Ferit Güven illuminates the historically constitutive roles of madness and death in philosophy by examining them in the light of contemporary discussions of the intersection of power and knowledge and ethical relations with the other. Historically, as Güven shows, philosophical treatments of madness and death have limited or subdued their disruptive quality. Madness and death are linked to the question of how to conceptualize the unthinkable, but Güven illustrates how this conceptualization results in a reduction to positivity of the very radical negativity these moments represent. Tracing this problematic through Plato, Hegel, Heidegger, and, finally, in the debate on madness between Foucault and Derrida, Güven gestures toward a nonreducible, disruptive form of negativity, articulated in Heidegger's critique of Hegel and Foucault's engagement with Derrida, that might allow for the preservation of real otherness and open the possibility of a true ethics of difference.

Dead Letters to Nietzsche examines how writing shapes subjectivity through the example of Nietzsche’s reception by his readers, including Stanley Rosen, David Farrell Krell, Georges Bataille, Laurence Lampert, Pierre Klossowski, and Sarah Kofman. More precisely, Joanne Faulkner finds that the personal identification that these readers form with Nietzsche’s texts is an enactment of the kind of identity-formation described in Lacanian and Kleinian psychoanalysis. This investment of their subjectivity guides their understanding of Nietzsche’s project, the revaluation of values. Not only does this work make a provocative contribution to Nietzsche scholarship, but it also opens in an original way broader philosophical questions about how readers come to be invested in a philosophical project and how such investment alters their subjectivity.

This book addresses the limits of metaphysics and the question of the possibility of ethics in this context. It is divided into six chapters, the first of which broadens readers’ understanding of difference as difference with specific reference to the works of Hegel. The second chapter discusses the works of Emmanuel Lévinas and the question of the ethical. In turn, the concepts of sovereignty and the eternal return are discussed in chapters three and four, while chapter five poses the question of literature in a new way. The book concludes with chapter six. The book represents an important contribution to the field of contemporary philosophical debates on the possibility of ethics beyond all possible metaphysical and political closures. As such, it will be of interest to scholars and researchers in both the humanities and social sciences. Beyond the academic world, the book will also appeal to readers (journalists, intellectuals, social activists, etc.) for whom the question of the ethical is the decisive question of our time.

Exploring ideas of post-mortem existence through the lenses of complex systems and traditional cultural perspectives offers a deeper understanding about life, death, and the existence beyond. Self-organization theory provides a framework for examining how cultural systems evolve and adapt new concepts of post-mortem states, where individual consciousness and collective memory continue to evolve. Traditional cultures provide diverse and deep-rooted views on the afterlife, often envisioning a continued existence, spiritual transformation, or idea perpetuated by moral beliefs. Further research on integrating these perspectives is necessary to gain a more nuanced approach to post-mortem existence understanding and appreciation for evolving systems and cultural constructs. Post-Mortem Existence Within the Complex Systems Self-Organization Theory Framework and in Traditional Cultures explores the ideals of post-mortem existences in traditional cultures using a complex systems self-organization theory framework. Religious structures and cultural responses to death are outlined while examining various models and scenarios. This book covers topics such as biology, philosophy, and anthropology, and is a useful resource for scientists, biologists, medical professionals, philosophers, anthropologists, academicians, and researchers.

Nietzsche is undoubtedly one of the most original and influential thinkers in the history of philosophy. In his works, he not only grapples with previous great philosophers and their ideas, but he also calls into question and redefines what it means to do philosophy. Nietzsche and the Philosophers for the first time sets out to examine explicitly Nietzsche’s relationship to his most important predecessors. This anthology includes essays that discuss Nietzsche’s engagement with such figures as Aristotle, Kant, Socrates, Hume, Schopenhauer, Emerson, Rousseau, and the Buddha. Anyone interested in Nietzsche or the history of philosophy generally will find much of great interest in this volume.

This book shows how an understanding of the nature and role of insanity in Hegel's writing provides intriguing new points of access to many of the central themes of his larger philosophic project. Berthold-Bond situates Hegel's theory of madness within the history of psychiatric practice during the great reform period at the turn of the eighteenth century, and shows how Hegel developed a middle path between the stridently opposed camps of "empirical" and "romantic" medicine, and of "somatic" and "psychical" practitioners. A key point of the book is to show that Hegel does not conceive of madness and health as strictly opposing states, but as kindred phenomena sharing many of the same underlying mental structures and strategies, so that the ontologies of insanity and rationality involve a mutually illuminating, mirroring relation. Hegel's theory is tested against the critiques of the institution of psychiatry and the very concept of madness by such influential twentieth-century authors as Michel Foucault and Thomas Szasz, and defended as offering a genuinely reconciling position in the contemporary debate between the "social labeling" and "medical" models of mental illness.

Humor has been praised by philosophers and poets as a balm to soothe the sorrows that outrageous fortune’s slings and arrows cause inevitably, if not incessantly, to each and every one of us. In mundane life, having a sense of humor is seen not only as a positive trait of character, but as a social prerequisite, without which a person’s career and mating prospects are severely diminished, if not annihilated. However, humor is much more than this, and so much else. In particular, humor can accompany cruelty, inform it, sustain it, and exemplify it. Therefore, in this book, we provide a comprehensive, reasoned exploration of the vast literature on the concepts of humor and cruelty, as these have been tackled in Western philosophy, humanities, and social sciences, especially psychology. Also, the apparent cacophony of extant interpretations of these two concepts is explained as the inevitable and even useful result of the polysemy inherent to all common-sense concepts, in line with the understanding of concepts developed by M. Polanyi in the 20th century. Thus, a thorough, nuanced grasp of their complex mutual relationship is established, and many platitudes affecting today's received views, and scholarship, are cast aside.

Covers topics in philosophy, psychology, and scientific methods. Vols. 31- include "A Bibliography of philosophy," 1933-

There are certain things that can be explained and certain things that cannot be explained. This book is about the latter. It is a book about death: how death interrupts and influences the reflection on the self. It is a book about God: a detailed and critical discussion on how Kierkegaard and Derrida apply the concept of God in their philosophical reflections. The most ground-breaking analysis concerns the famous passage on the self (A.A) in The Sickness unto Death, where the author combines logical, rhetorical and dialectical means to establish a new perspective on Kierkegaard's thinking in general. The Cartesian doubt then constitutes a common trait for his detailed and rigorous analysis of Derrida and Kierkegaard on death, madness, faith, and rationality - showing how they both seek to break up the Hegelian Aufhebung from within, but still remain dependent on Hegel. After Kierkegaard and Derrida, the certainty and total uncertainty of death - and of God as infinite other - gives the self a basic, though non-foundational, responsibility. The significance of this responsibility, of this other, of this death, requires sustained and thorough consideration. Where others mark a conclusion, this book therefore marks a point of departure: reflecting on oneself at the graveside of a dead man - thus introducing an Autopsia.

The Poetics of Philosophy is my attempt to hear what academic philosophy attempts to silence, namely, how reason resonates with madness. It is thus a stinging of the great steed of academia in order to recover and re-experience what otherwise would be repressed by the exigencies of bureaucratic-commodity life in the late capitalist world. An analysis of Plato’s principal dialogues with a view towards developing the author’s conception of thinking, knowing, and loving, it incorporates the insights of Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Derrida. Provoking the world mind to reflect upon its phenomenological possibility for Being dispersed within its daily routines or business, the book argues for the metaphysicality of physical reality articulated through the narrative trope of fractal dialectical logic. The present volume’s more general implications extend the insights of the author’s previous work in the area of social science. I refer to the possibility for world communist revolution, which is predicated on communism’s thorough ridding itself of its naïve materialist perspective, the relics of a Newtonian Universe, and its embracing of a fractal-dialectical logic (or similar) that is better able to incorporate the yearning for immortality, desire to experience beauty, and the need to have a meaningful life that define human species life. To articulate such a framework is the aim of my general research.