The Ethical Imagination in Shakespeare and Heidegger

The Ethical Imagination in Shakespeare and Heidegger
Author: Andy Amato
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2019-02-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350083674

While large bodies of scholarship exist on the plays of Shakespeare and the philosophy of Heidegger, this book is the first to read these two influential figures alongside one another, and to reveal how they can help us develop a creative and contemplative sense of ethics, or an 'ethical imagination'. Following the increased interest in reading Shakespeare philosophically, it seems only fitting that an encounter take place between the English language's most prominent poet and the philosopher widely considered to be central to continental philosophy. Interpreting the plays of Shakespeare through the writings of Heidegger and vice versa, each chapter pairs a select play with a select work of philosophy. In these pairings the themes, events, and arguments of each work are first carefully unpacked, and then key passages and concepts are taken up and read against and through one another. As these hermeneutic engagements and cross-readings unfold we find that the words and deeds of Shakespeare's characters uniquely illuminate, and are uniquely illuminated by, Heidegger's phenomenological analyses of being, language, and art.

The Ethical Imagination in Shakespeare and Heidegger

The Ethical Imagination in Shakespeare and Heidegger
Author: Andy Amato
Publisher:
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2019
Genre: Electronic books
ISBN: 9781350083691

While large bodies of scholarship exist on the plays of Shakespeare and the philosophy of Heidegger, this book is the first to read these two influential figures alongside one another, and to reveal how they can help us develop a creative and contemplative sense of ethics, or an 'ethical imagination'. Following the increased interest in reading Shakespeare philosophically, it seems only fitting that an encounter take place between the English language's most prominent poet and the philosopher widely considered to be central to continental philosophy. Interpreting the plays of Shakespeare through the writings of Heidegger and vice versa, each chapter pairs a select play with a select work of philosophy. In these pairings the themes, events, and arguments of each work are first carefully unpacked, and then key passages and concepts are taken up and read against and through one another. As these hermeneutic engagements and cross-readings unfold we find that the words and deeds of Shakespeare's characters uniquely illuminate, and are uniquely illuminated by, Heidegger's phenomenological analyses of being, language, and art.

The Tragic Imagination in Shakespeare and Emerson

The Tragic Imagination in Shakespeare and Emerson
Author: Andy Amato
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2024-03-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1350373583

What is the “tragic imagination”? And what role does it play in the works of William Shakespeare and Ralph Waldo Emerson? Explaining the tragic imagination as a creative faculty employed to answer the perennial Riddle of the Sphinx – a theory of the world that advances human freedom and dignity in the face of historical injustice, cruelty and violence – Andy Amato seeks to recover and rehabilitate this concept by revealing its significance to both key works of philosophy and literature and our contemporary world. This book begins with a close and careful reading of Emerson's first major work, Nature, in conversation with nineteenth and 20thcentury continental philosophy, critical theory and post-structuralism. Uncovering neglected elements of Emerson's philosophy, beyond his reputation as the philosopher of 'cheer', this book explores how Emersonian transcendentalism affirms rather than denies the tragic sense of life – “tragic idealism” – and makes a substantial contribution to philosophy's perpetual endeavour to solve the Riddle. In the second part of the book, Amato then employs Emerson's theoretical lens to interpret Shakespeare's tragedy, King Lear. In doing so, he innovatively reframes the central themes of suffering, vision, nature, nothing, foolishness and silence toward achieving liberation. By pairing these two giants of literature and philosophy, The Tragic Imagination in Shakespeare and Emerson not only offers fresh interpretations of Nature and King Lear, but also makes the case for the renewed deployment of tragic imagination, in creative redress, to our current social-political situation.

Historical Dictionary of Heidegger's Philosophy

Historical Dictionary of Heidegger's Philosophy
Author: Frank Schalow
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 575
Release: 2019-11-29
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 153812436X

Martin Heidegger’s thinking is a complex, and his terminology is as nuanced, as any thinker in the history of philosophy. As the historian of philosophy par excellence, he also exhibits both a greater appreciation and mastery of previous thinkers than any almost any other philosopher before or since. The Historical Dictionary of Heidegger's Philosophy, Third Edition addresses this dual challenge of reading, understanding, and interpreting Heidegger’s vast writings. The book provides a comprehensive and detailed account of the key terms shaping Heidegger’s philosophy, as well as outlining the development of his thought spanning the entirety of his career spanning almost sixty years. The Dictionary also includes a discussion of Heidegger’s seminal writings, the spanning his entire Gesamtausgabe (Complete Edition) up through volume 99 (of the projected 102 volumes). This third edition of Historical Dictionary of Heidegger's Philosophy, Third Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 800 cross-referenced entries that provides a clear and comprehensive exposition of the key developments in his life and his thought. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Martin Heidegger.

Heidegger’s Ecological Turn

Heidegger’s Ecological Turn
Author: Frank Schalow
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 187
Release: 2021-09-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1000433447

This book makes explicit the ecological implications of Martin Heidegger. It examines how the trajectory of Heidegger’s thinking harbors an "ecological turn," which comes to the forefront in his attempt to anticipate the impending crisis precipitated by modern technology. Schalow’s emphasis on such key motifs as stewardship, dwelling, and "letting be" (Gelassenheit) serves to coalesce the problem of freedom in a new and innovative way, in order to expand the interpretive or hermeneutic horizon for re-examining Heidegger’s philosophy. By prioritizing a response to today’s environmental crisis and the possible impact upon future generations, the author traverses a divide within Heidegger scholarship by developing a deeper, critical outlook on his philosophy—without either reiterating standard interpretations or rejecting them wholesale. He develops a trans-human approach to ethics, which, by prioritizing the welfare of the earth, nature, and animals, counters the anthropocentric bias and destructive premise of modern technology. Heidegger’s Ecological Turn will be of interest to Heidegger scholars and researchers working in phenomenology, hermeneutics, continental philosophy, and environmental philosophy.

Heidegger's Style

Heidegger's Style
Author: Markus Weidler
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2019-01-24
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350083402

Addressing Heidegger's continuing centrality to continental thought, Markus Weidler argues that Heidegger's prickly charm is best explained in terms of his great ingenuity, crafting a novel genre of writing which promises to harness the revelatory power of artworks for the purpose of philosophical inquiry. In doing so, Heidegger challenges the reader with a provocative form of artisan thinking, which for Weidler is central to understanding the significance of Heidegger's work overall. In Vorträge und Aufsätze (Public Lectures and Essays) Heidegger declares: 'once it has become anthropology, philosophy perishes from metaphysics.' Remarks critical of 'philosophical anthropology' are scattered throughout his writings, but so far commentators have not connected these tantalizing statements in any systematic way. This book deals with his hostility by addressing what we are to make of Heidegger's frequent but elusive dismissals of philosophical anthropology as a field of study. This examination of Heidegger's complex relation to philosophical anthropology traces how pioneering thinkers like Schelling and Schiller paved the way not only for Heidegger but also for some of his potential competitors, most notably Max Scheler and Georg Simmel. Weidler argues that confronting the puzzle over Heidegger's peculiar relation to philosophical anthropology is also one of the keys to explaining his popularity as a philosopher, which has endured despite revelations of his various personal and political failings.

The Ontology of Death

The Ontology of Death
Author: Aaron Aquilina
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2023-05-18
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350339490

Through examination of the death penalty in literature, Aaron Aquilina contests Heidegger's concept of 'being-towards-death' and proposes a new understanding of the political and philosophical subject. Dickens, Nabokov, Hugo, Sophocles and many others explore capital punishment in their works, from Antigone to Invitation to a Beheading. Using these varied case studies, Aquilina demonstrates how they all highlight two aspects of the experience. First, they uncover a particular state of being, or more precisely non-being, that comes with a death sentence, and, second, they reveal how this state exists beyond death row, as sovereignty and alterity are by no means confined to a prison cell. In contrast to Heidegger's being-towards-death, which individualizes the subject – only I can die my own death, supposedly – this book argues that, when condemned to death, the self and death collide, putting under erasure the category of subjectivity itself. Be it death row or not, when the supposed futurity of death is brought into the here and now, we encounter what Aquilina calls 'relational death'. Living on with death severs the subject's relation to itself, the other and political sociality as a whole, rendering the human less a named and recognizable 'being' than an anonymous 'living corpse', a human thing. In a sustained engagement with Blanchot, Levinas, Hegel, Agamben and Derrida, The Ontology of Death articulates a new theory of the subject, beyond political subjectivity defined by sovereignty and beyond the Heideggerian notion of ontological selfhood.

The Ethical Imagination in Shakespeare and Heidegger

The Ethical Imagination in Shakespeare and Heidegger
Author: Andy Amato
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2019-02-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350083666

While large bodies of scholarship exist on the plays of Shakespeare and the philosophy of Heidegger, this book is the first to read these two influential figures alongside one another, and to reveal how they can help us develop a creative and contemplative sense of ethics, or an 'ethical imagination'. Following the increased interest in reading Shakespeare philosophically, it seems only fitting that an encounter take place between the English language's most prominent poet and the philosopher widely considered to be central to continental philosophy. Interpreting the plays of Shakespeare through the writings of Heidegger and vice versa, each chapter pairs a select play with a select work of philosophy. In these pairings the themes, events, and arguments of each work are first carefully unpacked, and then key passages and concepts are taken up and read against and through one another. As these hermeneutic engagements and cross-readings unfold we find that the words and deeds of Shakespeare's characters uniquely illuminate, and are uniquely illuminated by, Heidegger's phenomenological analyses of being, language, and art.

Thinking with Shakespeare

Thinking with Shakespeare
Author: William Poole (New College, Oxford)
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2017-12-02
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1351195972

"Shakespeares works do not embody any doctrine or set of beliefs, as his critics have long been tempted to suggest, but they do stage encounters with certain kinds of thinking ethical, political, epistemological, even metaphysical that still concern us nowadays. They can be shown to draw on ancient philosophies Platonism, Stoicism, Scepticism either directly or through medieval and continental Renaissance thought. Or their scenarios can be likened to those of other kinds of intellectual argument, such as legal or theological discourse. The essays collected in this volume demonstrate the value of thinking with Shakespeare, either as embodied in Shakespeares own creative programme or in our use of philosophical paradigms as an approach to his works. The contributors are Colin Burrow, Terence Cave, Gabriel Josipovoci, Charles Martindale, Stephen Medcalf, Subha Mukherji, A. D. Nuttall and N. K. Sugimura."

Heidegger and the Problem of Phenomena

Heidegger and the Problem of Phenomena
Author: Fredrik Westerlund
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2020-02-20
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350086487

This book offers a broad critical study of Heidegger's lifelong effort to come to terms with the problem of phenomena and the nature of phenomenology: How do we experience beings as meaningful phenomena? What does it mean to phenomenologically describe and explicate our experience of phenomena? The book is a chronological investigation of how Heidegger's struggle with the problem of phenomena unfolds during the main stages of his philosophical development: from the early Freiburg lecture courses 1919-1923, over the Marburg-period and the publication of Being and Time in 1927, up to his later thinking stretching from the 1930s to the early 1970s. A central theme of the book is the tension between, on the one hand, Heidegger's effort to elaborate Husserl's phenomenological approach by applying it to our pre-theoretical experience of existentially charged phenomena, and, on the other hand, his drive towards a radically historicist form of thinking. Heidegger's main critical engagements with Husserl are examined and assessed along the way. Besides offering a new comprehensive interpretation of Heidegger's philosophical development, the book critically examines the philosophical power and problems of Heidegger's successive attempts to account for the structure of phenomena and the possibility of phenomenology. In particular, it develops a critique of Heidegger's radical historicism, arguing that it ultimately makes Heidegger unable to account either for the truth of our understanding or for the ethical-existential significance of other persons. The book also contains a chapter which probes the philosophical commitments that motivate Heidegger's political engagement in National Socialism.