The Barbarian Principle

"Essays explore a rich intersection between phenomenology and idealism with contemporary relevance"--Provided by publisher.

Toward the end of his life, Maurice Merleau-Ponty made a striking retrieval of F. W. J. Schelling's philosophy of nature. The Barbarian Principle explores the relationship between these two thinkers on this topic, opening up a dialogue with contemporary philosophical and ecological significance that will be of special interest to philosophers working in phenomenology and German idealism.

An exploration of ethnological thought in Greece, Rome, and China and its articulation during 'barbarian' invasion and conquest.

What is the nature of norms and values for the constitution of human society and culture? In this groundbreaking work, T. K. Seung shows that this was the ultimate question for Plato throughout his life, and that he gave not one but two answers, thus twice inventing political philosophy as the science of all sciences. Providing a thematically unified interpretation of his dialogues on the grand scale, Seung retraces Plato's journey of invention. Plato Rediscovered extends the project Seung began in Intuition and Construction (1993) and Kant's Platonic Revolution (1994). A work that will radically alter our understanding of the philosopher.

For four decades Sources of Chinese Tradition has served to introduce Western readers to Chinese civilization as it has been seen through basic writings and historical documents of the Chinese themselves. Now in its second edition, revised and extended through Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin–era China, this classic volume remains unrivaled for its wide selection of source readings on history, society, and thought in the world's largest nation. Award-winning China scholar Wm. Theodore de Bary—who edited the first edition in 1960—and his coeditor Richard Lufrano have revised and updated the second volume of Sources to reflect the interactions of ideas, institutions, and historical events from the seventeenth century up to the present day. Beginning with Qing civilization and continuing to contemporary times, volume II brings together key source texts from more than three centuries of Chinese history, with opening essays by noted China authorities providing context for readers not familiar with the period in question. Here are just a few of the topics covered in this second volume of Sources of Chinese Tradition: Early Sino-Western contacts in the seventeenth century; Four centuries of Chinese reflections on differences between Eastern and Western civilizations; Nineteenth- and twentieth-century reform movements, with treatises on women's rights, modern science, and literary reform; Controversies over the place of Confucianism in modern Chinese society; The nationalist revolution—including readings from Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek; The communist revolution—with central writings by Mao Zedong; Works from contemporary China—featuring political essays from Deng Xiaoping and dissidents including Wei Jingsheng. With more than two hundred selections in lucid, readable translation by today's most renowned experts on Chinese language and civilization, Sources of Chinese Tradition will continue to be recognized as the standard for source readings on Chinese civilization, an indispensable learning tool for scholars and students of Asian civilizations.

A collection of primary readings on the social, intellectual, and religious traditions of China, this text provides a resource for scholars and students and an introduction for general readers.

This book offers a cutting-edge interpretation of the philosophy of F.W.J. Schelling by critically reconsidering the interpretations of some of his “successors.” It argues that Schelling’s philosophy should be read as an ontology of immanence, highlighting its relevance for ongoing debates on ethics and freedom. The book builds on a key notion from Schelling’s Philosophy of Revelation where he outlines the process through which transcendence must return to immanence in order to be grasped and understood. The author identifies Jaspers, Heidegger, and Deleuze as the main interpreters of Schelling’s philosophical activity, highlighting their relevance for subsequent Schelling scholarship. Heidegger and Jaspers refer to Schelling’s philosophy in negative terms, namely as an incomplete and unviable philosophical system, whereas Deleuze holds the immanent core of Schelling’s ontological discourse in high regard. The author’s analysis demonstrates that reading Schelling’s philosophy as an ontology of immanence not only avoids Heidegger’s and Jaspers’s criticisms but is also more fitting to Schelling’s original meaning. Accordingly, his reading allows us to fully grasp Schelling’s thought in all its strength and consistency: as a philosophy that avoids metaphysical abstractions and maintains the concreteness of concepts like God, nature, freedom by binding them to a solid and material account of Being. Finally, the author uses Schelling to propose an innovative reading of freedom as a matter of resistance, and of philosophy as an activity whose main purpose is that of seeking the actual extent and place of (human) life and freedom within nature. The author originally emphasises the relevance of these conclusions on contemporary debates in Postcolonial Critical Theory and Environmental Ethics. Schelling, Freedom, and the Immanent Made Transcendent. From Philosophy of Nature to Environmental Ethics will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in 19th-century Continental philosophy, German idealism, and Postcolonial Critical Theory and Environmental Ethics.