An individual desires an object, not for itself, but because another individual also desires it. This mimetic desire, Rene Girard contends, lies at the source of all human disorder and order. In brilliant readings of Dante, Camus, Nietzsche, Dostoevski, Levi-Strauss, Freud, and others, Girard draws out the thesis of mimetic desire -- and ponders its suppression in the West since Plato: "The historical mutilation of mimesis ... was no mere oversight, no fortuitous 'error.' Real awareness of mimetic desire threatens the flattering delusion we entertain not only about ourselves as individuals but also about the nature and origin of that collective self we call our society."

To Double Business Bound: Essays on Literature, Mimesis and Anthropology

GIRARD, René

Literature & Fiction

Athlone

Written in 1939, while Lowith was in exile in Japan and first published in Germany in 1986, this book is a philosopher's autobiography. It focuses on the years 1914-1939 - a crucial period in the growth of Hitler's Germany. It covers Lowith's youth in Germany, his emigration to Italy and from there to Japan, and his meeting with Martin Heidegger in Rome in 1936 - and includes philosophical-biographical vignettes of leading German intellectual figures of the day: the George circle, Oswald Spengler, Karl Barth and Carl Schmitt. At a personal level, the work represents the search by a German-Jewish intellectual for political and cultural identity in the Germany of Weimar and the Third Reich. As an historical document, it provides a valuable account of the whole intellectual and social ambience before and after 1933, and should be of interest to philosophers, intellectual historians, Germanists and all those interested in the problematic history of 20th-century German philosophy. Karl Lowith's other titles include "Meaning and History" (1949), "From Hegel to Nietzsche" (1964), and "Weber and Marx" (1982).

My life in Germany before and after 1933: A report

Löwith, Karl

Socrate(s)

Sarah Kofman

Since its publication in 1968, "Difference and Repetition", an exposition of the critique of identity, has come to be considered a contemporary classic in philosophy and one of Deleuze's most important works. The text follows the development of two central concepts, those of pure difference and complex repetition. It shows how the two concepts are related, difference implying divergence and decentring, repetition being associated with displacement and disguising. The work moves deftly between Hegel, Kierkegaard, Freud, Althusser and Nietzsche to establish a fundamental critique of Western metaphysics, and has been a central text in initiating the shift in French thought - away from Hegel and Marx, towards Nietzsche and Freud. The author's other works include "Nietzsche and Philosophy" (1983), "Kant's Critical Philosophy" (1984), "Cinema I" (1986), "Cinema II" (1989) and "Logic of Sense" (1990).

Difference and repetition

Politics & Social Sciences

DELEUZE, GILLES

Philosophy

From Locke to Saussure: Essays on the Study of Language and Intellectual History

Presents theses about the history of linguistics, from John Locke to Ferdinand de Saussure, and reflects on language generally in the period from the 17th to the 19th century.

From Locke to Saussure: Essays on the study of language and intellectual history

Reference

Aarsleff, Hans

Foreign Language Study & Reference

This text provides a discussion of the philosophical origins of the notions of freedom in both a Western and Islamic context. Khuri maintains that standard theories of modernization do not fully explain the global resurgence of fundamental religion. Only with a new analysis of freedom, using Western and non-Western sources, can we have a spontaneous synthesis that will inspire genuine freedom for all individuals and societies in the Arab-Muslim world.

Freedom, Modernity and Islam: Towards a Creative Synthesis

Khuri. Richard K

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