Exploring the first-person narratives of three figures from the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic mystical traditions—St. Teresa of Avila, Rabbi Dov Baer, and Rzbihn Baql—Anthony J. Steinbock provides a complete phenomenology of mysticism based in the Abrahamic religious traditions. He relates a broad range of religious experiences, or verticality, to philosophical problems of evidence, selfhood, and otherness. From this philosophical description of vertical experience, Steinbock develops a social and cultural critique in terms of idolatry—as pride, secularism, and fundamentalism—and suggests that contemporary (...) understandings of human experience must come from a fuller, more open view of religious experience. (shrink)

This book contains the unfinished manuscript and working notes of the book Merleau-Ponty was writing when he died.

In this extraordinary work Gilles Deleuze reflects on one of the figures of the past who has most influenced his own sweeping reconfiguration of the tasks of philosophy.

The Being of the Phenomenon opens European post-structuralism to further study and is certain to inspire new thinking about the origins of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology.

"... no other book undertakes to relate all these French philosophers to each other the way that [Lawlor] does, brilliantly." —François Raffoul For many, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze represent one of the greatest movements in French philosophy. But these philosophers and their works did not materialize without a philosophical heritage. In Thinking through French Philosophy, Leonard Lawlor shows how the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty formed an important current in sustaining the development of structuralism and post-structuralism. Seeking the (...) "point of diffraction," or the specific ideas and concepts that link Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze, Lawlor discovers differences and convergences in these thinkers who worked the same terrain. Major themes include metaphysics, archaeology, language and documentation, expression and interrogation, and the very experience of thinking. Lawlor’s focus on the experience of the question brings out critical differences in immanence and transcendence. This illuminating and provocative book brings new vitality to debates on contemporary French philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, I attend to the ontological shift in Merleau-Ponty’s later writing and suggest that this conceptual turn opens the space for questions of the latent sense of the sensible foreclosed by dualist accounts and propositional theories of meaning. By attending to the Nature Lectures, I claim that there is a sens [meaning and orientation] of nature whose regulatory principle ought to be found in nature itself. This is to say that there is a normativity of nature that, albeit (...) not exclusive of sociocultural-linguistic norms, is irreducible to them. As I argue, this normativity is a “transspatializing and transtemporalizing”: it transverses its carnal manifestations, thereby inaugurating and becoming traceable within their materialization while remaining invisible in its excess or poietic renewing. I conclude by attending to the question of the “latent sense” of nature, suggesting that this sense is not conceptual or propositional, but intuitive as in the sense of right and left, a sense that is distributed across spatio-temporal individuals and emerges via the play of yet-to-be-determined incarnate manifestations.Dans cet article, j’aborde le tournant ontologique du dernier Merleau-Ponty et je suggère qu’il implique une interrogation sur le sens latent du sensible, exclu par les approches dualistes ainsi que par les théories propositionnelles de la signification. En analysant les cours sur la Nature, je vise à montrer qu’il y a un sens [signification et direction] de la nature, dont le principe régulateur est à chercher dans la nature elle-même. Cela revient à dire qu’il y a une normativité de la nature qui, bien qu’elle n’exclue pas les normes socio-culturelles-linguistiques, ne leur est pas pour autant réductible. Une telle normativité est « trans-spatiale et trans-temporelle » : elle traverse ses manifestations charnelles, en inaugurant ainsi et en devenant traçable dans ses matérialisations, tout en demeurant invisible dans son excès et dans son renouvellement poïétique. Je termine en abordant la question du « sens latent » de la nature, en suggérant que ce sens n’est ni conceptuel ni propositionnel, mais intuitif, tout comme l’est le sens de la droite et de la gauche, c’est-à-dire un sens qui est distribué à travers les individus spatio-temporels et qui émerge dans le jeu des manifestations incarnées encore-à-déterminer.In questo articolo intendo esaminare la svolta ontologica degli ultimi scritti di Merleau-Ponty per suggerire come questa apra ad un’interrogazione sul senso latente del sensibile, che rimane escluso dagli approcci dualistici e dalle teorie proposizionali del significato. Analizzando i corsi sulla Natura, vorrei mostrare come vi sia un senso [significato e orientamento] della natura il cui principio regolatore deve essere rintracciato nella natura stessa. Ciò significa che vi è una normatività della natura che, benché non esclusiva delle norme socioculturali-linguistiche, è irriducibile ad esse. Questa normatività è “trans-spaziale e trans-temporale”: essa attraversa le sue manifestazioni carnali, inaugurando e divenendo tracciabile nelle sue materializzazioni, pur rimanendo invisibile nella sua eccedenza o rinnovamento poietico. Concludo soffermandomi sulla questione del “senso latente” della natura, suggerendo che questo senso non è concettuale o proposizionale, ma intuitivo al modo del senso della destra e della sinistra, un senso che è distribuito attraverso gli individui spazio-temporali e che emerge nel gioco delle manifestazioni incarnate ancora-da-determinare. (shrink)

The possible and revelation -- The saturated phenomenon -- Metaphysics and phenomenology: a relief for theology -- "Christian philosophy": hermeneutic or heuristic? -- Sketch of a phenomenological concept of the gift -- What cannot be said: Apophasis and the discourse of love -- The banality of saturation -- Faith and reason.

v. 1. Introduction and the concept of religion -- v. 2. Determinate religion -- v. 3. The consummate religion.

A part of the “return to religion” now evident in European philosophy, this book represents the culmination of the career of a leading phenomenological thinker whose earlier works trace a trajectory from Marx through a genealogy of psychoanalysis that interprets Descartes’s “I think, I am” as “I feel myself thinking, I am.” In this book, Henry does not ask whether Christianity is “true” or “false.” Rather, what is in question here is what Christianity considers as truth, what kind of truth (...) it offers to people, what it endeavors to communicate to them, not as a theoretical and indifferent truth, but as the essential truth that by some mysterious affinity is suitable for them, to the point that it alone is capable of ensuring them salvation. In the process, Henry inevitably argues against the concept of truth that dominates modern thought and determines, in its multiple implications, the world in which we live. Henry argues that Christ undoes “the truth of the world,” that He is an access to the infinity of self-love, to a radical subjectivity that admits no outside, to the immanence of affective life found beyond the despair fatally attached to all objectifying thought. The Kingdom of God accomplishes itself in the here and now through the love of Christ in what Henry calls “the auto-affection of Life.” In this condition, he argues, all problems of lack, ambivalence, and false projection are resolved. (shrink)

This book offers the first sustained reflection on the significance of futurity for the phenomenological method itself.

Exploring the first-person narratives of three figures from the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic mystical traditions—St. Teresa of Avila, Rabbi Dov Baer, and Rzbihn Baql—Anthony J. Steinbock provides a complete phenomenology of mysticism based in the Abrahamic religious traditions. He relates a broad range of religious experiences, or verticality, to philosophical problems of evidence, selfhood, and otherness. From this philosophical description of vertical experience, Steinbock develops a social and cultural critique in terms of idolatry—as pride, secularism, and fundamentalism—and suggests that contemporary (...) understandings of human experience must come from a fuller, more open view of religious experience. (shrink)