You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Focusing on the conceptual genesis of European solidarity, the thinkers and contexts that contributed to its evolution, and the practices that aim at implementing it, this book highlights its main features, limits, and potentialities.
The meaning of Europe exceeds its territorial limits, and is not fully ascribable either to the events that characterized its history or to the institutions that regulated the lives of its inhabitants. Europe is all this, and yet it represents much more: a political concept and project, a cultural enterprise, and a system of power whose legitimacy is currently challenged by a series of internal and external crises that jeopardize its survival. There is no single definition that can describe what ‘Europe’ is, as this word evokes unity as much as division, solidarity and conflicts, progress and decadence, and coexistence and colonization. Besides all this, Europe is also a philosophical id...
The Risk of Freedom presents an in-depth analysis of the philosophy of Jan Patočka, one of the most influential Central European thinkers of the twentieth century, examining both the phenomenological and ethical-political aspects of his work. In particular, Francesco Tava takes an original approach to the problem of freedom, which represents a recurring theme in Patočka’s work, both in his early and later writings. Freedom is conceived of as a difficult and dangerous experience. In his deep analysis of this particular problem, Tava identifies the authentic ethical content of Patočka’s work and clarifies its connections with phenomenology, history of philosophy, politics and dissidence. The Risk of Freedom retraces Patočka’s philosophical journey and elucidates its more problematic and less evident traits, such as his original ethical conception, his political ideals and his direct commitment as a dissident.
Reimagining Europe comprises a series of contributions which address, in various ways, the relationship between Europe and continental philosophy/phenomenology. Europe is in crisis: a crisis that no longer designates a moment of decision, a critical point between a before and an after, but a state, a permanent mode of being, a constant emergency. At this juncture of Europe, the aporia of language confronts the aporia of history. We cannot speak, we must speak, we shall speak. As such, the contributions all engage with the idea that the question "what is Europe?" must measure up a series of questions, namely: what was it to be? What does it mean to initiate and sustain a project, such as Europe, if only at times, after the fact? The questions of internal and external borders, of homogeneity and coherence, identity and equality, legitimacy and rights, democracy and representation can only be raised insofar as the question of Europe, its destiny, and destination, is raised as a whole.
Jan Patočka, perhaps more so than any other philosopher in the twentieth century, managed to combine intense philosophical insight with a farsighted analysis of the idea and challenges facing Europe as a historical, cultural and political signifier. As a political dissident in communist Czechoslovakia he also became a moral and political inspiration to a generation of Czechs, including Václav Havel. He accomplished this in a time of intense political repression when not even the hint of a unified Europe seemed visible by showing in exemplary fashion how concrete thought can be without renouncing in any way its depth. Europe as an idea and a political project is a central issue in contemporary political theory. Patočka’s political thought offers many original insights into questions surrounding the European project. Here, for the first time, a group of leading scholars from different disciplines gathers together to discuss the specific political impact of Patočka’s philosophy and its lasting significance.
Critically evaluating and synthesizing all the previous research on the phenomenology of Czech philosopher Jan Patočka, the book brings a new voice into contemporary philosophical discussions. It elucidates the development of Patočka’s phenomenology and offers a critical appropriation of his work by connecting it with non-phenomenological approaches. The first half of the book offers a succinct, and systematizing, overview of Patočka’s phenomenology throughout its development to help readers appreciate the motives behind and grounds for its transformations. The second half systematically explicates, critically examines and creatively develops Patočka’s concept of the movement of existence as the most promising part of his asubjective phenomenology. The book appeals to new readers of Patočka as well as his scholars, and to students and researchers of contemporary philosophy concerned with topics such as embodiment, personal identity, intersubjectivity, sociality, or historicity. By re-assessing Patočka’s philosophy of history and his civilizational analysis, it also helps to better articulate the question of the place of Europe in the post-European world.
Situating Karl Mannheim in a tradition of critical social philosophy, Iaan Reynolds argues that Mannheim's early explorations in the sociology of knowledge offer a novel approach to this tradition since they emphasize the need for social research to cultivate the critical self-awareness of social researchers.
In Groundwork of Phenomenological Marxism: Crisis, Body, World, Ian H. Angus investigates the crisis of reason in a contemporary context. Beginning with Edmund Husserl’s The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Angus connects the phenomenology of human motility to Marx’s ontology of labor in Capital and shows its basis in natural fecundity (excess). He argues that the formalization of reason creates an inability to foster differentiated community as expected by both Husserl and Marx and that the formalization of human motility by the regime of value reveals the ontological productivity of natural fecundity, showing that ecology is the contemporary exemplary s...
Winner of the 2020 Emerging Scholar’s Theological Book Prize presented by the European Society for Catholic Theology This book examines the work of Czech philosopher Jan Patočka from the largely neglected perspective of religion. Patočka is known primarily for his work in phenomenology and ancient Greek philosophy, and also as a civil rights activist and critic of modernity. In this book, Martin Koci shows Patočka also maintained a persistent and increasing interest in Christianity. Thinking Faith after Christianity examines the theological motifs in Patočka's work and brings his thought into discussion with recent developments in phenomenology, making a case for Patočka as a forerunn...
Literary theory flourished in Central and Eastern Europe throughout the twentieth century, but its relation to Western literary scholarship is complex. This book sheds light on the entangled histories of exchange and influence both within the region known as Central and Eastern Europe, and between the region and the West. The exchange of ideas between scholars in the East and West was facilitated by both personal and institutional relations, both official and informal encounters. For the longest time, however, intellectual exchange was thwarted by political tensions that led to large parts of Central and Eastern Europe being isolated from the West. A few literary theories nevertheless made i...