Catastrophe and Philosophy

Catastrophe and Philosophy PDF Author: David J. Rosner
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498540120
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
This book investigates how a number of influential philosophies arose out of catastrophes, such as wars, plagues, and earthquakes. Central to the project is an explanation of how these catastrophes led to the questioning of basic assumptions and the introduction of new ideas to make sense out of a chaotic and often unintelligible world.

Catastrophe and Philosophy

Catastrophe and Philosophy PDF Author: David J. Rosner
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498540120
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Get Book

Book Description
This book investigates how a number of influential philosophies arose out of catastrophes, such as wars, plagues, and earthquakes. Central to the project is an explanation of how these catastrophes led to the questioning of basic assumptions and the introduction of new ideas to make sense out of a chaotic and often unintelligible world.

Ethics for a Broken World

Ethics for a Broken World PDF Author: Tim Mulgan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317547748
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Imagine living in the future in a world already damaged by humankind, a world where resources are insufficient to meet everyone's basic needs and where a chaotic climate makes life precarious. Then imagine looking back into the past, back to our own time and assessing the ethics of the early twenty-first century. "Ethics for a Broken World" imagines how the future might judge us and how living in a time of global environmental degradation might utterly reshape the politics and ethics of the future. This book is presented as a series of history of philosophy lectures given in the future, studying the classic texts from a past age of affluence, our own time. The central ethical questions of our time are shown to look very different from the perspective of a ruined world. The aim of "Ethics for a Broken" World is to look at our present with the benefit of hindsight - to reimagine contemporary philosophy in an historical context - and to highlight the contingency of our own moral and political ideals.

Tickle Your Catastrophe!

Tickle Your Catastrophe! PDF Author: Frederik Le Roy
Publisher: Academia Press
ISBN: 9038217226
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
A collection of essays that takes stock of the current impact of the image and imagination of the catastrophe in art, science and philosophy

Catastrophe and Redemption

Catastrophe and Redemption PDF Author: Jessica Whyte
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438448546
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Offers a striking new reading of Agamben’s political thought and its implications for political action in the present. Challenging the prevalent account of Agamben as a pessimistic thinker, Catastrophe and Redemption proposes a reading of his political thought in which the redemptive element of his work is not a curious aside but instead is fundamental to his project. Jessica Whyte considers his critical account of contemporary politics—his argument that Western politics has been “biopolitics” since its inception, his critique of human rights, his argument that the state of exception is now the norm, and the paradigmatic significance he attributes to the concentration camp—and shows that it is in the midst of these catastrophes of the present that Agamben sees the possibility of a form of profane redemption. Whyte outlines the importance of potentiality in his attempt to formulate a new politics, examines his relation to Jewish and Christian strands of messianism, and interrogates the new forms of praxis that he situates within contemporary commodity culture, taking Agamben’s thought as a call for the creation of new political forms. Jessica Whyte is Lecturer in Cultural and Social Analysis at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. She is the coeditor (with Alex Murray) of The Agamben Dictionary.

How to Think About Catastrophe

How to Think About Catastrophe PDF Author: Jean-Pierre Dupuy
Publisher: MSU Press
ISBN: 1628954744
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
During the last century humanity acquired the ability to destroy itself. The direct approach to destruction can be seen in such facts as the ever-present threat of nuclear war, but we have also developed the capacity to do indirect harm by altering conditions necessary for survival, including the looming cloud of climate change. How can we look forward and work past the dire position we now find ourselves in to achieve a sustainable future? This volume presents a new way of thinking about the future as it examines catastrophe and the human response. It examines different kinds of catastrophes that range from natural (e.g., earthquakes) to industrial (e.g., Chernobyl) and concludes that the traditional distinctions between them are only becoming blurrier by the day. This book aims to build a general theory of catastrophes—a new form of apocalyptic thinking that is grounded in science and philosophy. An ethics for the sake of the future is what is required, which in turn necessitates a new metaphysics of temporality. If a way out of the imminent danger in which we find ourselves is to be found, we must first look to radically alter our ethics.

After Fukushima

After Fukushima PDF Author: Jean-Luc Nancy
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823263401
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 63

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Book Description
The renowned philosopher offers “a powerful reflection on our times . . . and the fate of our civilization, as revealed by the catastrophe of Fukushima” (François Raffoul, Louisiana State University). In 2011, a tsunami flooded Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing three nuclear meltdowns, the effects of which will spread through generations and have an impact on all living things. In After Fukushima, philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy examines the nature of catastrophes in the era of globalization and technology. He argues that in today’s interconnected world, the effects of any disaster will spread in the way we currently associate only with nuclear risk. Can a catastrophe be an isolated occurrence? Is there such a thing as a “natural” catastrophe when all of our technologies—nuclear energy, power supply, water supply—are necessarily implicated, drawing together the biological, social, economic, and political? In this provocative and engaging work, Nancy examines these questions and more. Exclusive to this English edition are two interviews with Nancy conducted by Danielle Cohen-Levinas and Yuji Nishiyama and Yotetsu Tonaki.

The Democracy of Suffering

The Democracy of Suffering PDF Author: Todd Dufresne
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773559620
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
In The Democracy of Suffering philosopher Todd Dufresne provides a strikingly original exploration of the past, present, and future of this epoch, the Anthropocene, demonstrating how the twin crises of reason and capital have dramatically remade the essential conditions for life itself. Images, cartoons, artworks, and quotes pulled from literary and popular culture supplement this engaging and unorthodox look into where we stand amidst the ravages of climate change and capitalist economics. With humour, passion, and erudition, Dufresne diagnoses a frightening new reality and proposes a way forward, arguing that our serial experiences of catastrophic climate change herald an intellectual and moral awakening - one that lays the groundwork, albeit at the last possible moment, for a future beyond individualism, hate, and greed. That future is unapologetically collective. It begins with a shift in human consciousness, with philosophy in its broadest sense, and extends to a reengagement with our greatest ideals of economic, social, and political justice for all. But this collective future, Dufresne argues, is either now or never. Uncovering how we got into this mess and how, if at all, we get out of it, The Democracy of Suffering is a flicker of light, or perhaps a scream, in the face of human extinction and the end of civilization.

Calamity Theory

Calamity Theory PDF Author: Joshua Schuster
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452966583
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
What are the implications of how we talk about apocalypse? A new philosophical field has emerged. “Existential risk” studies any real or hypothetical human extinction event in the near or distant future. This movement examines catastrophes ranging from runaway global warming to nuclear warfare to malevolent artificial intelligence, deploying a curious mix of utilitarian ethics, statistical risk analysis, and, controversially, a transhuman advocacy that would aim to supersede almost all extinction scenarios. The proponents of existential risk thinking, led by Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom, have seen their work gain immense popularity, attracting endorsement from Bill Gates and Elon Musk, millions of dollars, and millions of views. Calamity Theory is the first book to examine the rise of this thinking and its failures to acknowledge the ways some communities and lifeways are more at risk than others and what it implies about human extinction. Forerunners: Ideas First is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital publications. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.

On Jean Améry

On Jean Améry PDF Author: Magdalena Żółkoś
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 073914765X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
On Jean Am ry provides a comprehensive discussion of one of the most challenging and complex post-Holocaust thinkers, Jean Am ry (1912-1978), a Jewish-Austrian-Belgian essayist, journalist and literary author. In the English-speaking world Am ry is known for his poignant publication, At the Mind's Limits, a narrative of exile, dispossession, torture, and Auschwitz. In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in Am ry's writings on victimization and resentment, partly attributable to a modern fascination with tolerance, historical injustice, and reconciliatory ambitions. Many aspects of Am ry's writing have remained largely unexplored outside the realm of European scholarship, and his legacy in English-language scholarship limited to discussions of victimization and memory. This volume offers the first English language collection of academic essays on the post-Holocaust thought of Jean Am ry. Comprehensive in scope and multi-disciplinary in orientation, contributors explore central aspects of Am ry's philosophical and ethical position, including dignity, responsibility, resentment, and forgiveness. What emerges from the pages of this book is an image of Am ry as a difficult and perplexing-yet exceptionally engaging-thinker, whose writings address some of the central paradoxes of survivorship and witnessing. The intellectual and ethical questions of Am ry's philosophies are equally pertinent today as they were half-century ago: How one can reconcile with the irreconcilable? How can one account for the unaccountable? And, how can one live after catastrophe?

Heidegger and Marcuse

Heidegger and Marcuse PDF Author: Andrew Feenberg
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415941778
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.