An investigation into the strange and troublesome relationship to pleasure that defines the human being, drawing on the disparate perspectives of Deleuze and Lacan.Is pleasure a rotten idea, mired in negativity and lack, which should be abandoned in favor of a new concept of desire? Or is desire itself fundamentally a matter of lack, absence, and loss? This is one of the crucial issues dividing the work of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Lacan, two of the most formidabl...

A provocative book that proposes a new and surprising inspiration for philosophy today—the canine thinker from Kafka’s story “Investigations of a Dog.”Written toward the end of Kafka’s life, “Investigations of a Dog” (Forschungen eines Hundes, 1922) is one of the lesser-known and most enigmatic works in the author’s oeuvre. Kafka’s tale of philosophical adventure is that of a lone, maladjusted dog who challenges the dogmatism of established science and pio...

A dynamic contemporary examination of universalismGathering a selection of essays by influential theorist Boris Groys, Towards a New Universalism articulates his sustained engagement with the problem of universality under contemporary conditions shaped by globalization, institutional fragmentation, and digital mediation. Rather than defending classical universalism or abandoning it in favor of cultural particularism, Groys approaches universality as someth...

What does the name Trump stand for? If branding now rules over the production of value, as the coauthors of Sovereignty, Inc. argue, then Trump assumes the status of a master brand whose primary activity is the compulsive work of self-branding—such is the new sovereignty business in which, whether one belongs to his base or not, we are all "incorporated."Drawing on anthropology, political theory, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and theater, William Mazzarella, Eric L. Santner,...

Against the idea that comedy offers us a relief from the horrors of the real world, the German-Jewish-American filmmaker Ernst Lubitsch defended his masterpiece To Be or Not to Be, a comedy from 1942 about the concurrent Nazi occupation of Poland, with the claim that he had made up his mind “to make a picture with no attempt to relieve anybody from anything at any time.” The essays included in The Ethics of Ernst Lubitsch consider Lubitsch’s work from his early Berlin yea...

“Incites us to reflect on fiction and philosophy, knowledge and truth, and brilliantly illustrates the art of the essay.” — The New Republic"Every novelist's work contains an implicit vision of the history of the novel, an idea of what the novel is. I have tried to express the idea of the novel that is inherent in my own novels." — Milan KunderaKundera brilliantly examines the evolution, construction, and essence o...

A spectre is haunting us: fear. We are constantly confronted with apocalyptic scenarios: pandemics, world war, the climate catastrophe. Images of the end of the world and the end of human civilization are conjured up with ever greater urgency. Anxiously, we face a bleak future. Preoccupied with crisis management, life becomes a matter of survival.But it is precisely at such moments of fear and despair that hope arises like a phoenix from the ashes. Only hope can give us back a life...

It has been described as a "tame longing without any particular object" by Schopenhauer, "a bestial and indefinable affliction" by Dostoevsky, and "time's invasion of your world system" by Joseph Brodsky, but still very few of us today can explain precisely what boredom is. A Philosophy of Boredom investigates one of the central preoccupations of our age as it probes the nature of boredom, how it originated, how and why it afflicts us, and why we cannot seem to overcome it by any ...

Existentialism For Beginners is an entertaining romp through the history of a philosophical movement that has had a broad and enduring influence on Western culture. From the middle of the Nineteenth Century through the late Twentieth Century existentialism informed our politics and art and still exerts its influence today. Tracing the movement's beginnings with close-up views of seminal figures like Kierkegaard Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche Existentialism For Beginners follows its intellectual...

How do we evaluate the power and utility of language when it has been manipulated to circumvent the truth at high levels or charged with vulgarity and imprecision by mass-consumer culture? How can fractured language adapt to the demands of more exact speech required by mathematics and symbolic notation? These are some of the questions addressed in this elegantly written book, first published in 1967 to international acclaim.

Unlock the more straightforward side of The Myth of Sisyphus with this concise and insightful summary and analysis!This engaging summary presents an analysis of The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus, a philosophical essay which focuses on the issue of suicide in an absurd world. Camus uses Greek mythology to highlight why life, in spite of its inherent pointlessness, is still worth living, coming to the conclusion that revolt is the only way to liv...

In this clear and detailed reading guide, we’ve done all the hard work for you!The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus is a philosophical essay that belongs to the Cycle of the Absurd, along with The Stranger and Caligula. In this essay, the author discusses the absurdity of a meaningless life, the estrangement of Man from the world, and the possibility of suicide as a solution.Find out everything you need to know about The Myth of Sisyphus i...