Speculative Philosophy

Speculative Philosophy PDF Author: Donald Phillip Verene
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739136615
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
In this original and illuminating work, the reader is invited to approach philosophy as an activity that can instruct, delight, and move. On this view, philosophy can be seen as a key to human education, a mastery of humane letters, and a part of the repulic of the liberal arts. Embracing this approach to philosophy, Verene argues, involves moving beyond modern philosophy's analytical encounter with experience, one that emphasizes argument and criticism at the expense of the Socratic search for self-knowledge. Relying on insights from Vico and Hegel, Verene introduces a new sense of reason, one that sees the True as the whole and that connects reason to the ancient sense of speculation. Reflection and criticism are given their due, but the reorientation of philosophy toward the speculative grasp of the whole of things allows memory, imagination, and dialectical ingenuity to take on philosophical form. In the end, this work show how speculation, symbolic form, metaphor, poetry, and rhetoric are natural parts of philosophical thinking.

Speculative Philosophy

Speculative Philosophy PDF Author: Donald Phillip Verene
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739136615
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this original and illuminating work, the reader is invited to approach philosophy as an activity that can instruct, delight, and move. On this view, philosophy can be seen as a key to human education, a mastery of humane letters, and a part of the repulic of the liberal arts. Embracing this approach to philosophy, Verene argues, involves moving beyond modern philosophy's analytical encounter with experience, one that emphasizes argument and criticism at the expense of the Socratic search for self-knowledge. Relying on insights from Vico and Hegel, Verene introduces a new sense of reason, one that sees the True as the whole and that connects reason to the ancient sense of speculation. Reflection and criticism are given their due, but the reorientation of philosophy toward the speculative grasp of the whole of things allows memory, imagination, and dialectical ingenuity to take on philosophical form. In the end, this work show how speculation, symbolic form, metaphor, poetry, and rhetoric are natural parts of philosophical thinking.

Diseases of the Head

Diseases of the Head PDF Author: Matt Rosen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781953035103
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 522

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Book Description
Diseases of the Head is an anthology of essays from contemporary philosophers, artists, and writers working at the crossroads of speculative philosophy and speculative horror. At once a compendium of multivocal endeavors, a breviary of supposedly illicit ponderings, and a travelogue of philosophical exploration, this collection centers itself on the place at which philosophy and horror meet. Employing rigorous analysis, incisive experimentation, and novel invention, this anthology asks about the use that speculation can make of horror and horror of speculation, about whether philosophy is fictional or fiction philosophical, and about the relationship between horror, the exigencies of our world and time, and the future developments that may await us in philosophy itself. From philosophers working on horrific themes, to horror writers influenced by heresies in the wake of post-Kantianism, to artists engaged in projects that address monstrosity and alienation, Diseases of the Head aims at nothing less than a speculative coup d'état.Refusing both total negation and absolute affirmation, refusing to deny everything or account for everything, refusing the posture of critique and the posture of all-encompassing unification, this collection of essays aims at exposition and construction, analysis and creation - it desires to fight for some thing, but not everything, and not nothing. And it desires, most of all, to speak from the position of its own insufficiency, its own partiality, its own under-determinacy, which is always indicative of the practice of thinking, of speculation. Considering themes of anonymity, otherness and alterity, the gothic, extinction and the world without us, the end times, the apocalypse, the ancient and the world before us, and the uncanny or unheimlich, among other motifs, this anthology seeks to articulate the cutting edge which can be found at the intersection of speculative philosophy and speculative horror.Matt Rosen is a philosopher. He is the author of numerous books and pamphlets, including Speculative Annihilationism (Zero Books, 2019) and the forthcoming treatise Angst and Abnegation. His theoretical writings have also appeared in journals and anthologies. His work centers on radical ethics and alterity, and his interests range across a variety of areas, including moral philosophy, metaphysics, literature, mysticism, psychoanalysis, theology, politics, and aesthetics.

Speculative Realism

Speculative Realism PDF Author: Graham Harman
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509520023
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
On April 27, 2007, the first Speculative Realism (SR) workshop was held at Goldsmiths, University of London, featuring four young philosophers whose ideas were loosely allied. Over the ensuing decade, the ideas of SR spread from philosophy to the arts, architecture, and numerous disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. SR has been arguably the most influential new current in continental philosophy since the works of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari found their second wind in the 1990s. But what is SR? This book is the first general overview by one of its original members, focusing on the aesthetic, ethical, ontological, and political themes of greatest importance to the movement. Graham Harman provides a balanced but critical assessment of his original SR colleagues – Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, and Quentin Meillassoux – along with a clear summary of his own Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO). A number of central philosophical questions tie the four chapters together: What exactly is "correlationism," the chief enemy of SR? What are the stakes of philosophical realism, and is such realism better served by mathematics and the natural sciences, or by a broader model of cognitive activity that includes aesthetics? This book covers both the historical and conceptual development of the movement, providing a first-rate introduction for students, aided by helpful end-of-chapter study questions chosen by Harman himself. SR, Harman shows, is a vital and fast-developing field in contemporary philosophy.

Physics and Speculative Philosophy

Physics and Speculative Philosophy PDF Author: Timothy E. Eastman
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 311045047X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
Through both an historical and philosophical analysis of the concept of possibility, we show how including both potentiality and actuality as part of the real is both compatible with experience and contributes to solving key problems of fundamental process and emergence. The book is organized into four main sections that incorporate our routes to potentiality: (1) potentiality in modern science [history and philosophy; quantum physics and complexity]; (2) Relational Realism [ontological interpretation of quantum physics; philosophy and logic]; (3) Process Physics [ontological interpretation of relativity theory; physics and philosophy]; (4) on speculative philosophy and physics [limitations and approximations; process philosophy]. We conclude that certain fundamental problems in modern physics require complementary analyses of certain philosophical and metaphysical issues, and that such scholarship reveals intrinsic features and limits of determinism, potentiality and emergence that enable, among others, important progress on the quantum theory of measurement problem and new understandings of emergence.

Ernst Bloch’s Speculative Materialism

Ernst Bloch’s Speculative Materialism PDF Author: Cat Moir
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004272879
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
In Ernst Bloch’s Speculative Materialism: Ontology, Epistemology, Politics, Cat Moir offers a new interpretation of the philosophy of Ernst Bloch. The reception of Bloch’s work has seen him variously painted as a naïve realist, a romantic nature philosopher, a totalitarian thinker, and an irrationalist whose obscure literary style stands in for a lack of systematic rigour. Moir challenges these conceptions of Bloch by reconstructing the ontological, epistemological, and political dimensions of his speculative materialism. Through a close, historically contextualised reading of Bloch’s major work of ontology, Das Materialismusproblem, seine Geschichte und Substanz (The Materialism Problem, its History and Substance), Moir presents Bloch as one of the twentieth century’s most significant critical thinkers.

Speculative Realism

Speculative Realism PDF Author: Peter Gratton
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441163670
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Speculative realism is one of the most talked-about movements in recent Continental philosophy. It has been discussed widely amongst the younger generation of Continental philosophers seeking new philosophical approaches and promises to form the cornerstone of future debates in the field. This book introduces the contexts out of which speculative realism has emerged and provides an overview of the major contributors and latest developments. It guides the reader through the important questions asked by realism (what can I know? what is reality?), examining philosophy's perennial questions in new ways. The book begins with the speculative realist's critique of 'correlationism', the view that we can never reach what is real beneath our language systems, our means for perception, or our finite manner of being-in-the-world. It goes on to critically review the work of the movement's most important thinkers, including Quentin Meillassoux, Ray Brassier, and Graham Harman, but also other important writers such as Jane Bennett and Catherine Malabou whose writings delineate alternative approaches to the real. It interrogates the crucial questions these thinkers have raised and concludes with a look toward the future of speculative realism, especially as it relates to the reality of time.

The Universe of Things

The Universe of Things PDF Author: Steven Shaviro
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 145294282X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
From the rediscovery of Alfred North Whitehead’s work to the rise of new materialist thought, including object-oriented ontology, there has been a rapid turn toward speculation in philosophy as a way of moving beyond solely human perceptions of nature and existence. Now Steven Shaviro maps this quickly emerging speculative realism, which is already dramatically influencing how we interpret reality and our place in a universe in which humans are not the measure of all things. The Universe of Things explores the common insistence of speculative realism on a noncorrelationist thought: that things or objects exist apart from how our own human minds relate to and comprehend them. Shaviro focuses on how Whitehead both anticipates and offers challenges to prevailing speculative realist thought, moving between Whitehead’s own panpsychism, Harman’s object-oriented ontology, and the reductionist eliminativism of Quentin Meillassoux and Ray Brassier. The stakes of this recent speculative realist thought—of the effort to develop new ways of grasping the world—are enormous as it becomes clear that our inherited assumptions are no longer adequate to describe, much less understand, the reality we experience around us. As Shaviro acknowledges, speculative realist thought has its dangers, but it also, like the best speculative fiction, holds the potential to liberate us from confining views of what is outside ourselves and, he believes, to reclaim aesthetics and beauty as a principle of life itself. Bringing together a wide array of contemporary thought, and evenhandedly assessing its current debates, The Universe of Things is an invaluable guide to the evolution of speculative realism and the provocation of Alfred North Whitehead’s pathbreaking work.

The Philosophy of Philosophy

The Philosophy of Philosophy PDF Author: Timothy Williamson
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119616670
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 692

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Book Description
The Philosophy of Philosophy The Blackwell / Brown Lectures in Philosophy The Philosophy of Philosophy presents an original, unified concept of philosophy as a non-natural science. In this provocative work, distinguished philosopher Timothy Williamson challenges widely-held assumptions and clarifies long-standing misconceptions about the methodology and nature of philosophical inquiry. The author rejects the standard narratives of contemporary philosophy developed from naturalism, the linguistic turn, postmodern irony, and other prominent trends of the twentieth century. Viewing the method of philosophy as evolving from non-philosophical pursuits, Williamson provides readers with fresh insight into the “self-image” of philosophy and offers new ways of understanding what philosophy is and how it actually works. Now in its second edition, this landmark volume comprises the original book and the author’s subsequent work. New topics include the recent history of analytic philosophy, assessments of experimental philosophy, theories of concepts and understanding, Wittgensteinian approaches, popular philosophy, naturalism, morally-loaded examples in philosophy, philosophical applications of scientific methods, and many more. This edition features the author’s latest thoughts on a variety of issues, autobiographical reflections, and replies to critics. The Philosophy of Philosophy, Second Edition remains essential reading for philosophers, scholars, graduate and advanced undergraduate students in philosophy, and other readers with a sustained interest in the method and rationale of the doing of philosophy.

Collected Essays in Speculative Philosophy

Collected Essays in Speculative Philosophy PDF Author: James Bradley
Publisher: New Perspectives in Ontology
ISBN: 9781474485869
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
This collection of essays by James Bradley showcases his unique vision: a speculative cosmology of the Trinity, drawing on the vast history of Western philosophy. This journey led him into an intensive study of a number of different thinkers, ancient and modern, including Plato, John Scotus Eriugena, Duns Scotus, Hegel, Schelling, Peirce, Whitehead and Collingwood.

Speculative Grace

Speculative Grace PDF Author: Adam S. Miller
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 082325223X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
This book offers a novel account of grace framed in terms of Bruno Latour’s “principle of irreduction.” It thus models an object-oriented approach to grace, experimentally moving a traditional Christian understanding of grace out of a top-down, theistic ontology and into an agent-based, object-oriented ontology. In the process, it also provides a systematic and original account of Latour’s overall project. The account of grace offered here redistributes the tasks assigned to science and religion. Where now the work of science is to bring into focus objects that are too distant, too resistant, and too transcendent to be visible, the business of religion is to bring into focus objects that are too near, too available, and too immanent to be visible. Where science reveals transcendent objects by correcting for our nearsightedness, religion reveals immanent objects by correcting for our farsightedness. Speculative Grace remaps the meaning of grace and examines the kinds of religious instruments and practices that, as a result, take center stage.