On Thursday night, March 4, 1926, in the town of Konnersreuth, Bavaria, a young peasant woman named Therese Neumann lay in bed, very weak and ill of what had been diagnosed as influenza. Suddenly she saw Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane."I saw Him kneeling on the ground, and I saw everything else in the garden, the trees, the rocks and also the three disciples. All at once I felt such vehement pain in my side that I thought my last moment had come. Then I felt something running do...

The purpose of Communicating in the Anthropocene: Intimate Relations is to tell a different story about the world. Humans, especially those raised in Western traditions, have long told stories about themselves as individual protagonists who act with varying degrees of free will against a background of mute supporting characters and inert landscapes. Humans can be either saviors or destroyers, but our actions are explained and judged again and again as emanating from the individual. And yet...

The relationship of philosophy with Kafka’s oeuvre is complex. It has been argued that Kafka’s novels and stories defy philosophic extrapolation; conversely, it has also been suggested that precisely the tendency of Kafka’s writings to elude discursive solution is itself a philosophical tendency, one that is somehow contributing to a wiser relationship of human beings with language. These matters are the focus of the proposed volume on Philosophy and Kafka.The proposed collection b...

Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future is a book by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, first published in 1886. It draws on and expands the ideas of his previous work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but with a more critical and polemical approach. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche accuses past philosophers of lacking critical sense and blindly accepting dogmatic premises in their consideration of morality. Specifically, he accuses them of founding grand metaphysical systems up...

A 19th century literary masterpiece, which uses Persian religious leader Zarathustra to pronounce the author’s views, including the introduction of the controversial Doctrine of the Obermensch, or “superman”, later perverted by Nazi propagandists.

From bestselling author and provocateur Christopher Hitchens, the classic guide to the art of principled dissent and disagreement.**“Hitchens is, first and last, a writer, an always exciting, often exacting, furious polemicist.” -**The Boston GlobeIn Letters to a Young Contrarian, Christopher Hitchens inspires the radicals, gadflies, mavericks, rebels, and angry young people of tomorrow. Exploring the entire range of “cont...

Like many others of my generation, I first read Camus in high school. I carried him in my backpack while traveling across Europe, I carried him into (and out of) relationships, and I carried him into (and out of) difficult periods of my life. More recently, I have carried him into university classes that I have taught, coming out of them with a renewed appreciation of his art. To be sure, my idea of Camus thirty years ago scarcely resembles my idea of him today. While my admiration and att...

Heidegger's Being and Time: Critical Essays provides a variety of recent studies of Heidegger's most important work. Twelve prominent scholars, representing diverse nationalities, generations, and interpretive approaches deal with general methodological and ontological questions, particular issues in Heidegger's text, and the relation between Being and Time and Heidegger's later thought. All of the essays presented in this volume were never before available in an...

In Kierkegaard's Romantic Legacy, Anoop Gupta develops an original theory of the self based on Kierkegaard's writings. Gupta proceeds by historical exegesis and considers several important ways of thinking about self outside of the natural sciences. His study moves theories of the self from theology toward sociology, from a God-relationship to a social one, and illustrates how a loss in theological underpinnings partly contributes to the rise in the popularity of cultural relativi...

The two lectures translated here were published in 1957 under the title Identitat und Differenz. The sensitive and attentive reader will come away with a feeling that he now knows Heidegger, the man, the teacher, better. Heidegger provides illuminating insights and thoughts on many a vital issue—our technological age, religion, language, history, and more—all of which he touches upon here, if only epigrammatically. What makes Heidegger important is his receptiveness, his sensitivi...

SCULPTING SENTENTIAE An Art Form of Independent Philosophy contains 406 original sententiae (statements) plus a preface discussing why the author considers this type of philosophical writing to be an art form. It represents a radical departure from the contemporary university approach to philosophy as a scholarly discipline. Unlike discursive prose, sententiae do not entertain or support the reader on a flowing current of language. Here the mind does not analyze, it apprehends, it sees. If...

Ludwig Feuerbach's departure from the traditional philosophy of Hegel opened a door for generations of radical philosophical thinkers, foremost among them the young Karl Marx. Indeed, much of early Marx is unintelligible without reference to certain fundamental Feuerbachian texts. The selections in this volume, few of them available in translation elsewhere, reveal Feuerbach's fundamental criticisms of the 'old philosophy' of Hegel and advance his own humanistic thought, grounded in life a...