Étienne Souriau: The Different Modes of Existence (1943–) [FR, DE, EN]

“Exploring the aesthetic depths of the various modes of existence by one of France’s most heralded but forgotten thinkers of existential pluralism.

What relation is there between the existence of a work of art and that of a living being? Between the existence of an atom and that of a value like solidarity? These questions become our own each time a reality is established—whether it is a piece of music, someone we love, or a fictional character—and begins to take on an importance in our lives. Like William James or Gilles Deleuze, Souriau methodically defends the thesis of an existential pluralism. There are indeed different manners of existing and even different degrees or intensities of existence: from pure phenomena to objectivized things, by way of the virtual and the surexistent, to which works of art and the intellect, and even the very fact of morality, bear witness. Existence is polyphonic and, as a result, the world is considerably enriched and enlarged. Beyond all that exists in the ordinary sense of the term, it is necessary to allow for all sorts of virtual and ephemeral states, transitional realms, and barely begun realities, still in the making, all of which constitute so many “inter-worlds.””

Publisher Alcan, Paris, 1943

New edition
Introduction by Isabelle Stengers and Bruno Latour
Publisher PUF, Paris, 2009
220 pages

English edition
Translated by Erik Beranek and Tim Howles
Introduction by Isabelle Stengers and Bruno Latour
Publisher Univocal, Minneapolis, MN, 2015
ISBN 9781937561505
240 pages
via wX

Reviews: Raymond A. Sangiolo (Études phil 1945 FR), Frédéric Keck (Le Monde 2009 FR).

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Publisher (DE)
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Les différents modes d’existence (French, 1943/2009, 11 MB, added on 2021-3-9)
Die verschiedenen Modi der Existenz (German, trans. Thomas Wäckerle, 2015, PDF)
The Different Modes of Existence (English, trans. Erik Beranek and Tim Howles, 2015, updated on 2021-3-9)

Kaja Silverman: The Miracle of Analogy, or, The History of Photography, 1 (2015)

“The Miracle of Analogy is the first of a two-volume reconceptualization of photography. It argues that photography originates in what is seen, rather than in the human eye or the camera lens, and that it is the world’s primary way of revealing itself to us. Neither an index, representation, nor copy, as conventional studies would have it, the photographic image is an analogy. This principle obtains at every level of its being: a photograph analogizes its referent, the negative from which it is generated, every other print that is struck from that negative, and all of its digital “offspring.”

Photography is also unstoppably developmental, both at the level of the individual image and of medium. The photograph moves through time, in search of other “kin,” some of which may be visual, but others of which may be literary, architectural, philosophical, or literary. Finally, photography develops with us, and in response to us. It assumes historically legible forms, but when we divest them of their saving power, as we always seem to do, it goes elsewhere.

The present volume focuses on the nineteenth century and some of its contemporary progeny. It begins with the camera obscura, which morphed into chemical photography and lives on in digital form, and ends with Walter Benjamin. Key figures discussed along the way include Nicéphore Niépce, Louis Daguerre, William Fox-Talbot, Jeff Wall, and Joan Fontcuberta.”

Publisher Stanford University Press, 2015
ISBN 9780804794008
203 pages

Reviews: Todd Cronan (Nonsite 2014), Emily Una Weirich (ARLIS/NA 2015), Burke Hilsabeck (Critical Inquiry 2015).

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WorldCat

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Martin Heidegger: Sojourns: The Journey to Greece (1989/2005)

Heidegger’s philosophical journal, written during his first visit to Greece in 1962.

“[Heidegger] was well past seventy when he went [to Greece] for the first time. For years he had hesitated about making such a trip, and just two years earlier he had cancelled his plan to travel to Greece with his friend Eckhart Kästner. Later he made two further trips to Greece, as well as three trips at least to Provence. But it was the initial trip to Greece, in 1962, that was decisive and that yielded this beautiful, if enigmatic, travelbook Sojourns.” (from the Foreword)

Originally published as Aufenthalte, Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main, 1989.

Translated by John Panteleimon Manoussakis
Foreword by John Sallis
Publisher SUNY Press, 2005
SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy
ISBN 0791464954, 9780791464953
xviii+70 pages
via x

Review: Rachael Sotos (Nietzsche Circle, 2007).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (9 MB)