Isonomia and the Origins of Philosophy

Isonomia and the Origins of Philosophy PDF Author: Kojin Karatani
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822372711
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Book Description
In Isonomia and the Origins of Philosophy—published originally in Japanese and now available in four languages—Kōjin Karatani questions the idealization of ancient Athens as the source of philosophy and democracy by placing the origins instead in Ionia, a set of Greek colonies located in present-day Turkey. Contrasting Athenian democracy with Ionian isonomia—a system based on non-rule and a lack of social divisions whereby equality is realized through the freedom to immigrate—Karatani shows how early Greek thinkers from Heraclitus to Pythagoras were inseparably linked to the isonomia of their Ionian origins, not democracy. He finds in isonomia a model for how an egalitarian society not driven by class antagonism might be put into practice, and resituates Socrates's work and that of his intellectual heirs as the last philosophical attempts to practice isonomia's utopic potentials. Karatani subtly interrogates the democratic commitments of Western philosophy from within and argues that the key to transcending their contradictions lies not in Athenian democracy, with its echoes of imperialism, slavery, and exclusion, but in the openness of isonomia.

Isonomia and the Origins of Philosophy

Isonomia and the Origins of Philosophy PDF Author: Kojin Karatani
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822372711
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Book Description
In Isonomia and the Origins of Philosophy—published originally in Japanese and now available in four languages—Kōjin Karatani questions the idealization of ancient Athens as the source of philosophy and democracy by placing the origins instead in Ionia, a set of Greek colonies located in present-day Turkey. Contrasting Athenian democracy with Ionian isonomia—a system based on non-rule and a lack of social divisions whereby equality is realized through the freedom to immigrate—Karatani shows how early Greek thinkers from Heraclitus to Pythagoras were inseparably linked to the isonomia of their Ionian origins, not democracy. He finds in isonomia a model for how an egalitarian society not driven by class antagonism might be put into practice, and resituates Socrates's work and that of his intellectual heirs as the last philosophical attempts to practice isonomia's utopic potentials. Karatani subtly interrogates the democratic commitments of Western philosophy from within and argues that the key to transcending their contradictions lies not in Athenian democracy, with its echoes of imperialism, slavery, and exclusion, but in the openness of isonomia.

The Structure of World History

The Structure of World History PDF Author: Kojin Karatani
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822376687
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
In this major, paradigm-shifting work, Kojin Karatani systematically re-reads Marx's version of world history, shifting the focus of critique from modes of production to modes of exchange. Karatani seeks to understand both Capital-Nation-State, the interlocking system that is the dominant form of modern global society, and the possibilities for superseding it. In The Structure of World History, he traces different modes of exchange, including the pooling of resources that characterizes nomadic tribes, the gift exchange systems developed after the adoption of fixed-settlement agriculture, the exchange of obedience for protection that arises with the emergence of the state, the commodity exchanges that characterize capitalism, and, finally, a future mode of exchange based on the return of gift exchange, albeit modified for the contemporary moment. He argues that this final stage—marking the overcoming of capital, nation, and state—is best understood in light of Kant's writings on eternal peace. The Structure of World History is in many ways the capstone of Karatani's brilliant career, yet it also signals new directions in his thought.

History and Repetition

History and Repetition PDF Author: Kōjin Karatani
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231157290
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Kojin Karatani wrote the essays in History and Repetition during a time of radical historical change, triggered by the collapse of the Cold War and the death of the Showa emperor in 1989. Reading Karl Marx in an original way, Karatani developed a theory of history based on the repetitive cycle of crises attending the expansion and transformation of capital. His work led to a rigorous analysis of political, economic, and literary forms of representation that recast historical events as a series of repeated forms forged in the transitional moments of global capitalism. History and Repetition cemented Karatani's reputation as one of Japan's premier thinkers, capable of traversing the fields of philosophy, political economy, history, and literature in his work. The first complete translation of History and Repetition into English, undertaken with the cooperation of Karatani himself, this volume opens with his innovative reading of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, tracing Marx's early theoretical formulation of the state. Karatani follows with a study of violent crises as they recur after major transitions of power, developing his theory of historical repetition and introducing a groundbreaking interpretation of fascism (in both Europe and Japan) as the spectral return of the absolutist monarch in the midst of a crisis of representative democracy. For Karatani, fascism represents the most violent materialization of the repetitive mechanism of history. Yet he also seeks out singularities that operate outside the brutal inevitability of historical repetition, whether represented in literature or, more precisely, in the process of literature's demise. Closely reading the works of Oe Kenzaburo, Mishima Yukio, Nakagami Kenji, and Murakami Haruki, Karatani compares the recurrent and universal with the singular and unrepeatable, while advancing a compelling theory of the decline of modern literature. Merging theoretical arguments with a concrete analysis of cultural and intellectual history, Karatani's essays encapsulate a brilliant, multidisciplinary perspective on world history.

Philosophy for Non-Philosophers

Philosophy for Non-Philosophers PDF Author: Louis Althusser
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472592026
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
In 1980, at the end of the most intensely political period of his work and life, Louis Althusser penned Philosophy for Non-philosophers. Available here for the first time in English, Philosophy for Non-philosophers constitutes a rigorous and engaged attempt to address a wide reading public unfamiliar with Althusser's project. As such, the work is a concentration of the most fundamental theses of Althusser's own ideas, and presents a synthesis of his sprawling and disparate philosophical and political writings. Nowhere else does Althusser push the distinction between philosophy and other disciplines as far, or develop in such detail the concept of 'practice'. Rather than a work of 'popular philosophy', Philosophy for Non-philosophers is a continuation and conglomeration of Althusser's thought; a thought whose radicality is still perceptible in those that have followed since. Philosophy for Non-philosophers thus provides a vivid encapsulation of Althusser's seminal influence on the leading thinkers of today, including Ranciere, Badiou, Balibar, and Žižek.

Transcritique

Transcritique PDF Author: Kojin Karatani
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262263368
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Kojin Karatani's Transcritique introduces a startlingly new dimension to Immanuel Kant's transcendental critique by using Kant to read Karl Marx and Marx to read Kant. In a direct challenge to standard academic approaches to both thinkers, Karatani's transcritical readings discover the ethical roots of socialism in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and a Kantian critique of money in Marx's Capital. Karatani reads Kant as a philosopher who sought to wrest metaphysics from the discredited realm of theoretical dogma in order to restore it to its proper place in the sphere of ethics and praxis. With this as his own critical model, he then presents a reading of Marx that attempts to liberate Marxism from longstanding Marxist and socialist presuppositions in order to locate a solid theoretical basis for a positive activism capable of gradually superseding the trinity of Capital-Nation-State.

Architecture as Metaphor

Architecture as Metaphor PDF Author: Kojin Karatani
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description


The Philosophy of Social Ecology

The Philosophy of Social Ecology PDF Author: Murray Bookchin
Publisher: AK Press
ISBN: 1849354413
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 127

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Book Description
What is nature? What is humanity's place in nature? And what is the relationship of society to the natural world? In an era of ecological breakdown, answering these questions has become of momentous importance for our everyday lives and for the future that we and other life-forms face. In the essays of The Philosophy of Social Ecology, Murray Bookchin confronts these questions head on: invoking the ideas of mutualism, self-organization, and unity in diversity, in the service of ever expanding freedom. Refreshingly polemical and deeply philosophical, they take issue with technocratic and mechanistic ways of understanding and relating to, and within, nature. More importantly, they develop a solid, historically and politically based ethical foundation for social ecology, the field that Bookchin himself created and that offers us hope in the midst of our climate catastrophe.

Arendt on the Political

Arendt on the Political PDF Author: David Arndt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108498310
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
Shows how Hannah Arendt opened up new ways of thinking about politics and a new approach to interpreting political history.

The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought

The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought PDF Author: Christopher Rowe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521481366
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 784

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Book Description
A definitive reference work on Greek and Roman political thought from the age of Homer to late antiquity, first published in 2000.

Nation and Aesthetics

Nation and Aesthetics PDF Author: Kōjin Karatani
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190622970
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Nation and Aesthetics shows curious connections between nationalism and aesthetics through examining various fields such as art, language, and religion. This connection is not accidental, but inherent. Nation connects capitalism and the state, thus creating the problematic modern social formation of capital-nation-state.