Bezna 5 makes an ouroboric move of plunging into itself ('Bezna' in Romanian means consistent darkness + diffuse fear). Bezna 5 is darkly glowing dead thinking, cosmic pessimism, hairy autonomy, limbo sighs, horrendous pink volumes, underground nematodes, happy dismemberment, haunting prehumanism, glowing horror, sinister moods, eternal stillness, future plague, idiot nonknowing and news from Cioran:The Book of Delusions (fragments) Emil CioranFollowing the Sigh Nicola Masc...

A beloved multidisciplinary treatise comes to Penguin ClassicsSince its initial publication in 1958, The Poetics of Space has been a muse to philosophers, architects, writers, psychologists, critics, and readers alike. The rare work of irresistibly inviting philosophy, Bachelard’s seminal work brims with quiet revelations and stirring, mysterious imagery. This lyrical journey takes as its premise the emergence of the poetic image and finds an ideal metapho...

A philosophical critique of how society encourages us to avoid risk when we should instead accept it.When Anne Dufourmantelle drowned in a heroic attempt to save two children caught in rough seas, obituaries around the world rarely failed to recall that she authored In Praise of Risk, implying that her death confirmed the ancient adage that to philosophize is to learn how to die. Now available in English, this magnificent book indeed offers a trenchant crit...

Having set global warming in irreversible motion, we are facing the possibility of ecological catastrophe. But the environmental emergency is also a crisis for our philosophical habits of thought, confronting us with a problem that seems to defy not only our control but also our understanding. Global warming is perhaps the most dramatic example of what Timothy Morton calls “hyperobjects”—entities of such vast temporal and spatial dimensions that they defeat traditional ideas about what a t...

Called by many France's foremost philosopher, Gilles Deleuze is one of the leading thinkers in the Western World. His acclaimed works and celebrated collaborations with Félix Guattari have established him as a seminal figure in the fields of literary criticism and philosophy. The long-awaited publication of What Is Philosophy? in English marks the culmination of Deleuze's career.Deleuze and Guattari differentiate between philosophy, science, and the arts, seeing as means o...

In his philosophical reflections on the art of lingering, acclaimed cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han argues that the value we attach today to the vita activa is producing a crisis in our sense of time. Our attachment to the vita activa creates an imperative to work which degrades the human being into a labouring animal, an animal laborans. At the same time, the hyperactivity which characterizes our daily routines robs human beings of the capacity to linger and th...

“Scholarly advice for dark times.” —The New Yorker“Provides a metric ton of misery and a lot of company.” —New York Times“Probably philosophy’s only beach read.”—ViceA ‘nihilist’s devotional,’ this collection aphorisms, fragments, and observations on philosophy and pessimism offer a raw look at the human conditionDark times lie around us and ahead of us, and what better way to survive the coming Apoc...

Are great works of art, literature and music 'creations' or 'inventions'? Does the mathematician 'invent' or 'discover'? Exploring an often neglected field, this book asks whether the current revolutions in our means of communication and in the biological sciences, may bring with them radical changes in the concept of individual creation and of poetic and philosophical invention. Are we returning to ancient anonymities and collectivities in aesthetic and intellectual experience? Are music ...

How to live meaningfully in the face of the unknowableWe human beings had no say in existing—we just opened our eyes and found ourselves here. We have a fundamental need to understand who we are and the world we live in. Reason takes us a long way, but mystery remains. When our minds and senses are baffled, faith can seem justified—but faith is not knowledge. In Ultimate Questions, acclaimed philosopher Bryan Magee provocatively argues that we have no way ...

The renowned philosopher contemplates the medium of drawing in "a book full of dazzling insights, imaginative curves and provocative renewals" (Sarah Clift, University of King's College).In 2007, philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy curated an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Lyon. This book, originally written for that exhibition, explores the interplay between drawing and form—viewing the act of drawing as a formative force. Recalling that the terms 'drawing' and '...

We no longer inhabit earth and dwell under the sky: these are being replaced by Google Earth and the Cloud. The terrestrial order is giving way to a digital order, the world of things is being replaced by a world of non-things – a constantly expanding ‘infosphere’ of information and communication which displaces objects and obliterates any stillness and calmness in our lives.Byung-Chul Han’s critique of the infosphere highlights the price we are paying for our growing preoccupation...

A revealing study into the relationship between psychology and the arts.Anton Ehrenzweig's tour de force describes nothing less than the psychology of artistic creativity. Focusing on the visual arts and music, he shows that, in addition to conscious, intellectual critical powers, both the child and the creative artist rely on an unconscious, intuitive critical process to give shape to their view of the world.