Pierre Klossowski: Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle (1969–) [FR, ES, EN]

“Long recognized as a masterpiece of Nietzsche scholarship, Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle is made available here for the first time in English. Taking a structuralist approach to the relation between Nietzsche’s thought and his life, Pierre Klossowski emphasizes the centrality of the notion of Eternal Return (a cyclical notion of time and history) for understanding Nietzsche’s propensities for self-denial, self-refutation, and self-consumption.

Nietzsche’s ideas did not stem from personal pathology, according to Klossowski. Rather, Nietzsche made a pathological use of his best ideas, anchoring them in his own fluctuating bodily and mental conditions. Thus Nietzsche’s belief that questions of truth and morality are at base questions of power and fitness resonates dynamically and intellectually with his alternating lucidity and delirium.”

Publisher Mercure de France, Paris, 1969
Revised edition, 1978
367 pages

English edition
Translated by Daniel W. Smith
Publisher by University of Chicago Press, 1997
ISBN 0226443876, 9780226443874
282 pages

Publisher (EN)

Nietzsche et le cercle vicieux (French, 1969/1978, 5 MB, added on 2015-3-7)
Nietzsche y el circulo vicioso (Spanish, trans. Roxana Páez, 1995)
Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle (English, trans. Daniel W. Smith, 1997, 4 MB, updated on 2019-11-22)

See also Geoff Waite’s Nietzsche’s Corps/e (1996).

Finger, Guldin, Bernardo: Vilém Flusser: An Introduction (2011)

The first introduction to a key thinker in twentieth-century media philosophy and cultural theory

A thorough introduction to Vilém Flusser’s thought, this book reveals his engagement with a wide array of disciplines, from posthuman philosophy, media studies, and history to migrant studies, art, and anthropology. This volume shows how Flusser’s media theory works are just one part of a greater mosaic of writings that bring to the fore cultural and cognitive changes in the twenty-first century.

by Anke K. Finger, Rainer Guldin, Gustavo Bernardo
Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2011
Volume 34 van Electronic Mediations
ISBN 0816674787, 9780816674787
200 pages

publisher
google books

PDF

Jean-François Lyotard: Discourse, Figure (1971/2011)

“Discourse, Figure is Lyotard’s thesis. Provoked in part by Lacan’s influential seminars in Paris, Discourse, Figure distinguishes between the meaningfulness of linguistic signs and the meaningfulness of plastic arts such as painting and sculpture. Lyotard argues that because rational thought is discursive and works of art are inherently opaque signs, certain aspects of artistic meaning such as symbols and the pictorial richness of painting will always be beyond reason’s grasp.

A wide-ranging and highly unusual work, Discourse, Figure proceeds from an attentive consideration of the phenomenology of experience to an ambitious meditation on the psychoanalytic account of the subject of experience, structured by the confrontation between phenomenology and psychoanalysis as contending frames within which to think the materialism of consciousness. In addition to prefiguring many of Lyotard’s later concerns, Discourse, Figure captures Lyotard’s passionate engagement with topics beyond phenomenology and psychoanalysis to structuralism, semiotics, poetry, art, and the philosophy of language.”

Originally published in French as Discours, figure by Klincksieck, 1971

Translated by Antony Hudek and Mary Lydon
Introduction by John Mowitt
Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2011
Cultural Critique Books
ISBN 0816645655, 9780816645657
512 pages

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2012-11-4)