For Aristotle, excellence is not an act but a habit, and Hume regards habit as ‘the great guide of life’. However, for Proust habit is problematic: ‘if habit is a second nature, it prevents us from knowing our first.’ What is habit? Do habits turn us into machines or free us to do more creative things? Should religious faith be habitual? Does habit help or hinder the practice of philosophy? Why do Luther, Spinoza, Kant, Kierkegaard and Bergson all criticise habit? (...) If habit is both a blessing and a curse, how can we live well in our habits? In this thought-provoking book Clare Carlisle examines habit from a philosophical standpoint. Beginning with a lucid appraisal of habit’s philosophical history she suggests that both receptivity and resistance to change are basic principles of habit-formation. Carlisle shows how the philosophy of habit not only anticipates the discoveries of recent neuroscience but illuminates their ethical significance. She asks whether habit is a reliable form of knowledge by examining the contrasting interpretations of habitual thinking offered by Spinoza and Hume. She then turns to the role of habit in the good life, tracing Aristotle’s legacy through the ideas of Joseph Butler, Hegel, and Félix Ravaisson, and assessing the ambivalent attitudes to habit expressed by Nietzsche and Proust. She argues that a distinction between habit and practice helps to clarify this ambivalence, particularly in the context of habit and religion, where she examines both the theology of habit and the repetitions of religious life. She concludes by considering how philosophy itself is a practice of learning to live well with habit. (shrink)

This book is a lively and provoking introduction to film theory.

Although Judith Butler’s theory of the performativity of gender has been highly influential in feminist theory, queer theory, cultural studies, and some areas of philosophy, it has yet to receive its due from critical social theorists. This oversight is especially problematic given the crucial insights into the study of power – a central concept for critical social theory – that can be gleaned from Butler’s work. Her analysis is somewhat unique among discussions of power in its attempt to theorize simultaneously (...) both the features of cultural domination in contemporary societies and the possibilities of resistance to and subversion of such domination. Although I will maintain here that this attempt is not entirely successful, I nevertheless argue that Butler’s account makes crucial contributions to a feminist critical theory of power; as a result, it merits much more serious attention from critical theorists. (shrink)

Surveys the elements and evolution of design in cities from Athens to Brasilia, emphasizing the relationship between man and his environment.

This is the first comprehensive introduction to Deleuze's work on literature. It provides thorough treatments of Deleuze's early book on Proust and his seminal volume on Kafka and minor literature. Deleuze on Literature situates those studies and many other scattered writings within a general project that extends throughout Deleuze's career-that of conceiving of literature as a form of health and the writer as a cultural physician.

The city's reign over our senses, our moods, our very ways of being is outmoded. The suburban metropolis has superseded the city. The new building materials are non-material: electricity, telephony, weather, time, and so forth. Consequently, according to Lars Lerup, architecture and architects must be rethought. Until now, architects have been trained to serve the elite few, as reflected in a belief in customization and the uniqueness of each project. Instead, Lerup holds, architectural educators should promote teamwork and the design (...) of authorless objects, combined with an integration of design and practice. Before we can rethink the architectural curriculum, however, we must rethink the metropolis. And rethink the metropolis is just what Lerup does. In an intellectually far-ranging yet intensely personal manner, he moves from contemplation of the form and philosophical implications of the Pantheon to a discussion of how Levittown residents seek and create community. The result is an exhilarating work with profound practical implications. Unlike the many who view suburbia with paranoid dismay, Lerup takes an optimistic view of the new, open metropolis—for him not the site of unavoidable uniformity and mediocrity, but an exciting new frontier. (shrink)

Le livre d'Alain Roger essaie de combler un vide. En dépit de la prolifération des publications dont le paysage fait l'objet depuis une vingtaine d'années, nous manquons d'un véritable traité théorique et systématique. Aussi l'auteur s'attache-t-il à exposer, dans une langue accessible au plus large public, les principales questions que soulève, aujourd'hui, la notion, si maltraitée, de " paysage ". On trouvera donc ici une histoire du paysage occidental - Campagne, Montagne, Mer -, ainsi qu'une réflexion sur les débats qui (...) divisent actuellement les spécialistes : quels sont les rapports du paysage et de l'environnement? Qu'en est-il de cette mort annoncée du paysage? Quelle politique convient-il de mener en ce domaine? Ce court traité n'est pas un manuel de vulgarisation, bien au contraire. Il ne dissimule pas ses convictions culturalistes. Le paysage, nos paysages sont des inventions historiques, dues, pour l'essentiel, aux artistes. Un " pays " devient un " paysage " par une opération qu'Alain Roger, reprenant un mot de Montaigne, nomme artialisation, que celle-ci intervienne directement sur le socle naturel, in situ - c'est l'œuvre des jardiniers, des paysagistes, du Land Art -, ou qu'elle opère indirectement, in visu, par l'intermédiaire de modèles, qui modèlent le regard collectif - c'est l'œuvre des peintres, des écrivains, des photographes. L'ouvrage est engagé. Il dit son refus de tous les conservatismes. (shrink)