Human Life Is Radical Reality

The twenty-first century needs a new paradigm for philosophy, because both Anglo-American and Continental philosophy have ended in analytic sterility and deconstructive nihilism. They have ignored the radical reality of human life, which all other realities must presuppose. Three European philosophers in the twentieth century - Dilthey, Heidegger, and Ortega y Gasset - began to develop this idea, but never before has it been systematically conceptualized and adequately expounded. With reference to the works of these philosophers, this book examines the major categories and essential properties of human life as it is lived, for example, in time, circumstance, history, and understanding.

José Ortega y Gasset, (1883-1955), Spanish writer, philosopher and revolutionary was noted for his humanistic criticism of modern civilization. His best known work, The Revolt of the Masses earned him an international reputation. In it, he decried the destructive influence of the mass-minded, and therefore mediocre, people, who, if not directed by the intellectually and morally superior minority, encourage the rise of fascism and totalitarianism.

The essays and lectures that comprise this book reflect decades of work in the United States, Spain, and Spanish America. In no particular chronological sequence, these writings cluster in thematic unity around the innovative concepts of the shared vision of philosophers Ortega y Gasset and Julián Marías. These include, among others, human life as the radical reality, the indissoluble bond of person and circumstance, innovations of philosophic genre and lexicon, perspective as reality and history as reason, and beyond the reductive claims of modern biologism, realism, and idealism the unique reality of the human person as creation. Harold Raley has written twenty-four books on philosophy, history, theological topics, and fiction, authored more than a hundred professional articles, delivered several dozen major lectures on philosophy, literature, and language, in addition to a decade of journalistic writing on language and intellectual topics. He has lectured in American and Canadian universities, at several venues in Spain, and lectured and taught in Colombia, South America. Raley has taught French, Spanish, and humanities. He has served as department chair at Oklahoma State University and the University of Houston, and as Dean of Fine Arts and Humanities at Houston Baptist University where he held the Robert H. Ray Chair of Humanities and was named Scholar- in-Residence.

Understanding life through its origins reveals the groundwork underlying the differentiations of its autonomous generative matrixes. Following the primogenital matrix of generation, the three generative matrixes of the specifically human sense of life establish humanness within the creative human condition as the existential sphere of sharing-in-life.

The Real is Radical is centrally concerned with the explication and development of François Laruelle's theory of “non-standard Marxism.” Fardy assembles a constellation of concepts designed to put Laruelle's work into dialogue with diverse theoretical perspectives, including Althusser, Tronti, Adorno, Baudrillard, Kolozova and others while demonstrating the novelty and theoretical saliency of Laruelle's work. The Real is Radical provides a much-needed introduction to non-standard Marxism and a useful starting point for the development of its theoretical potential.

Critique of Latin American Reason is one of the most important philosophical texts to have come out of South America in recent decades. First published in 1996, it offers a sweeping critique of the foundational schools of thought in Latin American philosophy and critical theory. Santiago Castro-Gómez argues that “Latin America” is not so much a geographical entity, a culture, or a place, but rather an object of knowledge produced by a family of discourses in the humanities that are inseparably linked to colonial power relationships. Using the archaeological and genealogical methods of Michel Foucault, he analyzes the political, literary, and philosophical discourses and modes of power that have contributed to the making of “Latin America.” Castro-Gómez examines the views of a wide range of Latin American thinkers on modernity, postmodernity, identity, colonial history, and literature, also considering how these questions have intersected with popular culture. His critique spans Central and South America, and it also implicates broader and protracted global processes. This book presents this groundbreaking work of contemporary critical theory in English translation for the first time. It features a foreword by Linda Martín Alcoff, a new preface by the author, and an introduction by Eduardo Mendieta situating Castro-Gómez’s thought in the context of critical theory in Latin America and the Global South. Two appendixes feature an interview with Castro-Gómez that sheds light on the book’s composition and short provocations responding to each chapter from a multidisciplinary forum of contemporary scholars who resituate the work within a range of perspectives including feminist, Francophone African, and decolonial Black political thought.

This book reconstructs the original and origins of the Rig Veda, (between 5.000 to 2.500 B.C, ) the first Indo-European written document ever to show the origin of cultures and the power of music in the recitation and construction of the original hymns. Here we find the original geometries, original forms, original sacrifice of any form to claim supremacy over the others and the continued movement of human life. This book brings together early humans with modern neurobiological discoveries and shows the origins of multiple centers of knowing (the gods), the movement of the singer and the song in a world that avoids idolatry of substances by insisting in the constant movement of singer, song, and music. If you thought you knew all there is to know about the language you use, read this book and find out the idolatry of its imagery and the possible sacrifice needed for a happy, communal and divine life.