Bibliography (p. xxiv-xxv)--Autobiography.--Thoughts on poetry and its varieties.--Bentham.--Coleridge.--Nature.--On liberty.

This early work by Robin G. Collingwood was originally published in 1939 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'An Autobiography' is the story of Collingwood's personal and academic life. Robin George Collingwood was born on 22nd February 1889, in Cartmel, England. He was the son of author, artist, and academic, W. G. Collingwood. He was greatly influenced by the Italian Idealists Croce, Gentile, and Guido de Ruggiero. Another important influence was his father, (...) a professor of fine art and a student of Ruskin. He published many works of philosophy, such as Speculum Mentis (1924), An Essay on Philosophic Method (1933), and An Essay on Metaphysics (1940). (shrink)

The Saami assert that "to move on is better than to stay put" (jot'tit lea buorit go orrot). The senior (in more ways than one) author, Myrdene Anderson, found as a Saami ethnographer that her life history resonated well with this Saami philosophy. In addition, Anderson had adopted from her own heritage the adage that "one can't hit a moving target". The Saami would also be comfortable with that formula. Together, one might minimally collapse and paraphrase both adages as: "a (...) rolling agent invests in the moment". Devika Chawla, the junior author, interrogates Anderson in nuancing this philosophy. To what degree is our research overdetermined and underdetermined by such factors as life history, culture, personality, and narrative reflections? The inquiry proceeds to unpack the opacities and transparencies in semiosic constructions. (shrink)

A review of Tara Abraham: Rebel Genius: Warren S. McCulloch’s transdisciplinary life in science. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2016, 305 pages, $19.51 HB.

In this paper, I would like to show how the movements of never stable meanings that link biography and religion are figured and interwoven throughout a kind of ineffable literary and philosophical notion of religion. Religion is a notion that can be understood through a cluster of topics such as origin, promise, dissociation, the unconditional, forgiveness, the undeconstructable and the possibility of the impossible—terms and expressions that Derrida suggests describe God.

Volume 2 of Josef Pieper's three-part autobiography is here presented for the first time in English translation. The volume represents not just a simple continuation of a seamless story. The first volume dealt with Pieper's life from his birth in 1904 to the time of World War 2. The current volume deals with the post-war years, 1945-1964, offering a personal documentation of the institutional rubble through which an emerging academic and philosopher had to find his way. This included finding (...) work, re-establishing himself in the family home, completing his academic education, and beginning to teach philosophy in a climate of despair and disillusionment. In this context, the quintessential Pieper emerges. His positive philosophy of being, firmly based on Plato and Thomas Aquinas, finds extraordinary resonance with students, who flock to his lectures in surprising numbers -- seeking and finding a positive way forward. His dedication to training teachers sees him declining higher academic posts in Germany in favor of work which, though less lucrative and more obscure, he considered more fruitful. These years are also marked by his fiercely independent stance over against the Catholic hierarchy -- despite his staunch adherence to the tradition values of Christianity. His popularity as a philosopher and teacher quickly spread to America, where he was invited to teach at famous universities. His fame led to further travels -- to Switzerland, England, France, Spain, India, China, Saigon, and Thailand. Such travels enriched his thinking and nourished the open-mindedness of the Western philosopher. (shrink)

An examination of the genre of philosophical autobiography sheds light on the role of personal judgment alongside objective rationality in philosophy. Building on Monk's conception of philosophical biography, philosophical autobiography can be seen as any autobiography that reveals some interplay between life and thought. It is argued that almost all autobiographies by philosophers are philosophical because the recounting of one's own life is almost invariably a form of extended speech act of self-revelation. When a philosopher is (...) the autobiographer, this self-revelation illuminates the interplay between thought, life, and personality. Understanding how this works allows us to address three problems of biography raised by Honderich: how to give an account of something as large and complex as a human life; how a life-story is also a judgment; and how we can justify identifying one part of a causal circumstance as 'the cause'. There is also a new ethical problem raised about the autobiographer's right to make public details of a shared private life. (shrink)

“Biography” is a sober, precise and modern word. Like other words formed from a Greek root, it has a competent and knowing air. It makes a good appearance in the summary of reviews, on the platform at conferences, between “biology” and “bibliography,” between “necrology” and “radiography,” in that scientific elite of the lexicon that travels in “business” class from one language to another, always at home in the time belts, hotel lobbies, conference rooms or amphitheaters. Compared with this prosperity, (...) the word “Life” is old-fashioned, a poor relative doomed to retirement homes. In the period between the two wars it disappeared from bookstore windows and book jackets. The hesitations of André Maurois, the author of Aspects de la biographie (1928), are characteristic of a transition: he wavered between La Vie de Disraeli (1927), Ariel ou la vie de Shelley (1923), Prométhée ou la vie de Balzac (1965) and Byron (1930). We sense that the title Vie was on the way out or had to yield to a proper name or an allegorical figure. However, it was a word in good standing, nobly Latin in origin, as great a signore in its class as those Massimi or Colonna who claimed their ancestors were mentioned by Titus Livy. Its genealogy is still more ancient, if we recall that its metonymic and literary meaning in Latin is a translation of the Greek word Bios, which the Hellenes, inventors of the genre and who had a more pedantic use of their language than we do, were content to use up until the end. “Biography,” according to Liddell-Scott, is not found in Antiquity except in a very late neo-Platonian, Damaskios, who put this humorless escogriffe into circulation when twilight was descending on the Roman Empire, between the 5th and 6th centuries A.D., at the dawn of the Middle Ages. It made its entrance into modern languages in the last quarter of the 17th century, when the humanism of the Renaissance was coming to an end, and the Enlightenment was beginning its rise. This late and ill-boding word began a slow ascension, long delayed: it did not come into usage outside the circles of antiquarians until the 19th century. The old word “Life” proudly kept its importance until the ‘20s of our era in the particularly conservative language of titles of works. Its definitive effacement to the profit of “biography” brought that of the word “memoirs” or the word “confessions,” which yielded to “autobiography,” while “hagiography” without being able to impose itself so well in usage, took much gravity and credibility away from the “Lives of the Saints.”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Intertextual Biography in the Rivalry of Cratinus and AristophanesZachary P. BilesMore than a decade ago, Malcolm Heath provided an influential explanation for charges of plagiarism between comic poets when he posited a growing store of ideas that were recycled as quickly as they were invented. As a result, "Anything put on stage in a comedy would become public property and be absorbed into the repertoire, so that all (...) comic poets contributed to it; and all drew on it, although each would aim to give a new and original twist to the material which he borrowed, so that the repertoire constantly evolved. If this was so, then any poet could lay claim to originality... and any rival could make a counterclaim of plagiarism."1 These remarks have important implications for the study of Old Comedy, not least in exposing the irony of such assertions as that of Antiphanes (Poiēsis, fr. 189 K-A), which overstates generic distinctions between tragedy and comedy on the score of originality. Beyond merely acknowledging comedy's essentially adaptive nature, Heath's position suggests that a certain degree of allusiveness was, as it were, built into the genre. Unfortunately there are few opportunities to test the potential insights that follow from Heath's general proposition since the corpus of comic fragments poses so many questions of plot, context, attribution, and-always important for this kind of study-chronology.There is one sequence of plays, however, that has attracted attention since antiquity as an example of comic poets responding to one another and for which valuable insights can still be gained by building on Heath's thesis. In 423 Cratinus took the prize against Aristophanes' Clouds with Pytine, a play in which Cratinus boldly portrayed himself as the hero while borrowing heavily from Aristophanes' caricature of him in Knights the previous year. While interest in the relationship of these plays has been renewed in recent years, the convergence of issues pertaining to adaptation, intertextuality, and rivalry has not been fully explored. Besides discussing these ideas as they relate to Knights and [End Page 169] Pytine, I shall extend the thread of artistic borrowing at either end, first by positing a stage autobiography of Cratinus that both predates and inspired Knights, and then by tracing elements of intertextuality between Wasps and Pytine. Generally speaking Heath's model proves to be of great value; however, my study makes an important modification by treating competition as a vital aspect of comic poetry.2 The intertextuality of these plays primarily depends on poetic biography, and the notion of competition is central to my understanding of stage biography as comic poets employed it either to assert their own superiority or malign their rivals. After examining the biographical interplay in the rivalry of Cratinus and Aristophanes, I end by applying the intertextual model more generally to Wasps, a play that advertises itself as a competitive response and whose intertextual relationship with Pytine can be viewed as a function of competitive strategy.IThe trail of evidence begins with a scholion on Knights 400. Commenting on the chorus's elusive response to Cleon ("If I don't despise you, may I become a blanket in Cratinus' house!"), the scholiast writes:(= Pytine test. ii K-A)3 [End Page 170]Certain errors about Cratinus' retirement aside,4 the scholiast shows himself to be a reliable witness to the play by his knowledge of the plot and ability to cite the text in the continuation of his commentary (fr. 193). Thus, with the exception of treating the more fully developed caricature of Cratinus as a drunk in the Knights parabasis as the actual source of inspiration for his self-portrayal in Pytine, generations of scholars have followed the scholiast's characterization of Pytine as a redemptive play, however exaggerated this biographical (mis)representation may have been in both plays. Two recent studies have raised objections to the traditional understanding of Knights and Pytine. Troubled by a certain feeling of allusiveness in the jokes about Cratinus in Knights and Acharnians, Keith Sidwell hypothesizes a source for the audience's familiarity with details of Cratinus' life by arguing that his stage "biography " was not an Aristophanic... (shrink)

The text provides a phenomenological analysis of The Autobiography of Malcolm X taken from the subjective perspective offered by Malik Shabazz (Malcolm X). Central to this process is the ever evolving and shifting relationality between Malcolm’s specific point of view and the social world he must take-up.

Using Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings as an example, this paper introduces Wilhlem Dilthey’s hermeneutics and pedagogical theory. Dilthey saw biographies as nothing less than “the highest and most instructive form of the understanding of life.” This, then, serves as the starting point for his hermeneutics or theory of understanding, which distinguishes humanistic understanding from scientific explanation, and sees any one moment or word as having meaning only in relation to a whole—the whole of a sentence (...) or text, or the whole of one’s life. It is also the starting point of his pedagogy, whose ultimate “duty” is “to develop the child as a person who carries their own purpose within themselves.” In introducing Dilthey’s hermeneutic pedagogy, this paper draws principally from his The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences, a text that has been long neglected in hermeneutic and phenomenological studies of education. (shrink)

This chapter exhibits elements of the origins of David Lewis, philosopher and human being, and whose works we know. It describes important influences on David as a child, as an adolescent, and young man. The chapter begins with the last, and most important, of the forces that shaped the adult David, and made him the philosopher that he was. The chapter dealing with childhood and early adolescence draws partly on Lewis family myth and folklore, but primarily on an autobiography (...) he wrote, at the age of 14, in his next‐to‐last year of high school. David also showed early signs of the high‐mindedness that characterized him for his entire life. The chapter also looks at David's early life. What Australia, and the Australians, did for him was to take him out of himself and make him into a member of community. (shrink)

This piece seeks to explore notions of commemoration and autobiography with particular reference to the life and work of Laura Marcus. Special attention is given to her Auto/Biographical Discourses, Virginia Woolf and Autobiography, as well as Paul de Man’s essay ‘Autobiography as De-Facement’, the work of Jacques Derrida, and Woolf’s ‘biography’, Orlando.

Charles Sanders Peirce , the most important and influential of the classical American philosophers, is credited as the inventor of the philosophical school of pragmatism. The scope and significance of his work have had a lasting effect not only in several fields of philosophy but also in mathematics, the history and philosophy of science, and the theory of signs, as well as in literary and cultural studies. Largely obscure until after his death, Peirce's life has long been a subject of (...) interest and dispute. Unfortunately, previous biographies often confuse as much as they clarify crucial matters in Peirce's story. Ketner's new biographical project is remarkable not only for its entertaining aspects but also for its illuminating insights into Peirce's life, his thought, and the intellectual milieu in which he worked. (shrink)

This sequel to First Person Singular (1980) presents autobiographical sketches of 15 eminent scholars in the language sciences. These personal reminiscences on their careers in linguistics reflect developments in the field over the past decades and shed light on the role each of them played and the influences they underwent. This book is a valuable source for scholars of the history of ideas in general and for historiographers of linguistics in particular, while it makes interesting reading for every linguist interested (...) in the history of the discipline. The volume includes photographs of all contributors and is completed by an index of names and an index of subjects and languages. (shrink)

A short scientific biography emphasising the main phases of Abramsky’s research: duality theory and domains in logical form, game semantics, categorical quantum mechanics, the sheaf-theoretic approach to contextuality, and game comonads and a structural view of resources and descriptive complexity.

This article explores André-Marie Ampère's autobiography in order to analyse the dynamics of science in early 19th century French institutions. According to recent works that have emphasised the value of biographies in the history of science, this study examines Ampère's public self-representation to show the cultural transformations of a life dedicated to science in post-revolutionary French society. With this aim, I have interpreted this manuscript as an outstanding example of the scientific rhetoric flourishing in early 19th century French Romanticism, (...) which celebrated the life and works of men of science by means of biographies. Following this approach, Ampère's account has been analysed in relation to certain commonplaces shared with other autobiographies of that time, such as his traumatic experience linked to the French Revolution. Finally, this article discusses Ampère's autobiography as revealing an emerging model of scientific personae, i.e. a new collective way of thinking, feeling and perceiving, which announced the category of the modern scientist. (shrink)

Enlightening Journey brings the life of the American philosopher, Nicholas Rescher, into the new millennium. The latest in a quartet of autobiographical works, this latest installment charts—in a single volume—the many twists and turns of Rescher's life and career. It takes the reader from Rescher's childhood in Weimar and then Nazi Germany through life as a first generation American during the Depression; as a high school student during World War II and a graduate student at Princeton; as a serviceman during (...) the Korean War to work as a Cold War warrior with the RAND Corporation during the Vietnam War. It traces the evolution of Rescher's career as a professional philosopher and his contribution of over seventy books and more than two hundred articles, many written in the construction of his signature system of pragmatic idealism. The very best in biography, Enlightening Journey offers new insight into the intellectual power and restless curiosity of an extraordinary modern scholar seeking to live out a very ordinary American life. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill hatte ein außergewöhnliches Leben. Einige biographische Besonderheiten sind weithin bekannt: Seine Erziehung durch den strengen VaterMill, James ist legendär, seine komplizierte Beziehung zu seiner späteren Ehefrau Harriet Taylor schon immer Anlass lebhafter Spekulationen. Etwas überraschend mag bei der ersten Beschäftigung mit Mills Leben sein, dass er weder studiert hat noch einer wissenschaftlichen Tätigkeit nachgegangen ist, zumindest nicht als Brotberuf; sein Lebenswerk erschuf er im Privatleben. Bekannt ist auch Mills Autobiography, die 1873 nach seinem Tod veröffentlicht wurde, (...) die er aber bereits ab 1853 zusammen mit seiner Ehefrau Harriet Taylor Mill verfasste. (shrink)

Philosophers of literature do not take much of an interest in autobiography.1 In one sense this is not surprising. As a certain prejudice has it, autobiography is, along with biography, the preferred reading of people who do not really like to read. The very words can conjure up images of what one finds on bookshelves in Florida retirement communities and in underfunded public libraries, books with titles like Under the Rainbow: The Real Liza Minnelli or Me: Stories (...) of My Life (Katharine Hepburn).2 Hardly rousing material, at least from the philosophical point of view. But on a moment’s reflection, it becomes clear that the initial prejudice is unfounded. Never mind the fact that there are obviously .. (shrink)

A short intellectual biography of Kit Fine, provided by himself.

In this brief and incisive book, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Garry Wills tells the story of the Confessions--what motivated Augustine to dictate it, how it asks to be read, and the many ways it has been misread in the one-and-a-half millennia since it was composed. Following Wills's biography of Augustine and his translation of the Confessions, this is an unparalleled introduction to one of the most important books in the Christian and Western traditions. Understandably fascinated by the story of Augustine's (...) life, modern readers have largely succumbed to the temptation to read the Confessions as autobiography. But, Wills argues, this is a mistake. The book is not autobiography but rather a long prayer, suffused with the language of Scripture and addressed to God, not man. Augustine tells the story of his life not for its own significance but in order to discern how, as a drama of sin and salvation leading to God, it fits into sacred history. "We have to read Augustine as we do Dante," Wills writes, "alert to rich layer upon layer of Scriptural and theological symbolism." Wills also addresses the long afterlife of the book, from controversy in its own time and relative neglect during the Middle Ages to a renewed prominence beginning in the fourteenth century and persisting to today, when the Confessions has become an object of interest not just for Christians but also historians, philosophers, psychiatrists, and literary critics. With unmatched clarity and skill, Wills strips away the centuries of misunderstanding that have accumulated around Augustine's spiritual classic. (shrink)

Le 13 juin 1944, Marguerite Buffard-Flavien, arrêtée quelques jours auparavant après d’autres camarades des groupes FTP de Lyon, se jette par la fenêtre de la salle d’interrogatoire de la Milice et meurt peu après à l’hôpital. Le livre que Christian Langeois consacre à cette figure héroïque, dont il reconstitue le parcours à partir des archives départementales, de quelques entretiens, des hommages qui lui ont été rendus après-guerre, de l’autobiographie rédigée comme cadre du parti communiste...

This study considers the origins and characteristics of Karl Jaspers’ biographical approach. Specifically, we analyse how this approach manifests itself in Jaspers’ work, namely, in his understanding of psychology, his psychology of worldviews, his views on the history of philosophy and his philosophical method. The biographical approach was a central strategy in Jaspers’ work as an appeal to life and was closely linked with how Jaspers understood both philosophy and his thought. For Jaspers, biography could restore mental unity and (...) reveal the existence behind creativity. (shrink)

My purpose in Hume: An Intellectual Biography was to write the first comprehensive account of Hume's career as an author, beginning with what we know about his education at Edinburgh, and ending with "My Own Life," the brief autobiography that Hume wrote shortly before he died. Where Ernest Mossner, in his classic The Life of David Hume, was explicitly concerned with the man rather than with the ideas, I was concerned with the ideas, and the arguments, rather than (...) with the man. Hume's biography was of interest to me insofar as, but no further than, it shed light on Hume's intellectual development. In many respects, Mossner's achievement as a biographer remains deeply impressive, and anyone wanting to gain a full... (shrink)

Derek Parfit (1942-2017) is the most famous philosopher you've likely never heard of. In 1984, Parfit published what was, and is still, hailed by many philosophers as a work of genius - one of the most cited works of philosophy since World War II, Reasons and Persons. At its core, he argued that we should be concerned less with our own interests and more with the common good. His book brims with brilliant argumentative detail and stunningly inventive thought experiments that (...) challenged contemporary views about what it means to be a person, why one should forego concern for oneself as an identity that persists over time, what it means to act on the basis of reasons, and what we owe to future generations. Parfit also - unfashionably at the time - believed in a kind of grand unified theory of morality, what he called theory x, a non-religious ethical theory wherein all the major moral theories were converging from different sides on the same mountaintop. Parfit has had an enormous influence not only on philosophy, but also beyond, particularly amongst those in the fields of climate ethics, poverty relief, and charitable giving. In this book, the first-full scale biography of Parfit, Dave Edmonds tells the story of the thinker that many philosophers consider the most important moral philosopher of the last century. Edmonds' rendering of the man in full skilfully illuminates the person behind the acclaimed philosopher. Despite Parfit's extraordinary mind, outward appearances suggest his was also an extraordinarily uneventful life - one largely spent in cloistered institutions from Eton to Oxford and one seemingly monomaniacally devoted to ideas. Edmonds' aim is to show how this son and grandson of missionaries went from a genial and outgoing history student to a captivating, yet monkish philosopher singularly devoted to saving morality. In doing so, Edmonds makes Parfit's profound, but often impenetrable, ideas accessible to a broad audience and gives life and body to the thoughts of a seemingly pure thinker that captured the imagination of a generation of philosophers. (shrink)

Independent of his international renown as a humanitarian, Albert Schweitzer is well known as a great musicologist; a reputation that rests largely upon this book. Schweitzer's \"J. S. Bach\" is one of the great full-length studies of the composer, his life, and his work. Its influence on the subsequent performace of Bach's music was enormous, and there is scarcely a later work on Bach which does not acknowledge a deep debt to Schweitzer's. Grove's Dictionary says of the book, \"Schweitzer has (...) probably been more quoted than any authority since Spitta.\". (shrink)

Mixing fiction, history, psychoanalysis, and personal fantasy, Teresa, My Love turns a past world into a modern marvel, following Sylvia Leclercq, a French psychoanalyst, academic, and incurable insomniac, as she falls for the sixteenth-century Saint Teresa of Avila and becomes consumed with charting her life. Traveling to Spain, Leclercq, Julia Kristeva's probing alter ego, visits the sites and embodiments of the famous mystic and awakens to her own desire for faith, connection, and rebellion. One of Kristeva's most passionate and transporting (...) works, _Teresa, My Love_ interchanges biography, autobiography, analysis, dramatic dialogue, musical scores, and images of paintings and sculpture to engage the reader in Leclercq's--and Kristeva's--journey. Born in 1515, Teresa of Avila outwitted the Spanish Inquisition and was a key reformer of the Carmelite Order. Her experience of ecstasy, which she intimately described in her writings, released her from her body and led to a complete realization of her consciousness, a state Kristeva explores in relation to present-day political failures, religious fundamentalism, and cultural malaise. Incorporating notes from her own psychoanalytic practice, as well as literary and philosophical references, Kristeva builds a fascinating dual diagnosis of contemporary society and the individual psyche while sharing unprecedented insights into her own character. (shrink)

_Psychology's Grand Theorists_ argues that the three schools in psychology that have been dominant historically--the psychodynamic, behavioral, and phenomenological--have resulted in large part from the personal experiences of their originators. Sigmund Freud, B.F. Skinner, and Carl Rogers each believed that he had discovered the truth about human nature, yet their truths are entirely different. This book explores how the lives of these men influenced the divergent theories they developed, through a close examination of letters, diaries, biographies, autobiographies, and professional writings. (...) Uncovering the subjective sources of these theories, the book gives the reader a greater sense of intimacy with each man's ideas, and promotes critical inquiry into their scientific status. The book is written in an engaging style that will appeal to a wide range of readers. Intended as a supplement in courses on personality, clinical psychology, and/or the history of psychology, it will also be of interest to clinicians or counselors who use one or more of these theoretical models in their therapeutic work. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Jacques Derrida INTERPRETING SIGNATURES (NIETZSCHE/HEIDEGGER): TWO QUESTIONS T1HE first question concerns die name Nietzsche, die second has to do with the concept of totality. Let us begin widi chapters 2 and 3 of Heidegger's Nietzsche — dealing with "The Eternal Recurrence of the Same" and "The Will to Power as Knowledge," respectively. We will be turning especially to the subsection on chaos ["The Concept of Chaos," I, pp. 562-70] (...) and to "The Alleged Biologism of Nietzsche" ["Nietzsches angeblicher Biologismus"]. In view ofme fact mat the same interpretation is regularly at work throughout, the risks involved in choosing diis strategy are, I hope, quite limited. In each instance, a single system of reading is powerfully concentrated and gadiered together. It is directed at gadiering togedier the unity and the uniqueness of Nietzsche's diinking, which, as a fulfilled unity, is itself in a fair way to being the culmination of occidental metaphysics. Nietzsche would be precisely at the crest, or ridge, atop the peak of diis fulfillment. And thus he would be looking at both sides, down both slopes. What about diis unity — diis doubled unity? What is its connection to the name — or rather, the signature — of Nietzsche? Does Heidegger take any account of this question — which others might call biographical, autobiographical, or autographical — of the singularity of a signature ostensibly the proper name of Nietzsche? To put the matter anodier way, if one can glimpse behind Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche the foundations of a general reading of Western metaphysics, men die question Translated by Diane Michelfelder and Richard E. Palmer. 246 Jacques Derrida247 arises: To what extent does this interpretation of metaphysics in its totality and as a whole contain an interpretive decision about die unity or singularity of thinking? And to what extent does this interpretive decision also presuppose a decision about die "biographical," about the proper name, the autobiographical, and about signature — about the politics of signature? ' Heidegger's position on this subject I will indicate first ofall widi a summarizing and simplifying statement, which one could, I hope, demonstrate is not wrong: there is a unity in Nietzschean thought even if it is not that of a system in the classical sense. This unity is also its uniqueness, its singularity. A thesis explicidy advanced by Heidegger is that every great thinker has only one thought. This uniqueness was neither constituted nor threatened, neither gadiered together nor brought about, through a name or proper name — nor by the life of Nietzsche, either normal or insane. This unique unity is something it draws from the unity of Western metaphysics which is gathered together mere at its crest, which one could also compare to the simple unity of a line created by a fold. The result of all this is that biography, autobiography, the scene or the powers of the proper name, of proper names, signatures, and so on, are again accorded minority status, are again given the inessential place diey have always occupied in the history ofmetaphysics. This points to the necessity and place of a questioning which I can only sketch here. Such would be a simplified version of the question. Now let us read Heidegger a little more closely and seek to confirm the strongest coherence of his interpretation or, beyond its coherence, his deepest thought. As a provisional concession to die classical norms of reading, let us take this book at its beginning, or even before its beginning at the beginning ofthe preface. Naturally, diis preface was, like so many odiers, written later. As we know, the book goes back to a series of lectures given between 1936 and 1940, and to some treatises written between 1940 and 1946. One should take most careful note of these dates if one is to bring this interpretation, as a whole and in detail, into connection with the historicopolitical and institutional field of its presentation. The preface, however, dates from 1961. The intention of the two pages in mis case, as almost always, is to justify the publication of this collection by reference to the essential unity ofits totality: "This publication, rethought (nachgedacht) as a whole (als Ganzes) should provide a glimpse ofthe path ofthought... (shrink)

Named one of the Ten Best Books of 2016 by the New York Times, a spirited account of a major intellectual movement of the twentieth century and the revolutionary thinkers who came to shape it, by the best-selling author of How to Live Sarah Bakewell. Paris, 1933: three contemporaries meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are the young Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and longtime friend Raymond Aron, a fellow philosopher who raves to (...) them about a new conceptual framework from Berlin called Phenomenology. "You see," he says, "if you are a phenomenologist you can talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it!" It was this simple phrase that would ignite a movement, inspiring Sartre to integrate Phenomenology into his own French, humanistic sensibility, thereby creating an entirely new philosophical approach inspired by themes of radical freedom, authentic being, and political activism. This movement would sweep through the jazz clubs and cafés of the Left Bank before making its way across the world as Existentialism. Featuring not only philosophers, but also playwrights, anthropologists, convicts, and revolutionaries, At the Existentialist Café follows the existentialists' story, from the first rebellious spark through the Second World War, to its role in postwar liberation movements such as anti-colonialism, feminism, and gay rights. Interweaving biography and philosophy, it is the epic account of passionate encounters--fights, love affairs, mentorships, rebellions, and long partnerships--and a vital investigation into what the existentialists have to offer us today, at a moment when we are once again confronting the major questions of freedom, global responsibility, and human authenticity in a fractious and technology-driven world. (shrink)

Simone de Beauvoir is one of the most well‐known chroniclers of the twentieth century and her formal volumes of autobiography are widely cited as a left‐wing intellectual's account of her era. Yet her life writing extended far beyond formal memoir to include diaries, letters, and biographical testimonies. In this chapter I analyze the broad movements of Beauvoir's engagement with the genre, from her early philosophical diaries to her formal memoirs and biographies, in the context of her own philosophical and (...) literary worldview. Her auto/biographical writings will emerge from this analysis as an individual case history in which Beauvoir tests out many of her philosophical notions concerning situated selfhood and bears witness to the major evolutions in twentieth century western society. (shrink)

This book critically examines the debate on Martin Heidegger's concept of Entscheidung and his engagement and confrontation with Nazism in terms of his broader philosophical thought. It argues that one cannot explain Heidegger's actions without accounting for his idea of "decision" and its connection to his understanding of individual "fate" and national "destiny." The book looks at the relation of biography to philosophy and the ethical and political implications of appropriating Heidegger's thinking in these domains of inquiry. It highlights (...) themes such as Heidegger's differences with the neo-Kantians in Germany; Heidegger on Kant and practical reason; and his reading of Nietzsche and Hegel. It offers a philosophical assessment grounded in Heidegger's own texts, with reference to historical and other philosophical commentaries on the rise of National Socialism in post-Weimar Germany and the philosophical issues associated with the interpretation of Nazi genocide and ideology. An important intervention in Western philosophy, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of political philosophy, continental philosophy, German philosophy, philosophy in general, and political studies. (shrink)

Mixing fiction, history, psychoanalysis, and personal fantasy, Teresa, My Love turns a past world into a modern marvel, following Sylvia Leclercq, a French psychoanalyst, academic, and incurable insomniac, as she falls for the sixteenth-century Saint Teresa of Avila and becomes consumed with charting her life. Traveling to Spain, Leclercq, Julia Kristeva's probing alter ego, visits the sites and embodiments of the famous mystic and awakens to her own desire for faith, connection, and rebellion. One of Kristeva's most passionate and transporting (...) works, _Teresa, My Love_ interchanges biography, autobiography, analysis, dramatic dialogue, musical scores, and images of paintings and sculpture to engage the reader in Leclercq's--and Kristeva's--journey. Born in 1515, Teresa of Avila outwitted the Spanish Inquisition and was a key reformer of the Carmelite Order. Her experience of ecstasy, which she intimately described in her writings, released her from her body and led to a complete realization of her consciousness, a state Kristeva explores in relation to present-day political failures, religious fundamentalism, and cultural malaise. Incorporating notes from her own psychoanalytic practice, as well as literary and philosophical references, Kristeva builds a fascinating dual diagnosis of contemporary society and the individual psyche while sharing unprecedented insights into her own character. (shrink)