Edited by Richard McKeon, with an introduction by C.D.C. Reeve Preserved by Arabic mathematicians and canonized by Christian scholars, Aristotle’s works have shaped Western thought, science, and religion for nearly two thousand years. Richard McKeon’s The Basic Works of Aristotle—constituted out of the definitive Oxford translation and in print as a Random House hardcover for sixty years—has long been considered the best available one-volume Aristotle. Appearing in paperback at long last, this edition includes selections from the Organon, On the Heavens, (...) The Short Physical Treatises, Rhetoric, among others, and On the Soul, On Generation and Corruption, Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, and Poetics in their entirety. (shrink)

A cornerstone of Sartre’s philosophy, _The Imaginary_ was first published in 1940. Sartre had become acquainted with the philosophy of Edmund Husserl in Berlin and was fascinated by his idea of the 'intentionality of consciousness' as a key to the puzzle of existence. Against this background, _The Imaginary_ crystallized Sartre's worldview and artistic vision. The book is an extended examination of the concepts of nothingness and freedom, both of which are derived from the ability of consciousness to imagine objects both (...) as they are and as they are not – ideas that would drive Sartre's existentialism and entire theory of human freedom. (shrink)

But is not the word "metaphor" itself a metaphor, the metaphor of a displacement and therefore of a transfer in a kind of space? What is at stake is precisely the necessity of these spatial metaphors about metaphor included in our talk about "figures" of speech. . . . But in order to understand correctly the work of resemblance in metaphor and to introduce the pictorial or ironic moment at the right place, it is necessary briefly to recall the mutation (...) undergone by the theory of metaphor at the level of semantics by contrast with the tradition of classical rhetoric. In this tradition, metaphor was correctly described in terms of deviance, but this deviance was mistakenly ascribed to denomination only. Instead of giving a thing its usual common name, one designates it by means of a borrowed name, a "foreign" name in Aristotle's terminology. The rationale of this transfer of name was understood as the objective similarity between the things themselves or the subjective similarity between the attitudes linked to the grasping of these things. As concerns the goal of this transfer, it was supposed either to fill up a lexical lacuna, and therefore to serve the principle of economy which rules the endeavor of giving appropriate names to new things, new ideas, or new experiences, or to decorate discourse, and therefore to serve the main purpose of rhetorical discourse, which is to persuade and to please. Paul Ricoeur is professor of philosophy at the Université de Paris and John Nuveen Professor at the University of Chicago. He is editor of Revue de métaphysique et de morale and the author of many influential works on phenomenology, hermeneutics, and the philosophy of language. His most recent work to appear in English is The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language. He has also contributed "Narrative Time" to Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

This paper defends what the philosopher Merleau Ponty coins 'the imaginary texture of the real'. It is suggested that the imagination is at work in the everyday world which we perceive, the world as it is for us. In defending this view a concept of the imagination is invoked which has both similarities with and differences from, our everyday notion. The everyday notion contrasts the imaginary and the real. The imaginary is tied to the fictional or the illusory. Here it (...) will be suggested, following both Kant and Strawson, that there is a more fundamental working of the imagination, present in both perception and the constructions of fictions. What Kant and Strawson failed to make clear, however, was that the workings of the imagination within the perceived world, gives that world, an affective logic. The domain of affect is that of emotions, feelings and desire, and to claim such an affective logic in the world we experience, is to point out that it has salience and significance for us. Such salience suggests and demands the desiring and sometimes fearful responses we make to it; the shape of the perceived world echoed in the shapes our bodies take within it. (shrink)

In this book, which remained unfinished at his death, Husserl attempts to forge a union between phenomenology and existentialism.

House. From cellar to garret. Significance of the hut -- House and universe -- Drawers, chests and wardrobes -- Nests -- Shells -- Corners -- Miniature -- Intimate immensity -- Dialectics of outside and inside -- Phenomenology of roundness.

‘No matter how long I may look at an image, I shall never find anything in it but what I put there. It is in this fact that we find the distinction between an image and a perception.' - Jean-Paul Sartre L’Imagination was published in 1936 when Jean-Paul Sartre was thirty years old. Long out of print, this is the first English translation in many years. The Imagination is Sartre’s first full philosophical work, presenting some of the basic arguments concerning (...) phenomenology, consciousness and intentionality that were to later appear in his master works and be so influential in the course of twentieth-century philosophy. Sartre begins by criticising philosophical theories of the imagination, particularly those of Descartes, Leibniz and Hume, before establishing his central thesis. Imagination does not involve the perception of ‘mental images’ in any literal sense, Sartre argues, yet reveals some of the fundamental capacities of consciousness. He then reviews psychological theories of the imagination, including a fascinating discussion of the work of Henri Bergson. Sartre argues that the ‘classical conception’ is fundamentally flawed because it begins by conceiving of the imagination as being like perception and then seeks, in vain, to re-establish the difference between the two. Sartre concludes with an important chapter on Husserl’s theory of the imagination which, despite sharing the flaws of earlier approaches, signals a new phenomenological way forward in understanding the imagination. The Imagination is essential reading for anyone interested in the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, phenomenology, and the history of twentieth-century philosophy. This new translation includes a helpful historical and philosophical introduction by Kenneth Williford and David Rudrauf. Also included is Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s important review of L’Imagination upon its publication in French in 1936. Translated by Kenneth Williford and David Rudrauf. (shrink)

Introduction -- Euripides, philosopher of the stage -- The world of men and gods -- Agreeing with nature : fate and providence in stoic ethics -- Augustine : divine justice and the "ordering" of evil -- The philosopher and the princess : Descartes and the philosophical life -- Living with necessity : Spinoza and the philosophical life -- Designer worlds -- Providence as progress -- Providence lost.

The essay traces the double, phenomenological and psychological, background of Sartre’s theory of the imagination. Insofar as these two phenomenological and psychological currents are equally influential for Sartre’s theory of the imagination, his intellectual project is situated in an inter-disciplinary research area which combines the descriptive analyses of Edmund Husserl with the clinical reports and psychological theories of Pierre Janet. While Husserl provides the foundation for the prevailing theory of imagination as pictorial representation, Janet’s findings on obsessive behavior enrich an (...) alternative current in Sartre’s thinking about imagination as spontaneous and self-determined creativity. (shrink)

A complete translation of Aristotle's classic that is both faithful and readable, along with an introduction that provides the modern reader with a means of understanding this seminal work and its impact on our culture. In this volume, Joe Sachs (translator of Aristotle's _Physics, Metaphysics,_ and the _Nicomachean Ethics _)also supplements his excellent translation with well-chosen notes and glossary of important terms. Focus Philosophical Library translations are close to and are non-interpretative of the original text, with the notes and a (...) glossary intending to provide the reader with some sense of the terms and the concepts as they were understood by Aristotle’s immediate audience. (shrink)

Commenting on Jean-Paul Sartre's theory of imagination, Paul Ricoeur argues that Sartre fails to address the productive nature of imaginative acts. According to Ricoeur, Sartre's examples show that he thinks of imagination in mimetic terms, neglecting its innovative and creative dimensions. Imagination, Ricoeur continues, manifests itself most clearly in fiction, wherein new meaning is created. By using fiction as the paradigm of imaginative activity, Ricoeur is able to argue against Sartre that the essence of imagination lies not in its ability (...) to reproduce absent objects, but rather in the ability to transform reality through creative acts. Motivated by the intuition that Sartre the writer could not have forgotten to address such crucial dimensions of imagination, I examine Sartre's philosophical and literary work, showing that not only does he develop a notion of productive imagination, he also puts this notion to work by articulating the relationship between imagination, narrative, and identity formation, well before Ricoeur advanced his narrative-identity theory. I argue that Sartre, like Ricoeur and MacIntyre, another representative of narrative-theory whose criticism of Sartre I address in this essay, views imagination and narrativity as necessary conditions for the formation of a coherent and meaningful sense of self. (shrink)