Commiserating with Devastated Things seeks to understand the place Milan Kundera calls “the universe of the novel.” Working through Kundera’s oeuvre as well as the continental philosophical tradition, Wirth argues that Kundera transforms—not applies—philosophical reflection within literature. Reading between Kundera’s work and his self-avowed tradition, from Kafka to Hermann Broch, Wirth asks what it might mean to insist that philosophy does not have a monopoly on wisdom, that the novel has its own modes of wisdom that challenge philosophy’s.
What is solitude, why do we crave and fear it, and how do we distinguish it properly from loneliness? It lies at the core of the lives of philosophers and their self-reflective contemplations, and it is the enabling (and disabling) condition that allows us to seriously question how to live creatively and meaningfully. David Farrell Krell is one of the decisive philosophical voices on how philosophers can creatively engage their solitudes. The scale and range of his understanding of solitudes are taken up in this book by some of the most distinguished Continental philosophers. Authors address the problem of solitude from different angles, and imagine how to face and respond creatively to it. Blending philosophical narrative and straightforward philosophical treatises, this book provides inspiration for contemplation of our own versions of solitude and their creative potentials. Some authors focus on the work of historical figures in philosophy or poetry, such as Heidegger and Hölderlin, while others deal more directly with Krell's work as exemplary of their own imaginings of creative solitudes. Other authors respond more personally and creatively in their demonstrations of how we can, and must, seek our solitudes. Including an original chapter by David Farrell Krell, this book is an invigorating meditation on the possibility of being philosophical about a life through solitude, and the meaning of this powerfully resonant and universal human experience.
In Milan Kundera’s Fiction: A Critical Approach to Existential Betrayals, Karen von Kunes traces Kundera’s literary aspirations to a single episode in Czechoslovakia in the Stalinist era. This moment attracted international attention when a 1950 police report was released in 2008. Reporters rushed to judgment, accusing Kundera of denouncing Miroslav Dvořáček to the police, resulting in Dvořáček’s immediate arrest and sentencing to hard labor. von Kunes debunks this shocking charge in a systematic way and argues that Kundera reported a suitcase, not a man. She ties Kundera’s dominant themes of sex, betrayal, and political denouncement to the suitcase, a fatal instrument that can lead to paradoxes and unforeseen and catastrophic coincidences for his characters.
Reconsiders the contemporary relevance of Schellings radical philosophical and religious ecology. The last two decades have seen a renaissance and reappraisal of Schellings remarkable body of philosophical work, moving beyond explications and historical study to begin thinking with and through Schelling, exploring and developing the fundamental issues at stake in his thought and their contemporary relevance. In this book, Jason M. Wirth seeks to engage Schellings work concerning the philosophical problem of the relationship of time and the imagination, calling this relationship Schellings practice of the wild. Focusing on the questions of nature, art, philosophical religion (mythology and revelation), and history, Wirth argues that at the heart of Schellings work is a radical philosophical and religious ecology. He develops this theme not only through close readings of Schellings texts, but also by bringing them into dialogue with thinkers as diverse as Deleuze, Nietzsche, Melville, Musil, and many others. The book also features the first appearance in English translation of Schellings famous letter to Eschenmayer regarding the Freedom essay.
This collection is intercultural philosophy at its best. It contextualizes the global significance of the leading figures of Western phenomenology, including Husserl, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Buber and Levinas, enters them into intercultural dialogue with the Daoism of Laozi and Zhuangzi and in doing so, breaks new ground. By presenting the first sustained analysis of the Daoist worldview by way of phenomenological experience, this book not only furthers our understanding of Daoism and phenomenology, but delves deeper into the roots of human thinking, aesthetic expression, and its impact on the modern social world. The international team of philosophers approach the phenomenological tradition in the broadest sense possible, looking beyond the phenomenological language of Husserl. With chapters on art, ethics, death and the metaphor of dream and hermeneutics, this collection encourages scholars and students in both Asian and Western traditions to rethink their philosophical bearings and engage in meaningful intercultural dialogue.
Repositions Bachelard as a critical and integral part of contemporary continental philosophy. Like Schelling before him and Deleuze and Guattari after him, Gaston Bachelard made major philosophical contributions to the advancement of science and the arts. In addition to being a mathematician and epistemologist whose influential work in the philosophy of science is still being absorbed, Bachelard was also one of the most innovative thinkers on poetic creativity and its ethical implications. His approaches to literature and the arts by way of elemental reverie awakened long-buried modes of thinking that have inspired literary critics, depth psychologists, poets, and artists alike. Bachelards extraordinary body of work, unduly neglected by the English-language reception of continental philosophy in recent decades, exhibits a capacity to speak to the full complexity and wider reaches of human thinking. The essays in this volume analyze Bachelard as a phenomenological thinker and situate his thought within the Western tradition. Considering his work alongside that of Schelling, Husserl, Bergson, Buber, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, Deleuze, and Nancy, this collection highlights some of Bachelards most provocative proposals on questions of ontology, hermeneutics, ethics, environmental politics, spirituality, and the possibilities they offer for productive transformations of self and world.
How are the teachings of a thirteenth-century master relevant today? Twenty contemporary writers unpack Dogen's words and show how we can still find meaning in his teachings. Zen Master Dogen, the thirteenth-century founder of Japanese Soto Zen Buddhism, is widely regarded as one of the world’s most remarkable spiritual thinkers. Dogen influence on both Japanese and Western Zen Buddhism cannot be overstated. His writings, emphasizing the nonduality of practice and enlightenment are vastly subtle, endlessly sophisticated—and renownedly challenging to read on one’s own. This unique collection of essays opens up for the reader new pathways for connecting to and making use of Dogen's powerful teachings. Some of Soto Zen’s leading scholars and practitioners offer a masterfully guided tour of Dogen’s writings, organized around two key texts: Shushogi, which is a classical distillation of the whole of Dogen’s teachings, and Fukanzazengi, Dogen universal instructions for Zen meditation. Along the way, the reader will gain an enriched understanding of the Zen practice and realization, of shikantaza or “just sitting,” and of the essence of Mahayana Buddhism—and a much deeper appreciation of this peerless master. Includes essays from Kosho Itagaki, Taigen Dan Leighton, Tenshin Charles Fletcher, Shudo Brian Schroeder, Glen A. Mazis, David Loy, Drew Leder, Steven DeCaroli, Steve Bein, John Maraldo, Michael Schwartz, Tetsuzen Jason M. Wirth, Leah Kalmanson, Erin Jien McCarthy, Dainen David Putney, Steven Heine, Graham Parkes, Mark Unno, Shudo Brian Schroeder, and Kanpu Bret W. Davis.
A beautifully written and illustrated framework for resilient design that is as pragmatic as it is inspiring, showing us not only how but why we should design differently. Design for Resilience is a timely, visionary map for creating restorative design that addresses humanity’s most critical issue: climate change. Our current wealth-oriented economic systems have resulted in gross disparities, war, refugee crises, and mass migrations that augur a bleak collective future. In this book, respected scholar Stuart Walker combines formidable research with practical examples to offer a hopeful, original, and transformative view of what resilient design looks like and how it can apply to all aspects of life, from personal objects to food to culture to business to recreation. Working at the intersection of theory, philosophy, history, environmentalism, and justice, Walker offers a fresh approach that decolonizes design thinking to fundamentally change the nature of design practice and how it shapes our lives, communities, and industries. Asking nothing short of the fundamental question “How should we live?,” Design for Resilience addresses the high-priority issues that concern governments, policymakers, designers, and people around the world who recognize that now, perhaps more than at any other time in human history, we need paradigmatic changes to create a future that lasts.
Popular representations of teachers and teaching are easy to take for granted precisely because they are so accessible and pervasive. Our lives are intertextual in the way lived experiences overlap with the stories of others presented to us through mass media. It is this set of connected narratives that we bring into classrooms and into discussions of educational policy. In this day and time—with public education under siege by forces eager to deprofessionalize teaching and transfer public funds to benefit private enterprises—we ignore the dominant discourse about education and the patterns of representation that typify educator characters at our peril. This edited volume offers a fresh take on educator characters in popular culture and also includes important essays about media texts that have not been addressed adequately in the literature previously. The 15 chapters cover diverse forms from literary classics to iconic teacher movies to popular television to rock ‘n’ roll. Topics explored include pedagogy through the lenses of gender, sexuality, race, disability, politics, narrative archetypes, curriculum, teaching strategies, and liberatory praxis. The various perspectives represented in this volume come from scholars and practitioners of education at all levels of schooling. This book is especially timely in an era when public education in the United States is under assault from conservative political forces and undervalued by the general public. Contributors are: Steve Benton, Naeemah Clark, Kristy Liles Crawley, Elizabeth Currin, Mary M. Dalton, Jill Ewing Flynn, Chad E. Harris, Gary Kenton, Mark A. Lewis, Ian Parker Renga, Stephanie Schroeder, Roslin Smith, Jeff Spanke, and Andrew Wirth.
“A tour de force that both challenges and expands our understanding of the very practice of philosophy . . . and comparative philosophy in particular” (Joseph Markowski, Reading Religion). In Nietzche and Other Buddhas, author Jason M. Wirth brings major East Asian Buddhist thinkers into radical dialogue with key Continental philosophers through a series of exercises that pursue what is traditionally called comparative or intercultural philosophy. In the process, he reflects on what makes such exercises possible and intelligible. The primary questions Wirth asks are: How does this particular engagement and confrontation challenge and radicalize what is sometimes called comparative or intercultural philosophy? How does this task reconsider what is meant by philosophy? The confrontations that Wirth sets up between Dogen, Hakuin, Linji, Shinran, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, James, and Deleuze consider the nature of philosophy—and especially comparative philosophy—from a global perspective. This global perspective in turn opens up a new and challenging space of thought within and between the cutting edges of Western Continental philosophy and East Asian Buddhist practice.
