Ontology Books - Page 17

Adorno's Aesthetic Theory: The Redemption of Illusion (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)

Lambert Zuidervaart

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Editorial Review:

Theodor Adorno's Aesthetic Theory is a vast labyrinth that anyone interested in modern aesthetic theory must at some time enter. Because of his immense difficulty of the same order as Derrida - Adorno's reception has been slowed by the lack of a comprehensive and comprehensible account of the intentions of his aesthetics. This is the first book to put Aesthetic Theory into context and outline the main ideas and relevant debates, offering readers a valuable guide through this huge, difficult, but revelatory work. Its extended argument is that, despite Adorno's assumptions of autonomism, cognitivism, and aesthetic modernism, his idea of artistic truth content offers crucial insights for contemporary philosophical aesthetics.

The eleven chapters are divided into three parts: Context, Content, and Critique. The first part offers a brief biography, describes Adorno's debates with Benjamin, Brecht, and Lukács, and outlines his philosophical program. The second part is an interpretation of Adorno's aesthetics, examining how he situates art in society, production, politics, and history and uncovering the social, political, and historical dimensions of his idea of artistic truth. The third part evaluates Adorno's contribution by confronting it with the critiques of Peter Bürger, Frederic Jameson, and Albrecht Wellmer.

Lambert Zuidervaart is Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College.

Becomings: Explorations in Time, Memory, and Futures

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Editorial Review:

With the advent of the new millennium, the notion of the future, and of time in general, has taken on greater significance in postmodern thought. Although the equally pervasive and abstract concept of space has generated a vast body of disciplines, time, and the related idea of "becoming" (transforming, mutating, and metamorphosing) have until now received little theoretical attention.

This volume explores the ontological, epistemic, and political implications of rethinking time as a dynamic and irreversible force. Drawing on ideas from the natural sciences, as well as from literature, philosophy, politics, and cultural analyses, its authors seek to stimulate further research in both the sciences and the humanities which highlights the temporal foundations of matter and culture.

The first section of the volume, "The Becoming of the World," provides a broad introduction to the concepts of time. The second section, "Knowing and Doing Otherwise," addresses the forces within cultural and intellectual practices which produce various becomings and new futures. It also analyzes how alternative models of subjectivity and corporeality may be generated through different conceptions of time. "Global Futures," the third section, considers the possibilities for the social, political, and cultural transformation of individuals and nations.

Contributors Linda Alcoff, Syracuse University Edward Casey, State University of New York, Stony Brook Pheng Cheah, Northwestern University Claire Colebrook, Monash University Elizabeth Grosz, State University of New York, Buffalo Eleanor Kaufman, Cornell University Manuel de Landa, Columbia University Alphonso Lingis, Pennsylvania State University Dorothea Olkowski, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs John Rajchman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Gail Weiss, George Washington University

On Being Born and Other Difficulties

F. Gonzalez-Crussi

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Editorial Review:

There is no theme more central to human life on earth than birth (unless it is its natural counterpart, death). With a pathologist's trained eye for observation of detail and a style unrivaled in elegance and wit, F. Gonzalez-Crussi, author of The Five Senses, reflects on the largest of topics, those in which science, religion, and philosophy brush most closely together, such as the origin of life in the universe, the complex evolution of human sexuality, and the debate over when the soul is acquired. Drawing on a variety of sources spanning the fields of biology, literature, history, myth, medicine, and philosophy, On Being Born and Other Difficulties surveys a vast field of opinions and theories, contrasting the supremely rational processes by which we evolved on this planet with our irrational and often bizarre attempts to understand them. Gonzalez-Crussi traces millennia of misunderstandings to their sources - Aristotle, Hippocrates, Descartes, Sir Thomas Browne, Cervantes, Rabelais, Maupassant, and Nietzsche, among others - engaging them with precision, humour, and humanity. With its unparalleled depth and insight, On Being Born and Other Difficulties is a profoundly entertaining work of the highest literary calibre.

Aesthetics: Classic Readings from the Western Tradition

Dabney Townsend

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

An Engaging Perspective On Art and Beauty 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This a tough read, but a rewarding one. It presumes a familiarity with philosophical language and with the major players (especially the Greeks). It also borders on being a grad-level read, so beware if it's been assigned to you in an undergrad course; you've got your work cut out for you. Nonetheless, Townsend compiles an interesting assortment of readings (even though he jumps over big time periods) and gives a fresh perspective on writers that you've probably thought of very differently until now (e.g., Tolstoy and Clive Bell). It's the kind of book that's engrossing enough to keep even after the course is over, and it'll probably be a useful resource to have in your personal library if you're going to go on to graduate study in philosophy or art.

Editorial Review:

This anthology is a collection of basic readings for beginning students, chosen to illustrate the major movements in the history, development and nature of aesthetics. Selections of major importance are drawn from the period of the Greeks to the mid-twentieth century. Every section introduction includes an historical overview of each period, biographical information, and a brief analysis of key concepts. The editor designed this anthology to be of sufficient length for use as the sole text in a one quarter course, yet brief enough to invite the use of additional materials in longer courses.

Heidegger's Analytic: Interpretation, Discourse and Authenticity in Being and Time (Modern European Philosophy)

Taylor Carman

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A good study 3 out of 5 stars.
17 of 21 people found this review helpful.

This book is a fine piece of scholarship, and it certainly stands out amongst other commentaries on Heidegger's thought, most of which are plagued by ideological tendentiousness and unclarity. Carman's book avoids both of these failings, and for that reason alone is well worth a read.

The guiding thesis of the book is that Heidegger's "analytic" in "Being and Time" should be understood as the provision of "hermeneutic conditions," i.e. the conditions under which human beings are able to interpretively make sense of the world. Focusing particularly on Heidegger's views on language and intentionality, Carman makes a fairly good case for this reading.

The main problem that I found in this book is that, by tying Heidegger's researches with contemporary Anglo-American thought so closely, Carman winds up distorting the real originality of Heidegger's thought. Heidegger's thought is so deeply unlike virtually everything else that has come along in the last 200 years that it is a mistake to assimilate his work to that of other philosophers. Commentators and readers alike need to keep Heidegger's own admonitions about his work in mind while reading him; this is a man, after all, once told his students that it was his "personal conviction" that his "hermeneutics" is not philosophy at all (Summer 1923), and who later said that "It is my belief that it is all over for philosophy" (Winter 1923-1924).

That said, Carman's work is an eminently readable, well-argued study that ought to be a paradigm for other scholars. While I have my doubts about attempts to make Heidegger into an analytic philosopher, I can only praise Carman's effort at making Heidegger speak to a contemporary audience about issues of universal philosophical concern.

Editorial Review:

Unlike those who view Heidegger as an idealist, Taylor Carman asserts that Heidegger is best understood as a realist and offers a new interpretation of his major work, Being and Time. Among the book's distinctive features are an interpretation explicitly oriented within a Kantian framework (often taken for granted in readings of Heidegger) and an analysis of Dasein in relation to recent theories of intentionality; notably those of Dennett and Searle.

The Natural Background of Meaning (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science)

A. Denkel

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Editorial Review:

In The Natural Background to Meaning Denkel argues that meaning in language is an outcome of the evolutionary development of forms of animal communication, and explains this process by naturalising the Locke--Grice approach. The roots of meaning are contained in observable regularities, which are manifestations of objective connections such as essences and causal relations. Denkel's particularistic ontology of properties and causation leads to a view of time that harmonises B-theory with transience. Time's passage, he argues, is a necessary condition of communication and meaning. The book connects some central topics in the philosophies of language, science and ontology, treating them within the framework of a single theory. It will interest not only professional philosophers doing research on meaning, universals, causation and time, but also students, who can consult it as a textbook examining Grice's theory of meaning.

Kant's Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (Modern European Philosophy)

Henry E. Allison

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A must read for serious scholars of 3rd Critique 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 11 people found this review helpful.

Allison's book provides a wealth of interesting and semi-interesting arguments on the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. The book is important in engaging with Guyer and the tradition of analytic aesthetics. It responds to many of the lacunas in Guyer's *Kant's Theory of Taste*, particularly as regards the status of judgments of taste as reflective. However, Allison by no means goes far enough in explaining the import of this status. Those interested in the 3rd Critique are adivsed to get Makkreel's much more readable work if they wish to understand the reflective character of aesthetic judgments, including their contribution to reflective interpretation. Also, Allison at times goes too far in attacking Guyer, leaving Guyer able to readily deal with many of Allison's points, and thereby continue his own critique of Kant.

Editorial Review:

This book constitutes one of the most important contributions to recent Kant scholarship. In it, one of the preeminent interpreters of Kant, Henry Allison, offers a comprehensive, systematic, and philosophically astute account of all aspects of Kant's views on aesthetics. An authoritative guide to the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (the first and most important part of the Critique of Judgment), no one with a serious interest in Kant's aesthetics can afford to ignore this groundbreaking study.

The Logic of Time: A Model-Theoretic Investigation into the Varieties of Temporal Ontology and Temporal Discourse (Synthese Library)

J. van Benthem

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The Self after Postmodernity

Calvin O. Schrag

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Editorial Review:

American philosopher Calvin O. Schrag here rejects bleak deconstructionist and postmodern views of the human self, chooses a new vocabulary to describe the self, and depicts an action-oriented self defined by the ways it communicates. This thought-provoking book provides an overview of Schrag`s philosophy and includes a discussion of the role of culture in the dynamics of self-formation.

Philosophy of the Human Person

James B. Reichmann

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

A good introduction to Philosophy. 4 out of 5 stars.
5 of 11 people found this review helpful.

You will be introduced to the major thinkers of philosophy and their philosophies concerning the human person

An excellent overview of the Thomist position 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

This text provides an excellent intoduction and summary of the philosophy of the human being as has been traditionally taught in the Western tradition. Reichmann provides clear descriptions of several difficult topics in the philosophy of the person from the classic Thomist persepctive, especially in reference to modern issues like the beginning of life and the challenges posed by evolutionary theory

Much More Than A Super Suspense Thriller!! 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Reichmann brilliantly inserts philosophical ideas into the narrative. In addition to tracing the life of our protagonist, Thomas, Fr. Reichmann describes his struggles in coming to grips with his only too human self. Along the way, he teams up with his sidekick Archimedes, who provides valuable insight. With the help of Archimedes, Thomas comes to understand his phenomena of questioning, learning, intellection and habituation. He then must prepare himself for the ultimate test. In a thrilling conclusion, Thomas is forced to face his own origins. Will Thomas be tempted by the devil and accept a monkey as his father? Read on and find out!

Editorial Review:

This book provides the student of philosophy with a comprehensive discussion of the human experience, with the single aim of uncovering the meaning of being human.