"One of the major works in the development of contemporary criticism and philosophy." -- J. Hillis Miller, Yale University Jacques Derrida's revolutionary theories about deconstruction, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and structuralism, first voiced in the 1960s, forever changed the face of European and American criticism. The ideas in De la grammatologie sparked lively debates in intellectual circles that included students of literature, philosophy, and the humanities, inspiring these students to ask questions of their disciplines that had previously been considered improper. Thirty years (...) later, the immense influence of Derrida's work is still igniting controversy, thanks in part to Gayatri Spivak's translation, which captures the richness and complexity of the original. This corrected edition adds a new index of the critics and philosophers cited in the text and makes one of contemporary criticism's most indispensable works even more accessible and usable. (shrink)

In The Differend, Lyotard subjects to scrutiny- from the particular perspective of his notion of 'differend' - the turn of all Western philosophies toward language; the decline of metaphysics; the present intellectual retreat of Marxism; the hopes raised and mostly dashed, by theory; and the growing political despair. Taking his point of departure in an analysis of what Auschwitz meant philosophically, Lyotard attempts to sketch out modes of thought for our present.

In PHILOSOPHICAL FRAGMENTS, Søren Kierkegaard (writing under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus), seeks to explain the nature of Christianity in such as way as to bring out its demands on the individual, and to emphasize its incompatibility with the theology based on the work of Hegel that was becoming progressively more influential in Denmark. If one were to read only two or three of Kierkegaard's works, this is unquestionably one of the ones to read. One cannot understand Kierkegaard's thought without reading (...) this book, and along with its sequel represents the heart of what he was trying to achieve in what he called his "Authorship." Through PHILOSOPHICAL FRAGMENTS, Kierkegaard purports to present the logic of Christianity. (shrink)