I am a philosophy post-doc at Unesp and a poet who has always felt that politics is not the exclusive business of politicians; that violence is not the exclusive business of warfare or of “vulgar” people, say, drunkards in bars. Violence, I have felt while doing philosophy in the USA, Brazil, Germany, and France, is likewise expressed by well-educated and apparently “peaceful” philosophers who are engaged in implicit politics and practice “subtle” violence. To handle the relation between politics and metaphysics is to do justice to this feeling. The Politics of Metaphysics, I hope, does that. I believe that though more tacitly, the same is done by this list’s books.
Usually, it is believed that upfront political conflicts like wars can be tackled from right or left-wing stances. But what about disputes in metaphysics, say, over essence?
This book argues that these disputes can also be handled through right or left-wing stances. Indeed, disputes are micro-wars that implicitly have three features explicitly found in wars: significant social importance, the presence of conflicting parties that pressure one another often through violence, and dependency on normative factors. Ultimately, it is argued that a new left-wing approach to micro-wars has advantages over right-wing ones. While dialoguing with apparent unrelated interlocutors (e.g., Nietzsche and Carnap), the book claims so by spelling out a conflictual approach characterized by a critique of the “subtle” violence expressed by philosophers like Aristotle or Quine.
This book strikes me as being a very lovely one. Despite countless right-wing readings, Cardenal indicates that the Gospels can be persuasively read as providing evidence that Christian metaphysics may reinforce left-wing practices of liberation (and vice-versa)
Besides, this book renovates Plato’s dialogues; it considers all sorts of stances from interlocutors who have not been usually taken to be legitimate philosophical peers: namely, the campesinos (peasants) who got together with Cardenal every Sunday to discuss the Gospels in Solentiname, a remote archipelago in Lake Nicaragua whose population is around 1000 persons.
I also love the fact that this book manages to do philosophy through poetic means (and vice-versa) while indicating the importance of utopic views for those who can no longer bear an actual and supposedly unavoidable situation.
In Solentiname, a remote archipelago in Lake Nicaragua, the people gathered each Sunday to reflect together on the Gospel reading. From recordings of their dialogue, this extraordinary document of faith in the midst of struggle was composed. First published in four volumes, The Gospel in Solentiname was immediately acclaimed as a classic of liberation theology—a radical reading of the good news of Jesus from the perspective of the poor and the oppressed. (It was also banned by the Somoza dictatorship.)
Forty years later The Gospel in Solentiname retains its freshness and power. Though times may have changed, the message of…
I love this book because it problematizes a popular assumption among contemporary Anglo-American authors who like to call themselves “analytic philosophers” and who only care to acknowledge the existence of a few past philosophers, e.g., Russell and Ryle. The assumption is that philosophers, such as the latter two, tackled in an apolitical “noble” fashion metaphysical matters.
Akehurst, by his turn, indicates how the likes of Russell and Ryle aligned themselves with a right-wing British policy whose “vulgar” propaganda is echoed throughout works published by British philosophers in the first half of the 20th century.
Also, I appreciate Akehurst’s way of showing that while contributing to the creation of the so-called “analytic-continental gap,” this attitude helped to naturalize the attribution of the shortness of logos to German philosophers like Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche.
British Analytic Philosophy in the Twentieth Century examines three generations of analytic philosophers, who between them founded the modern discipline of analytic philosophy in Britain. The book explores how philosophers such as Bertrand Russell, A.J. Ayer, Gilbert Ryle and Isaiah Berlin believed in a link between German aggression in the twentieth century and the nineteenth-century philosophy of Hegel and Nietzsche. Thomas L. Akehurst thus identifies in this political critique of continental philosophy the origins of the hugely significant faultline between analytic and continental thought, an aspect of twentieth-century philosophy that is still poorly understood. The book also uncovers a tripartite…
My love for this book is grounded by the fact that it shows how logical positivists like Carnap embedded their objections to metaphysics in left-wing policies.
Usually, these policies cannot be attributed to Anglo-American philosophers who published works on metaphysics after the 1950s and whose academic careers “curiously” began to flourish during McCarthyism. That was when the ones with power over universities in the USA persuaded many through not-so-subtle means that “serious” philosophical work can only be done by those who act as if political issues (e.g., McCarthyism) were philosophically irrelevant.
Ultimately, I love this book, for it provides an explanation concerning why metaphysics is currently dominated by authors who receive funding for handling, in supposedly apolitical fashions, supposedly pressing issues, say, the grounds for snow being white.
This intriguing and ground-breaking book is the first in-depth study of the development of philosophy of science in the United States during the Cold War. It documents the political vitality of logical empiricism and Otto Neurath's Unity of Science Movement when these projects emigrated to the US in the 1930s and follows their de-politicization by a convergence of intellectual, cultural and political forces in the 1950s. Students of logical empiricism and the Vienna Circle treat these as strictly intellectual non-political projects. In fact, the refugee philosophers of science were highly active politically and debated questions about values inside and outside…
Dussel does what Latin American philosophers allegedly should not do. That is what I love about this book.
Whereas Latin American philosophers allegedly should take for granted assumptions from supposedly “enlightened” philosophers who have worked in the Global North, Dussel rejects such assumptions, say, the one that philosophers should never talk about imperialism as if this political issue were philosophically irrelevant.
Whereas Latin American philosophers allegedly should only tackle disputes in metaphysics raised by philosophers from the Global North, Dussel articulates disputes these likes usually ignore, e.g., the dispute on how or under which conditions a liberation could exist.
Whereas Latin American philosophers allegedly should import Northern right-wing policies of depoliticization, Dussel politicizes philosophy in a left-wing vein while opposing the war-driven attitudes of the likes of Henry Kissinger.
Argentinean philosopher, theologian, and historian Enrique Dussel understands the present international order as divided into the culture of the center -- by which he means the ruling elite of Europe, North America, and Russia -- and the peoples of the periphery -- by which he means the populations of Latin America, Africa, and part of Asia, and the oppressed classes (including women and children) throughout the world. In 'Philosophy of Liberation,' he presents a profound analysis of the alienation of peripheral peoples resulting from the imperialism of the center for more than five centuries. Dussel's aim is to demonstrate that…
What I love about this book is the fact that it indicates that an apparently apolitical metaphilosophical assumption agrees with an upfront right-wing policy.
The assumption is that when tackling disputes in metaphysics, philosophers should aim to achieve consensus. The policy is that of pressing one to respect the allegedly rationally undeniable standards of a “herd,” as Nietzsche puts it. While problematizing this view, Nietzsche argues that libertarian tendencies of expressing one’s uniqueness are more valuable than more egalitarian tendencies of following herds; to provoke dissensus would then be more valuable than to reach consensus.
This stance has influenced me, even though while problematizing Nietzsche’s works through Carnap’s (and vice-versa), I claim that libertarian and egalitarian tendencies are equally valuable so that one should aim for a balance between them.
Unabridged English value reproduction of Beyond Good And Evilby Friedrich Nietzsche and translated by Helen Zimmern. This philosophical classic is a must read because of its fearless approach to how knowledge is formed.
Beyond Good And Evil asks, is truth absolute? Do humans invent ways to fortify already held views or truly seek the truth? Are the powerful more ‘right’ than the weak? Or is Nietzsche writing down page after page to hear himself talk?
Let the reader decide in this slim volume with full text and footnotes, produced at an affordable price.
The constellation we know as Taurus goes all the way back to cave paintings of aurochs at Lascaux. This book traces the story of the bull in the sky, a journey through the history of what has become known as the sacred bull.
Each of the sections is written from the perspective of the mythical Taurus, from the beginning at Lascaux to Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, and elsewhere. This is not just a history of the bull but also a view of ourselves through the eyes of the bull, illustrating our pre-literate use of myth, how the advent of writing and the urban revolution changed our view of ourselves, and how even bullfighting in Spain is a variation on the ancient sacrifice of the sacred bull.
The constellation we know as Taurus goes all the way back to cave paintings of aurochs at Lascaux. In I Am Taurus, author Stephen Palmer traces the story of the bull in the sky, starting from that point 19,000 years ago - a journey through the history of what has become known as the sacred bull. Each of the eleven sections is written from the perspective of the mythical Taurus, from the beginning at Lascaux to Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Greece, Spain and elsewhere. This is not just a history of the bull but also an attempt to see ourselves through…
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