both gratifying and noteworthy. Too often, books about Heidegger completely overlook the fact that many of the most brilliant minds in Asia have spent the last two thousand years pondering some of the very same problems that exercised Heidegger, and that a knowledge of their thoughts about such matters as Being or Time can sometimes help us to better understand Heidegger.
Readers, for example, might take a look at Book 11 of Dogen's 'Shobogenzo,' UJI (Existence-Time or Being-Time), or at such works as Graham Parkes 'Heidegger and Asian Thought' or Richard Mays 'Heidegger's Hidden Sources : East Asian Influences on his Work' (see my Listmania List 'Understanding Heidegger' for details). Dorothea Frede, in her 'The Question of Being,' asks (without answering) the question : "What led to the "breakthrough" that provided Heidegger with the clue for attacking the question of the meaning of being in a new way . . . ?" (page 51). Who knows? Might it have been Asian thought? It certainly begins to look so.
The Companion also includes a List of contributors, a Chronology, a curiously organized 22-page Bibliography of both German and English works (which would have been easier to consult if the items had been spaced) and an Index. It is well-printed in a large, clear font on excellent paper, is bound in a sturdy glossy wrapper, and comes with a glued spine. Well organized and well produced, The Companion becomes a fitting addition to the distinguished Cambridge series and should be of interest to all serious students of Heidegger.
Superb.......2000-05-11
A simply excellent collection of articles on Heidegger, covering a broad spectrum of subjects ranging from Heidegger's views on technology, ontology, phenomenology, hermeneutics, theology and nihilism to art, morality, nazism, and language.
Guignon has compiled essays that are of good philosophical quality yet understandable (a big problem when it comes to some of Heidegger's own writings).
An Excellent Introduction.......2000-01-06
As a student, I found this book to be an extremely helpful introduction to Heidegger's philosophy. I get much more out reading Heidegger now than I did before having read this book. It is a well organized, clearly written, and scholarly collection of essays, which explicate major themes in Heidegger's works. I recommend it to students and laymen.
Book Description
Evil threatens human reason, for it challenges our hope that the world makes sense. For eighteenth-century Europeans, the Lisbon earthquake was manifest evil. Today we view evil as a matter of human cruelty, and Auschwitz as its extreme incarnation. Examining our understanding of evil from the Inquisition to contemporary terrorism, Susan Neiman explores who we have become in the three centuries that separate us from the early Enlightenment. In the process, she rewrites the history of modern thought and points philosophy back to the questions that originally animated it.
Whether expressed in theological or secular terms, evil poses a problem about the world's intelligibility. It confronts philosophy with fundamental questions: Can there be meaning in a world where innocents suffer? Can belief in divine power or human progress survive a cataloging of evil? Is evil profound or banal? Neiman argues that these questions impelled modern philosophy. Traditional philosophers from Leibniz to Hegel sought to defend the Creator of a world containing evil. Inevitably, their efforts--combined with those of more literary figures like Pope, Voltaire, and the Marquis de Sade--eroded belief in God's benevolence, power, and relevance, until Nietzsche claimed He had been murdered. They also yielded the distinction between natural and moral evil that we now take for granted. Neiman turns to consider philosophy's response to the Holocaust as a final moral evil, concluding that two basic stances run through modern thought. One, from Rousseau to Arendt, insists that morality demands we make evil intelligible. The other, from Voltaire to Adorno, insists that morality demands that we don't.
Beautifully written and thoroughly engaging, this book tells the history of modern philosophy as an attempt to come to terms with evil. It reintroduces philosophy to anyone interested in questions of life and death, good and evil, suffering and sense.
Customer Reviews:
They Way Philosophy Could Be Done But All too Often Isn't.......2007-04-03
Nieman argues that philosophy, historically speaking, is not about epistemology, as most of the textbooks claim, but that philosophers from Descartes (Leibniz) all the way into the 20th century had a different view in mind. No less than eminent New Testament scholar NT Wright has recommended this book as outstanding in surveying the issues and making the case for the thesis that theodicy is the centerpoint of philosophical questioning in the 17th through the 20th centuries. To quote him, from his own book on "Evil and the Justice of God," Wright calls Nieman's book "brilliant." (See page 20) Having read the book and been absolutely appreciative of her argument, and the clarity with which she makes her case, I have to say that Wright's judgment is correct (as I am convinced that most of his judgments are). Buy the book, its worth it.
Who'd a thunk it...an actual philosophy book.......2006-01-16
This is a very good book. It actually is a philosophy book in that it makes one think about the fundamental: Is there a purpose? It does this by describing how philosophers over the last 300 years have defined and explained suffering and evil. I had not read many of the authors but Neiman is able to frame up their thoughts in the text without too much trouble. I made a couple of sidetrips to the dictionary and some other reference sources but not many. For the authors I had read, I found her observations new and interesting. Some key themes that bounced around are:
-Is there an inherent conflict between the idea of an omnipotent God and a benevolent God?
-Is a moral choice truly moral if the person knows that there is a specific reward or punishment tied to it? So, is the only universe where free will can truly be free one where nothing can be proved?
-How much of our moral views might really be more related to psychology?
-What is the role of intention in evil? Natural disaters were considered an evil at one time but were defined away. Is being a bureaucrat within a structure that causes suffering intentional evil or not?
What I feel is missing from the book is a treatment of how non-western religions and philosophies have dealt with the problem. Including a Buddhist perspective would have been a good addition. However, because Neiman framed her discussion up the way she did, it's not failure, it's just a choice. Maybe she will deal with it elsewhere.
This book has rekindled my own dormant interest in philosophy and I now have a short list of the other books I want to read as follow-ups.
Amazing........2005-09-26
This is a very good book. If you have ever wondered "How can a good God allow such evil in the world?" or "Given that there is such evil in the world, if there is an all-powerful God, that God must be evil", then this book will be interesting for you. It takes you through the centuries-long philosophical attempts of reasonable people to make sense of evil in the world.
That said, this is not an easy book to read. It is written for an audience familiar with philosophy, as part of the larger conversations of philosophers. It isn't an introduction to philosophy.
It is readable, with patience and a good dictionary, by an ordinary reader without a degree in philosophy. And it is worth the time and effort.
Is Evil A Dead Issue?.......2003-08-07
The concept of evil has occupied a significant place in philosophy throughout the history of man's thinking. Dr. Neiman has written a very interesting book that explores the problem of evil as considered from early modern thinking to the present.
The question is, of course, how do you reconcile an omnipotent, benevolent Deity with the existence of evil. She starts the discussion with Leibnitz who felt that God considered all possible worlds, and decided that the one we have is the best one possible. Evil was divided into two types: natural evil that encompassed the cruelties of nature (floods, earthquakes, droughts, etc.) and moral evil i.e. those acts that we humans are responsible for. Pierre Bayle and Voltaire eagerly tore this idea to shreds. Rousseau came along and said that man, and not God was responsible for all evil, as man had become corrupted through the progress of civilization.
Neiman goes on to discuss the thoughts of Hume, Schopenhauer, Kant, Nietzsche, Feud, and even the Marquis de Sade. Then she delves into the topic of the Holocaust, and September 11. Of particular interest here is the thoughts of Hannah Arendt on the Holocaust, and her reflections during the war crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann. Arendt feels that the vast majority of those involved in the Holocaust, Eichmann included, had no malicious intent in what they did. They merely performed assigned tasks, and did not really have the evil impulses that might be found in one of de Sade's novels. Evil truly had become banal, a merely boring activity of a bureaucracy. September 11th did provide evidence of evil intent, however. Those involved were determined to destroy innocent human lives.
At this point one has to wonder whether Evil as a philosophical issue has become obsolete. Arendt's reaction to evil (and Freud's too) pointed out psychological issues, and my feeling is that our study of the topic should move on to the examination of the individual and social psychology, and the cultural factors that examine our species' seeming propensity to engage in acts of "moral" evil. Author Neiman also asks the question of whether Philosophy can go any further with this topic.
One outstanding book that covers this topic is "Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century" by Jonathan Glover. He explores how humans become desensitized to evil; how we are able to dispassionately "kill from a distance." A government can decided to drop bombs on people; missiles are fired that do the task. Yet no one involved actually is engaged in any close up killing of another human.
Other books to consider are "Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty" by Roy Baumeister; "The Roots of Evil", by Ervin Straub; "Why They Kill", by Richard Rhodes; and "Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People", by John Conroy. These books all explore the psychology of evil behavior.
A final comment. This book can be read and enjoyed by that ubiquitous "educated layman", but an interest in the topic of western philosophy would be helpful, as would some memory traces of what you learned in Philosophy 101.
A good wick to start a fire.......2003-05-05
MORALITY -- without it the society wouldn't be that as much tolerable hardly than it was now painful enough already... furthermore the human race might've not even survived this long quite likely without morality (that is, barbarism would reign supreme with its (moralities) absence - meaning "only the 'strong' survive" would be the main dictum in the structure of our civilization, and the society would have its systems not that far from being different from the time of Adolf Hitler rule, circa WW2). EVIL is the act of getting something under the tyranny of unreasonable means - such as the violation of someone's personal rights. The essence of Grace, although not as outspokenly recognized, either extended to and/or recieved by an individual is an integral part for the continual survival of the human race (remember the theme from Disney's THE LION KING - the 'circle of life'?); and not one person is immune to its ingredient of being necessary w/ its presence to a particular person's life in this existence. I mean, with all the things that you get and have - do you deserve them all of the time? None of us did.
This book with it's different approach to the study of Philosophy may be innovative and seems good enough for a read on another kind of perspective on philosophy. One would only have to be keen and openminded about it though; and if one is being honest - a path to self discovery on facts over opinions would dawn upon the reader, like pouring oil into water, which give an apparent stuff of evidently separating the one from the other.
Ah, comon get real people! why would anyone would like to oppose the stuff of morality's reality? It's because of SELFISHNESS w/c is the source and cause of all the headaches, ails and problems in this world's social core of dilemma in general.
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