Continental Philosophy An Introduction

by West, David

• ISBN13: 9780745645810
• ISBN10: 074564581X
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-12-01
• Publisher: Polity

Summary

This book is a fully updated and expanded new edition of An Introduction to Continental Philosophy, first published in 1996. It provides a clear, concise and readable introduction to philosophy in the continental tradition. It is a wide-ranging and reliable guide to the work of such major figures as Nietzsche, Habermas, Heidegger, Arendt, Sartre, Foucault, Derrida and Žižek. At the same time, it situates their thought within a coherent overall account of the development of continental philosophy since the Enlightenment.Individual chapters consider the character of modernity, the Enlightenment and its continental critics; the ideas of Marxism, the Frankfurt School and Habermas; hermeneutics and phenomenology; existentialism; structuralism, post-structuralism and postmodernism. In addition to the thinkers already mentioned, there is extended discussion of the ideas of Kant, Hegel, Dilthey, Husserl, Gadamer, Kierkegaard, de Beauvoir and Lyotard. The new edition includes an additional, full-length chapter on continental philosophy in the twenty-first century focusing on Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek.Continental Philosophy: An Introduction is an invaluable introductory text for courses on continental philosophy as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences dealing with major figures or influential approaches within that tradition.

Author Biography

David West is a Reader in Political Science and International Relations at the Australian National University.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Second Edition

Preface to the First Edition

Introduction: What is Continental Philosophy?

Modernity, Enlightenment and their Continental Critics

From Modernity to Enlightenment

The Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant

Continental Critics of Enlightenment

The Hegelian Synthesis

Dialectics of Emancipation: Marx, the Frankfurt School and Habermas

Feuerbach, Marx and Marxism

The Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School

Habermas and the Renewal of Critical Theory

Historicism, Hermeneutics and Phenomenology

Dilthey, Philosophy of Life and Hermeneutics

Husserl and Phenomenology

Heidegger's Phenomenology of Being

Gadamer and the Universality of Hermeneutics

The Phenomenology of Political Action ÐHannah Arendt

Beyond Theory: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Existentialism

Søren Kierkegaard

Friedrich Nietzsche

Jean-Paul Sartre and French Existentialism

Beyond the Subject: Structuralism and Poststructuralism

Decentring the Subject

The Break with Humanism

Foucault's Genealogy of the Subject

Derrida's Deconstruction of Western Metaphysics

Postmodernism

Varieties of Postmodernism

Philosophical Critique of Enlightenment and Modernity Postmodernity as a Stage of Western Society

Politics of Difference and Ethics of the Other

Radical Departures

After the End of History

The Return of the Political - Agamben, Nancy, Lacoue-Labarthe

Slavoj Zizek - The Fractious Subject of Ideology

In the Event of Alain Badiou

Notes

Bibliography

Index

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