This is a comparative essay on two types of love: the Christian or Romantic type of love that equates love and death; and classical or amicable love that equates love with rhythmical rituals and conjugations. The essay explores the role of instincts, desire, aggression, ecstasy, oblivion, pneumatics, meters and eternal recurrence in love. The question of the relation between love and marriage, love and adultery is posed. Historical forms of love are reviewed, from pederasty and renunciation to courtly and companionate (...) love. (shrink)

The Power of Shame Introduction The problem of shame, in marked contrast with the problem of conscience, has seldom been thematized in modern moral ...

This collection presents a broad and compelling overview of the most recent work by a world-renowned figure in contemporary thought. The book is in four parts: Koinonia, Polis, Psyche, Logos. The opening section begins with a general introduction to the author's views on being, time, creation, and the imaginary institution of society and continues with reflections on the role of the individual psyche in racist thinking and acting. The second part is a critique of those who now belittle and distort (...) the meaning of May 1968 and other movements of the sixties as well as the French Revolution. In part three, Castoriadis shows how psychoanalysis, like politics, can contribute to the project of individual and collective autonomy and challenges Lacan, Foucault, and Derrida, and others in his report on 'The State and Subject Today'. Finally he examines how Aristotle's original aporetic discovery and cover-up of the imagination were repeated by Kant, Freud, Heidegger, and even Merleau-Ponty. (shrink)

A study of the nature of philosophical reason, architecture, and politics as they are shaped by the influence of port cities and by the eternally returning movement of entry and exit through those cities. The examples of Piraeus, Venice, Rome, Marseilles, Königsberg and New York are considered.

Presenting a contemporary interpretation of stoicism, the essay draws on Agnes Heller's philosophy of existential choice in order to outline a reconstructed stoic theory of happiness and a pneumatic ethics addressing the context and dynamics of cybernetically structured societies in which vocational (professional) ethics play a declining role.

'Knowledge Capitalism' reveals how the emerging knowledge-based economy is redefining firms, empowering individuals and reshaping learning and work. It provides a practical tool-set for business managers to interpret and manage change.