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In Gadamer's hermeneutics, interpretation is inseparable from the broader concern of making one's way in life. In this book, James Risser builds on this insight about the juxtaposition of human living and the act of understanding by tracing hermeneutics back to the basic experience of philosophy as defined by Plato. For Risser, Plato provides resources for new directions in hermeneutics and new possibilities for "e;the life of understanding"e; and "e;the understanding of life."e; Risser places Gadamer in dialogue with Plato, with the issue of memory as a conceptual focus. He develops themes pertaining to hermeneutics such as retrieval as a matter of convalescence, exile as a venture into the foreign, formation with respect to oneself and to life with others, the experience of language in hermeneutics, and the relationship between speaking and writing.

Focusing on the idea of universal suffrage, John Llewelyn accepts the challenge of Derrida's later thought to renew his focus on the ethical, political, and religious dimensions of what makes us uniquely human. Llewelyn builds this concern on issues of representation, language, meaning, and logic with reflections on the phenomenological figures who informed Derrida's concept of deconstruction. By entering into dialogue with these philosophical traditions, Llewelyn demonstrates the range and depth of his own original thinking. The Rigor of a Certain Inhumanity is a rich and passionate, playful and perceptive work of philosophical analysis.

Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002), one of the towering figures of contemporary Continental philosophy, is best known for Truth and Method, where he elaborated the concept of "e;philosophical hermeneutics,"e; a programmatic way to get to what we do when we engage in interpretation. Donatella Di Cesare highlights the central place of Greek philosophy, particularly Plato, in Gadamer's work, brings out differences between his thought and that of Heidegger, and connects him with discussions and debates in pragmatism. This is a sensitive and thoroughly readable philosophical portrait of one of the 20th century's most powerful thinkers.

Takes a new look at the role of language in the thought of Martin Heidegger to reassess its significance for contemporary philosophy

What is the effect of light as it measures the seasons? How does light leave different traces on the terrain-on a Pacific Island, in the Aegean Sea, high in the Alps, or in the forest? John Sallis considers the expansiveness of nature and the range of human vision in essays about the effect of light and luminosity on place. Sallis writes movingly of nature and the elements, employing an enormous range of philosophical, geographical, and historical knowledge. Paintings and drawings by Alejandro A. Vallega illuminate the text, accentuating the interaction between light and environment.

Plato''s Animals examines the crucial role played by animal images, metaphors, allusions, and analogies in Plato''s Dialogues. These fourteen lively essays demonstrate that the gadflies, snakes, stingrays, swans, dogs, horses, and other animals that populate Plato''s work are not just rhetorical embellishments. Animals are central to Plato''s understanding of the hierarchy between animals, humans, and gods and are crucial to his ideas about education, sexuality, politics, aesthetics, the afterlife, the nature of the soul, and philosophy itself. The volume includes a comprehensive annotated index to PlatoΓÇÖs bestiary in both Greek and English.

With particular focus on imagination, this work presents a close reading of Kant's second critique, "The Critique of Practical Reason". In an interpretation that is daring as well as rigorous, this work reveals imagination as both its central force and the bridge that links Kant's three critiques.

Dominique Janicaud (1937¿2002) was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Nice-Sophia-Antipolis and the author of many books including Powers of the Rational (IUP, 1994), Phenomenology and the Theological Turn, and Phenomenology Wide Open. Heidegger en France, the crowning achievement of his philosophical work, was published in French in 2001.Fran¿s Raffoul is Professor of Philosophy at Louisiana State University. He is author of The Origins of Responsibility (IUP, 2010). David Pettigrew is Professor of Philosophy at Southern Connecticut State University. He is editor (with Fran¿s Raffoul) of French Interpretations of Heidegger.

Broaching an understanding of nature in Platonic thought, John Sallis goes beyond modern conceptions and provides a strategy to have recourse to the profound sense of nature operative in ancient Greek philosophy. In a rigorous and textually based account, Sallis traces the complex development of the Greek concept of nature. Beginning with the mythical vision embodied in the figure of the goddess Artemis, he reanimates the sense of nature that informs the fragmentary discourses of Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Empedocles and shows how Plato takes up pre-Socratic conceptions critically while also being transformed. Through Sallis's close reading of the Theaetetus and the Phaedo, he recovers the profound and comprehensive concept of nature in Plato's thought.

John Sallis dismantles the traditional conception of nature in this book of imagination and the cosmos. In the thought of Emerson, Hegel, and Schelling, Sallis discerns the seeds of an understanding of nature that goes against the modern technological assault on natural things and opens a space for a revitalized approach to the world. He identifies two fundamental reorientations that philosophical thought is called on to address today: the turn to the elemental in nature and the turn from nature to the cosmos at large. He traces the elusive course of the imagination, as if coming from nowhere, and describes the way in which it bears on the relation of humans to nature. Sallis's account demonstrates that a renewal of our understanding of nature is one of the prime imperatives we demand from philosophy today.

In these lectures, delivered in 1933-1934 while he was Rector of the University of Freiburg and an active supporter of the National Socialist regime, Martin Heidegger addresses the history of metaphysics and the notion of truth from Heraclitus to Hegel. First published in German in 2001, these two lecture courses offer a sustained encounter with Heidegger's thinking during a period when he attempted to give expression to his highest ambitions for a philosophy engaged with politics and the world. While the lectures are strongly nationalistic and celebrate the revolutionary spirit of the time, they also attack theories of racial supremacy in an attempt to stake out a distinctively Heideggerian understanding of what it means to be a people. This careful translation offers valuable insight into Heidegger's views on language, truth, animality, and life, as well as his political thought and activity.

Jeremy Bell is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry at Emory University.Michael Naas is Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University. He is author of Miracle and Machine: Jacques Derrida and the Two Sources of Religion, Science, and the Media and Derrida From Now On.

Aristophanes' comedies have stood the test of time as some of the greatest comic literature. This work illuminates the philosophical insights in Aristophanes' texts by presenting close readings of "Clouds", "Wasps", "Assemblywomen", and "Lysistrata", addressing their comic genius at the same time.

Jean Beaufret is best known for posing questions to which Martin Heidegger responded in his "Letter on Humanism." These questions constituted the moment that was to form a profound philosophical engagement and friendship between the two thinkers. The first of four volumes, this book covers Heidegger's attachments to Greek thinking in six letters.

Offers a reading of Martin Heidegger's youthful thought leading up to "Being and Time" (1927) and its subsequent development in his later writings. This work examines Heidegger's student years, showing the influences of Scholasticism, medieval mysticism, Neo-Kantianism, and phenomenology on his thinking during this period.

Martin Heidegger's 1941-1942 lecture course on Friedrich Hölderlin's hymn, "Remembrance," delivered immediately following his confrontation with Nietzsche, lays out a detailed plan for the interpretation of Hölderlin's poetry in which remembrance is a central concern. With its emphasis on the "free use of the national" and the "holy of the fatherland," the course marks an important progression in Heidegger's political thought. In addition to its startlingly innovative analyses of greeting, the festive, and the dream, the text provides Heidegger's fullest elaboration of the structure of commemorative thinking in relationship to time and the possibility of an "other beginning." This English translation by William McNeill and Julia Ireland completes the series of Heidegger's major lecture courses on Hölderlin.

If one takes Heidegger at his word then his philosophy is about pursuing different "paths" of thought rather than defining a single set of truths. This volume gathers the work of an international group of scholars to present a range of ways in which Heidegger can be read and a diversity of styles in which his thought can be continued. Despite their many approaches to Heidegger, their hermeneutic orientation brings these scholars together. The essays span themes from the ontic to the ontological, from the specific to the speculative. While the volume does not aim to present a comprehensive interpretation of Heidegger's later thought, it covers much of the terrain of his later thinking and presents new directions for how Heidegger should and should not be read today. Scholars of Heidegger's later thought will find rich and original readings that expand considerations of Heidegger's entire oeuvre.

As an early articulation of Heidegger's thought, this book will be an indispensable resource for scholars and students.

Considers the role and meaning of philosophy. The author proposes a robust and unified philosophy that would find itself equally at home in artistic and scientific disciplines. He focuses on Deleuze's "Difference and Repetition" and Heidegger's "Contributions to Philosophy" for their handling of the concept of difference.

Volume 18 of Martin Heidegger's collected works presents his important 1924 Marburg lectures which anticipate much of the revolutionary thinking that he subsequently articulated in Being and Time. Here are the seeds of the ideas that would become Heidegger's unique phenomenology. Heidegger interprets Aristotle's Rhetoric and looks closely at the Greek notion of pathos. These lectures offer special insight into the development of his concepts of care and concern, being-at-hand, being-in-the-world, and attunement, which were later elaborated in Being and Time. Available in English for the first time, they make a significant contribution to ancient philosophy, Aristotle studies, Continental philosophy, and phenomenology.

Looks into the essence of Heidegger's thought and engages the philosopher's transformative thinking with contemporary Western culture. This work examines Heidegger's translations of Greek philosophy and his interpretations and displacements of anthropology, ethics and politics, science and aesthetics.

Ewegen's withdrawn Socrates forever evades rigid interpretation and must instead remain a deep and insoluble question.