Robert J. Richards: The Tragic Sense of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary Thought (2008)
Filed under book | Tags: · aesthetics, biography, biology, darwinism, ecology, evolution, history of science, materialism, monism, science
“Prior to the First World War, more people learned of evolutionary theory from the voluminous writings of Charles Darwin’s foremost champion in Germany, Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), than from any other source, including the writings of Darwin himself. But, with detractors ranging from paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould to modern-day creationists and advocates of intelligent design, Haeckel is better known as a divisive figure than as a pioneering biologist. Robert J. Richards’s intellectual biography rehabilitates Haeckel, providing the most accurate measure of his science and art yet written, as well as a moving account of Haeckel’s eventful life.”
Publisher University of Chicago Press, 2008
ISBN 0226712192, 9780226712192
512 pages
Gilles Deleuze: Bergsonism (1966-) [FR, ES, EN, PT, RU, CZ]
Filed under book | Tags: · duration, elan vital, intuition, memory, monism, ontology, philosophy, time
“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.
Comment (0)John Mullarkey: Post-Continental Philosophy: An Outline (2006)
Filed under book | Tags: · affect, biology, empiricism, immanence, mathematics, monism, non-philosophy, ontology, phenomenology, philosophy, science, set theory, theory
Post-Continental Philosophy outlines the shift in Continental thought over the last 20 years through the work of four central figures: Gilles Deleuze, Alain Badiou, Michel Henry, and François Laruelle. Though they follow seemingly different methodologies and agendas, each insists on the need for a return to the category of immanence if philosophy is to have any future at all. Rejecting both the German phenomenological tradition of transcendence (of the Ego, Being, Consciousness, Alterity, or Flesh), as well as the French Structuralist valorisation of Language, they instead take the immanent categories of biology (Deleuze), mathematics (Badiou), affectivity (Henry), and axiomatic science (Laruelle) as focal points for a renewal of thought. Consequently, Continental philosophy is taken in a new direction that engages science and nature with a refreshingly critical and non-reductive approach to life, set-theory, embodiment, and knowledge. However, each of these new philosophies of immanence still regards what the other is doing as transcendent representation, raising the question of what this return to immanence really means. John Mullarkey’s analysis provides a startling answer. By teasing out their internal differences, he discovers that the only thing that can be said of immanence without falling back into transcendent representation seems not to be a saying at all but a ‘showing’, a depiction through lines. Because each of these philosophies also places a special value on the diagram, the common ground of immanence is that occupied by the philosophical diagram rather than the word. The heavily illustrated final chapter of the book literally outlines how a mode of philosophical discourse might proceed when using diagrams to think immanence.
Publisher Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006
Transversals: New Directions in Philosophy series
ISBN 0826464610, 9780826464613
260 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-9-6)
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