Nishida Kitarō: Ontology of Production: Three Essays (2012)

8 December 2013, dusan

Ontology of Production presents three essays by the influential Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945), translated for the first time into English by William Haver. While previous translations of his writings have framed Nishida within Asian or Oriental philosophical traditions, Haver’s introduction and approach to the texts rightly situate the work within Nishida’s own commitment to Western philosophy. In particular, Haver focuses on Nishida’s sustained and rigorous engagement with Marx’s conception of production.

Agreeing with Marx that ontology is production and production is ontology, Nishida in these three essays—”Expressive Activity” (1925), “The Standpoint of Active Intuition” (1935), and “Human Being” (1938)—addresses sense and reason, language and thought, intuition and appropriation, ultimately arguing that in this concept of production, ideality and materiality are neither mutually exclusive nor oppositional but, rather, coimmanent. Nishida’s forceful articulation of the radical nature of Marx’s theory of production is, Haver contends, particularly timely in today’s speculation-driven global economy. Nishida’s reading of Marx, which points to the inseparability of immaterial intellectual labor and material manual labor, provokes a reconsideration of Marxism’s utility for making sense of—and resisting—the logic of contemporary capitalism.”

Translated and with an Introduction by William Haver
Publisher Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2012
Asia-Pacific: Culture, Politics, and Society series
ISBN 0822351803, 9780822351801
208 pages

Review (David Baronov, Marx & Philosophy Review of Books)
Nishida Kitarō in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2019-8-19)

Gilles Deleuze: Bergsonism (1966-) [FR, ES, EN, PT, RU, CZ]

26 December 2012, dusan

“What is needed for something new to appear? According to Gilles Deleuze, this question of ‘novelty’ is the major problem posed by Bergson’s work. In Bergsonism, Deleuze demonstrates both the development and the range of three fundamental Bergsonian concepts: duration, memory, and the élan vital.

A good companion book to Bergson’s Matter and Memory, Bergsonism is also of particular interest to students of Deleuze’s own work, influenced as it is by Bergson.”

French edition
Publisher Presses Universitaires de France, 1966
3rd edition, 2004
ISBN 2130545416

English edition
Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam
Publisher Zone Books, 1988
ISBN 094229906X, 9780942299069
131 pages

Publisher (EN)

Le bergsonisme (French, 1966/2004)
El bergsonismo (Spanish, trans. Luis Ferrero Carracedo, 1987, no OCR)
Bergsonism (English, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, 1988, no OCR)
Bergsonismo (Portuguese, trans. Luiz B. L. Orlandi, 1999/2008)
Empirizm i subektivnost. Kriticheskaya filosofiya Kanta. Bergsonizm. Spinoza (Russian, trans. Я.И. Свирский, 2001)
Bergsonismus (Czech, trans. Josef Fulka, 2006, no OCR)

See also Mémoire et vie (1957-), Bergson’s texts selected by Deleuze.