Tag Archives: Book

Books, Of Interest

Recco and Sanday Edit Volume on Plato’s Laws

Two long time members of the APS have co-edited a volume entitled: Plato’s Laws: Force and Truth in Politics. 

Here is what Indiana University Press says:

Readers of Plato have often neglected the Laws because of its length and density. In this set of interpretive essays, notable scholars of the Laws from the fields of classics, history, philosophy, and political science offer a collective close reading of the dialogue “book by book” and reflect on the work as a whole. In their introduction, editors Gregory Recco and Eric Sanday explore the connections among the essays and the dramatic and productive exchanges between the contributors. This volume fills a major gap in studies on Plato’s dialogues by addressing the cultural and historical context of the Laws and highlighting their importance to contemporary scholarship.

Our own Marina McCoy of Boston College writes:

A diverse set of intelligent and original essays on the Laws featuring some of the best names in American scholarship.

Congratulations to Greg and Eric and to all the contributors published in this volume.

Books, Of Interest

The Nature Drawings of Peter Karklins

The Nature Drawings of Peter Karklins
Ed. Sean D. Kirkland

University of Chicago Press/Distributed for DePaul Art Museum

64 pages | 1 color plate, 31 halftones | 8 x 10 3/4

This exhibition catalogue presents a series of fascinating and challenging “nature drawings” by the Latvian, German-born, Chicago-based artist, Peter Karklins, drawings that are on display from July to November of 2012 at the DePaul University Art Museum in Chicago.

The book may well interest APS members for two reasons. On the one hand, the artist understands himself to present nature in a mode wholly at odds with the modern, scientific, technologically mastered conception thereof, even as he finds a profound resonance in the early Greeks’ experience of their world. On the other hand, a number of the mini-essays in the collection are contributed by long-time APS members, David Farrell Krell, Michael Naas, and William McNeill, and the volume is edited by Sean D. Kirkland, former APS co-director. The Nature Drawings of Peter Karklins is available through Amazon or the University of Chicago Press website.

“Peter Karklins once referred to his work as “Presocratic Realism,” a provocative title that suggests reality is found in the world before the time of systematic rationality, and, indeed, his images transport us to just such a place. His miniature works offer visions of another world in which the very fabric of the real is a strange hybrid of the biomorphic and the mechanically regularized, the sexual and the sterile, a world that holds itself uncomfortably between objectivity and fantasy, between objects we consciously observe and desires we unconsciously enact. Drawing primarily upon the insights of contemporary Continental philosophy, seventeen contributors from a variety of disciplines offer short, engaging responses that use the works to introduce powerful, contemporary reflections on the nature of art, of humanity, and of freedom.”

John Russon, Department of Philosophy, University of Guelph

 

“This is that rare, much to be coveted, invitation to the sort of event one only wishes happened more often. Gathered here are scholars of different fields all set in concerted focus on the marvelously strange miniature drawings of Peter Karklins. The creative dialogue that develops between these thinkers and the works in this volume stands as a testament to the value of bypassing the boundaries usually adhered to by the mainstream art industry, suggesting that the most refreshing engagements in art may happen well beyond them.”

Annika Marie, Department of Art and Design, Columbia College

 

Books

Heidegger’s Being and Truth

Indiana University Press is pleased to announce the recent publication of:

BEING AND TRUTH
Martin Heidegger
Translated by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt

“Fried and Polt’s translation of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Truth is a well-crafted and careful rendering of an important and demanding volume of the Complete Works.” —Andrew Mitchell, Emory University

In these lectures, delivered in 1933–1934 while he was Rector of the University of Freiburg and an active supporter of the National Socialist regime, Martin Heidegger addresses the history of metaphysics and the notion of truth from Heraclitus to Hegel. First published in German in 2001, these two lecture courses offer a sustained encounter with Heidegger’s thinking during a period when he attempted to give expression to his highest ambitions for a philosophy engaged with politics and the world. While the lectures are strongly nationalistic and celebrate the revolutionary spirit of the time, they also attack theories of racial supremacy in an attempt to stake out a distinctively Heideggerian understanding of what it means to be a people. This careful translation offers valuable insight into Heidegger’s views on language, truth, animality, and life, as well as his political thought and activity.

Studies in Continental Thought
256 pp., 5 b&w illus. cloth 978-0-253-35511-9 $39.95

For more information, visit:
http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/catalog/product_info.php?isbn=978-0-253-35511-9

Of Interest

Digital Dialogue 34: Heidegger on Aristotle

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Digital Dialogue 34
Originally uploaded by Christopher Long

Rob Metcalf, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado at Denver and graduate of the Pennsylvania State University’s Department of Philosophy, joins Christopher Long for episode 34 of the Digital Dialogue.

Rob’s work focuses on ancient philosophy, phenomenology, ethics, philosophy of religion and the history of philosophy.

We recorded this episode at Michigan State where we were attending the annual meeting of the Ancient Philosophy Society. Our discussion focused on his and Mark Tanzer’s recent translation of Heidegger’s 1924 lecture course entitled Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy.

Digital Dialogue 34: Metcalf on Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle

To subscribe to the Digital Dialogue through iTunesU, click here.

Books

Interrogating Antigone

Oxford University Press has recently published a collection of articles providing a postmodern perspective on the enigmatic figure of Antigone. The volume, Interrogating Antigone in Postmodern Philosophy and Criticism, focuses on on the ethical and political issues raised by Antigone as a figure who questions the patriarchal state.

Our own Sean Kirkland has an article in the volume entitled, Speed and Tragedy in Cocteau and Sophocles. Other contributors include Terry Eagleton, Tina Chanter, and Luce Irigaray.

Download this form to receive a 20% discount on the book.

Of Interest

Plato’s Many Devices Reviewed

Gerard Kuperus suggested that it might be a good idea to link to this review of the volume Gary Alan Scott edited entitled, Philosophy in Dialogue: Plato’s Many Devices. The review is by Rebecca Benson Cain.  In it she speaks very well of the work as a whole, which includes articles from a number of members of the Ancient Philosophy Society.

Check out Cain’s full review, which appears in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2009.04.71.

Here is a link to the book, available from Amazon.com.

Books

Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy

Indiana University Press has just released a translation of Heidegger’s Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy, translated by Robert Metcalf and Mark Tanzer.

“With a deep sensitivity to the nuances of Heidegger’s German, this translation retains a liveliness and readability that captures something of the urgency and creativity of Heidegger’s original presentation.”
—Christopher P. Long, Pennsylvania State University

Volume 18 of Martin Heidegger’s collected works presents his important 1924 Marburg lectures which anticipate much of the revolutionary thinking that he subsequently articulated in Being and Time. Available in English for the first time, they make a significant contribution to ancient philosophy, Aristotle studies, Continental philosophy, and phenomenology.

To learn more about the book, see:
http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/catalog/product_info.php?isbn=978-0-253-35349-8

Books

Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle

Indiana University Press has just released a paperback copy of Heidegger’s Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle: Initiation into Phenomenological Research, translated by Richard Rojcewicz.

“This book is an indispensable resource for the study of Heidegger’s thought because it provides a very early articulation of concepts that are central to Heidegger’s philosophy, such as care, facticity, nothingness, and temporality.” —Robert Metcalf, University of Colorado, Denver

Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle is the text of a lecture course presented at the University of Freiburg in the winter of 1921–1922. In this course, Heidegger first takes up the role of the definition of philosophy and then elaborates a unique analysis of “factical life,” or human life as it is lived concretely in relation to the world, a relation he calls “caring.” As he works out a phenomenology of factical life, Heidegger lays the groundwork for a phenomenological interpretation of Aristotle, whose influence on Heidegger’s philosophy was pivotal.

To learn more about the book, see:
The Indiana University Press

Books

Plato and the Question of Beauty

Announcing the publication of Drew Hyland’s Plato and the Question of Beauty.

The publisher’s description of the book reads as follows:

“A well written and forcefully argued exposition of one of the most important themes in Plato’s philosophy.” —Walter Brogan, Villanova University

Drew A. Hyland, one of Continental philosophy’s keenest interpreters of Plato, takes up the question of beauty in three Platonic dialogues, the Hippias Major, Symposium, and Phaedrus. What Plato meant by beauty is not easily characterized, and Hyland’s close readings show that Plato ultimately gives up on the possibility of a definition. Plato’s failure, however, tells us something important about beauty—that it cannot be reduced to logos.

Exploring questions surrounding love, memory, and ideal form, Hyland draws out the connections between beauty, the possibility of philosophy, and philosophical living. This new reading of Plato provides a serious investigation into the meaning of beauty and places it at the very heart of philosophy.

http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=76819

Studies in Continental Thought
168 pages
978-0-253-35138-8, cloth $55.00
978-0-253-21977-0, paper $21.95

Books

Aristotle’s Ethics as First Philosophy

Congratulations to Claudia Baracchi for the publication of her book, Aristotle’s Ethics as First Philosophy, with Cambridge University Press.

The publisher’s description of the book reads as follows:

In Aristotle’s Ethics as First Philosophy, Claudia Baracchi demonstrates the indissoluble links between practical and theoretical wisdom in Aristotle’s thinking. Referring to a broad range of texts from the Aristotelian corpus, Baracchi shows how the theoretical is always informed by a set of practices, and, specifically, how one’s encounter with phenomena, the world, or nature in the broadest sense, is always a matter of ethos.

Claudia was the 2008 host of the Annual Independent meeting of the Ancient Philosophy Society at the New School in New York.  She is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at the New School.