MU Libraries New Books: Speculative philosophy

About the new book list

11/4/2009

The RSS feeds for the new books list is updated every Wednesday and contains a list of books added to the Ellis Library collection for the last six weeks. The titles are grouped by call number classification, and are listed by week and alphabetically by title.

Books for the most recent weeks are currently on the New Books Shelves inside the north entrance of Ellis Library. They can be checked out.

The signature of all things : on method / Giorgio Agamben translated by Luca d'Isanto with Kevin Attell. (11/4/2009)

11/4/2009

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Call #: BD241 .A3513 2009

The remains of being : hermeneutic ontology after metaphysics / Santiago Zabala. (10/21/2009)

10/21/2009

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Product Description

In Basic Concepts, Heidegger claims that "Being is the most worn-out" and yet also that Being "remains constantly available." Santiago Zabala radicalizes the consequences of these little known but significant affirmations. Revisiting the work of Jacques Derrida, Reiner Schurmann, Jean-Luc Nancy, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Ernst Tugendhat, and Gianni Vattimo, he finds these remains of Being within which ontological thought can still operate. Being is an event, Zabala argues, a kind of generosity and gift that generates astonishment in those who experience it. This sense of wonder has fueled questions of meaning for centuries-from Plato to the present day. Postmetaphysical accounts of Being, as exemplified by the thinkers of Zabala's analysis, as well as by Nietzsche, Dewey, and others he encounters, don't abandon Being. Rather, they reject rigid, determined modes of essentialist thought in favor of more fluid, malleable, and adaptable conceptions, redefining the pursuit and meaning of philosophy itself.

Call #: BD311 .Z33 2009

Discours des méthodes : the methods of philosophy and realist phenomenology / Josef Seifert. (10/7/2009)

10/7/2009

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Call #: BD241 .S445 2009

Selves : an essay in revisionary metaphysics / Galen Strawson. (10/7/2009)

10/7/2009

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Product Description
What is the self? Does it exist? If it does exist, what is it like? It's not clear that we even know what we're asking about when we ask these large, metaphysical questions. The idea of the self comes very naturally to us, and it seems rather important, but it's also extremely puzzling. As for the word "self"--it's been taken in so many different ways that it seems that you can mean more or less what you like by it and come up with almost any answer. Galen Strawson proposes to approach the (seeming) problem of the self by starting from the thing that makes it seem there is a problem in the first place: our experience of the self, our experience of having or being a self, a hidden, inner mental presence or locus of consciousness. He argues that we should consider the phenomenology (experience) of the self before we attempt its metaphysics (its existence and nature). And when we have considered what it's like for human beings (assuming we can generalize about ourselves), we need to consider what it might be like for other possible creatures: what's the very least that might count as experience of oneself as a self? This, he proposes, will give us a good idea of what we ought to be looking for when we go on to ask whether there is such a thing-an idea worth following wherever it leads. It leads Strawson to conclude that selves, inner subjects of experience, do indeed exist. But they bear little resemblance to traditional conceptions of the self.

About the Author

Galen Strawson is Professor of Philosophy at Reading University, UK, and a Regular Visitor at CUNY Graduate Center, New York. Prior to that he was Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at CUNY Graduate Center, New York (2004-07); Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Jesus College, Oxford (1987-2000). He has also held visiting positions at the Research School of Social Sciences at Australian National University (1993), New York University (1997), and Rutgers University (2000). Strawson received his degrees from the universities of Cambridge and Oxford and studied at the Ecole Normale Superieure (rue d'Ulm) and the Sorbonne (Paris I, 1977-8).

Call #: BD450 .S7775 2009

Philosophy of personal identity and multiple personality / Logi Gunnarsson. (9/30/2009)

9/30/2009

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Product Description

As witnessed by recent films such as Fight Club and Identity, our culture is obsessed with multiple personality—a phenomenon raising intriguing questions about personal identity. This study offers both a full-fledged philosophical theory of personal identity and a systematic account of multiple personality. Gunnarsson combines the methods of analytic philosophy with close hermeneutic and phenomenological readings of cases from different fields, focusing on psychiatric and psychological treatises, self-help books, biographies, and fiction. He develops an original account of personal identity (the authorial correlate theory) and offers a provocative interpretation of multiple personality: in brief, multiples are right about the metaphysics but wrong about the facts.

About the Author
University of Dortmund, Germany

Call #: BD438.5 .G86 2010

Sounding new media : immersion and embodiment in the arts and culture / Frances Dyson. (9/30/2009)

9/30/2009

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Call #: BD331 .D97 2009

Conversations on truth / edited by Mick Gordon and Chris Wilkinson. (9/23/2009)

9/23/2009

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Product Description
'This book radically raises the level of debate.' The Observer on Conversations on Religion. These discussions explore the question of what truth is, and what role it has in private, public, political and scientific discourses. While some thinkers view truth as concrete and immutable, others believe that it is an essentially meaningless concept. And for many contributors to this volume it is the practical application of truth which engages them. Each fascinating chapter explores the subject from a new angle, including Nick Davies and Peter Wilby's view on truth in the media, Prof. Martin Kusch's reflections in relation to science and Mary Warnock's consideration of truth in the context of ethics and art. Other contributors include Mary Midgely, Noam Chomsky and A. C. Grayling. This is a book of quite exceptional interest and importance.

About the Author
Mick Gordon is an international award-winning theatre director. He has been Associate Director at the National Theatre and Artistic Director of The Gate Theatre, and he is the founding director of On Theatre. Chris Wilkinson studied Theology at Cambridge University, UK. He is a theatre director and an award winning arts journalist. He has written for The Scotsman, The Financial Times, Prospect Magazine and The Guardian.

Call #: BD171 .C658 2009

Love letters : the abyss of loneliness / Michael H. Mitias. (9/23/2009)

9/23/2009

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Product Description
This book is an in-depth discussion that seeks to answer two main questions: what is the nature of romantic love? What is the meaning of human life? The author argues that the longing for romantic love is part of the quest for meaningful life and human fulfillment.

Call #: BD435 .M58 2009

Death / Todd May. (9/16/2009)

9/16/2009

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Product Description
The fact that we will die, and that our death can come at any time, pervades the entirety of our living. There are many ways to think about and deal with death. Among those ways, however, a good number of them are attempts to escape its grip. In this book, Todd May seeks to confront death in its power. He considers the possibility that our mortal deaths are the end of us, and asks what this might mean for our living. What lessons can we draw from our mortality? And how might we live as creatures who die, and who know we are going to die?In answering these questions, May brings together two divergent perspectives on death. The first holds that death is not an evil, or at least that immortality would be far worse than dying. The second holds that death is indeed an evil, and that there is no escaping that fact. May shows that if we are to live with death, we need to hold these two perspectives together. Their convergence yields both a beauty and a tragedy to our living that are inextricably entwined.Drawing on the thoughts of many philosophers and writers - ancient and modern - as well as his own experience, May puts forward a particular view of how we might think about and, more importantly, live our lives in view of the inescapability of our dying. In the end, he argues, it is precisely the contingency of our lives that must be grasped and which must be folded into the hours or years that remain to each of us, so that we can live each moment as though it were at once a link to an uncertain future and yet perhaps the only link we have left.

About the Author
Todd May is Kathryn and Calhoun Lemon Professor of Philosophy at Clemson University, North Carolina.

Call #: BD444 .M39 2009

Impersonations : troubling the person in law and culture / Sheryl N. Hamilton. (9/16/2009)

9/16/2009

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Review

'Impersonations is a brilliantly conceived and beautifully executed book. Sheryl Hamilton is a wonderful storyteller, and the stories she has chosen to tell are as captivating as they are edifying.'

Product Description

Personhood is considered at once a sign of legal-political status and of socio-cultural agency, synonymous with the rational individual, subject, or citizen. Yet, in an era of life-extending technologies, genetic engineering, corporate social responsibility, and smart technology, the definition of the person is neither benign nor uncontested. Boundaries that previously worked to secure our place in the social order are blurring as never before. What does it mean, then, to be a person in the twenty-first century?

In Impersonations, Sheryl N. Hamilton uses five different kinds of persons - corporations, women, clones, computers, and celebrities - to discuss the instability of the concept of personhood and to examine some of the ways in which broader social anxieties are expressed in these case studies. She suggests that our investment in personhood is greater now than it has been for years, and that our ongoing struggle to define the term is evident in law and popular culture. Using a cultural studies of law approach, the author examines important issues such as whether the person is a gender-neutral concept based on individual rights, the relationship between personhood and the body, and whether persons can be property.

Impersonations is a highly original study that brings together legal, philosophical, and cultural expressions of personhood to enliven current debates about our place in the world.

About the Author

Sheryl N. Hamilton is Canada Research Chair in Communication, Law, and Governance and an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Communication and in the Department of Law at Carleton University.

Call #: BD450 .H253 2009

Me / Mel Thompson. (9/16/2009)

9/16/2009

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Call #: BD438.5 .T47 2009