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Consciousness and the Aconscious in Psychoanalytic Theory
In the last few decades consciousness has become a major topic of interest for neurologists, psychologists, and a host of other professionals in various disciplines. Their concerted efforts to define consciousness led them mostly to the same impasse: the leap from the body to the mind, or to the particular link that makes the mind an attribute of consciousness. In 1895 Freud put together a project for a Psychology for the Neurologists. It comprised the elements of a theory of consciousness as a manifestation of the continuous homeostatic pursuit of stability; an aconscious condition. Although he made a distinction between the aconscious and the unconscious in many of his important works, he ...
A Psychotherapy for the People
How did psychoanalysis come to define itself as being different from psychotherapy? How have racism, homophobia, misogyny and anti-Semitism converged in the creation of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis? Is psychoanalysis psychotherapy? Is psychoanalysis a "Jewish science"? Inspired by the progressive and humanistic origins of psychoanalysis, Lewis Aron and Karen Starr pursue Freud's call for psychoanalysis to be a "psychotherapy for the people." They present a cultural history focusing on how psychoanalysis has always defined itself in relation to an "other." At first, that other was hypnosis and suggestion; later it was psychotherapy. The authors trace a series of binary oppositions, each d...
The Persistence of the Soul in Literature, Art and Politics
This book analyses the evolution of literary and artistic representations of the soul, exploring its development through different time periods. The volume combines literary, aesthetic, ethical, and political considerations of the soul in texts and works of art from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries, spanning cultures and schools of thought. Drawing on philosophical, religious and psychological theories of the soul, it emphasizes the far-reaching and enduring epistemological function of the concept in literature, art and politics. The authors argue that the concept of the soul has shaped the understanding of human life and persistently irrigated cultural productions. They show how the concept of soul was explored and redefined by writers and artists, remaining relevant even as it became removed from its ancient or Christian origins.
Poetic Inclinations
Philosophy originates in wonder that generates sensitive thinking, also called ‘aesthetic thinking’—an expanded mode of thought that bridges and dissolves contradictions. This book questions the disregard for such thinking in modern society, including the neglect of it in most educational institutions and contemporary research. It describes what it means to think in an aesthetic way when ‘aesthetic’ is synonymous with ‘sensitive’ (not ‘sensuous’), including how such thinking may foster human well-being and develop our notions of history, hospitality, freedom, and the good life. The formative nature of aesthetic thinking is presented alongside the attestation of its relevanc...
Romancing Fascism
Romancing Fascism argues that intellectual responsibility can only be safeguarded if criticism is mobilised both as a poetic and as a critically enlightened endeavour. In this analysis of allegory as a function of modernity, what is made clear is the difficulty, if not impossibility, of definitively determining the genealogical antecedents of intellectual trends, particularly those considered pernicious to clear thinking. Thus Kerr-Koch takes a wide-ranging approach to the analysis of allegory as it is treated by three controversial writers whose works flank the 19th and 20th centuries, the middle and late periods of what we call modernity-Walter Benjamin, Paul de Man and Percy Bysshe Shelley. These three writers have been chosen because they have been at some point recuperated for a theory of 'postmodernism', a term that for some theorists represents liberal free play, and for others represents a lack of rigour and a pernicious corruption of thought.
The Reading of Theoretical Texts
Since the structuralist debates of the 1970s the field of textual analysis has largely remained the preserve of literary theorists. Social scientists, while accepting that observation is theory laden have tended to take the meaning of texts as given and to explain differences of interpretation either in terms of ignorance or bias. In this important contribution to methodological debate, Peter Ekegren uses developments within literary criticism, philosophy and critical theory to reclaim this study for the social sciences and to illuminate the ways in which different readings of a single text are created and defended.
Charles Taylor's Doctrine of Strong Evaluation
This book provides a comprehensive critical account of the philosophy of Charles Taylor. The author engages with the secondary literature on Taylor's work and suggests that some interpretations and criticisms have been based on misunderstandings of the ontological dimension of strong evaluation, while also developing a novel interpretation of Taylor's ontological thought. Meijer argues that a close examination of Taylor’s central concept of “strong evaluation” reveals both the potential of and the tensions in his entire thinking. The analysis pursues the development of Taylor’s thought from his very first philosophical papers (1958) until his most recent reflections in Retrieving Realism (2015) and The Language Animal (2016). It also examines in detail Taylor’s ambitious philosophical project: to connect arguments in philosophical anthropology, ethics, phenomenology, and ontology across the full range of his diverse writings. The book therefore specifically traces the links between Taylor’s arguments, with strong evaluation as their unifying leitmotif.
Social Theory for Today
This book is distinctive for extending the usual sociological reach, reopening territory that has lain fallow, set aside from the well-ploughed fields of orthodox social theory. In doing so, Law not only produces fresh insight into familiar theorists but guards against collective forgetting of the sociological canon. - Professor Bridget Fowler, University of Glasgow "An excellent book, it will be welcomed and read widely by advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and scholars in sociology, cultural studies, social theory and beyond." - Professor Chris Shilling, University of Kent Social Theory for Today guides students through the ‘turns’ of past and present social theory as it attempts t...
Common Law and Liberal Theory
In this book, James Stoner's purpose is to recover the common law basis of American constitutionalism. American constitutionalism in general, he argues, and judicial review in particular, cannot be fully understood without acknowledging their roots in both common law and liberal political theory. But for the most part, the common law underpinnings of constitutionalism have received short shrift.
American Virtues
Beginning with the Declaration of Independence, this analysis of Thomas Jefferson's moral and political philosophy focuses exclusively on the full range of moral, civic and intellectual virtues that form the American character.
