The Universal (In the realm of the sensible): Beyond Continental Philosophy proposes a radical, new philosophical system that moves from ontology to ethics. Dorothea Olkowski develops the concept of an ontological unconscious, a connection arising from our sensible relation to the world that conditions encounters with the environment and with others. This fundamental ontology rethinks the space-time relations opened by Irigaray's notion of the 'interval,' Bergson's 'recollection,' Merleau-Ponty's idea of the 'flesh' and Deleuze's 'plane of immanence'. Writing in an original style, inspired by literature and the arts, Olkowski locates a 'realm of the senses', a field of vulnerability, felt as pleasures and pains. This presents an aesthetic sense of something universal to all human kind, as well as to the organic and inorganic world. In addition to this proposal for a wider ontology, the relation between traditional ontologies and politics is examined as a means of opening politics beyond a no exit or limit cycle. Instead a multiplicity of self-organized, emergent perspectives emerges, eliminating the need for the connections, conjunctions, and disjunctions of the Kantian paradigm at work in contemporary continental philosophy.This is a timely, controversial and important book that will contribute enormously to the study of Deleuze and Continental Philosophy.

The Universal proposes a radically new philosophical system that moves from ontology to ethics. Drawing on the work of De Beauvoir, Sartre, and Le Doeuff, among others, and addressing a range of topics from the Asian sex trade to late capitalism, quantum gravity, and Merleau-Ponty's views on cinema, Dorothea Olkowski stretches the mathematical, political, epistemological, and aesthetic limits of continental philosophy and introduces a new perspective on political structures. Straddling a course between formalism and conventionalism, Olkowski develops the concept of an ontological unconscious that arises from our "sensible" relation to the world-the information we absorb and emit that affects our encounters with the environment and others. In this "realm of the senses," or the field of vulnerability defined by our experience with pleasure and pain, Olkowski is able to rethink the space-time relations put forth by Irigaray's notion of the "interval," Bergson's "recollection," Merleau-Ponty's idea of the "flesh," and Deleuze's "plane of immanence." This aesthetic sense is shared by all humankind and nonhuman entities in the organic and inorganic world. The sensible universal can be applied to categories of pure and practical reason; experiential binaries of male-female and subject-object; and issues of autonomy, moral laws, and the regulation of perception.

Item includes discussion of Mary Kelly's work.

The work reimagines emancipatory possibilities in the face of reified capitalist modernity. The enlightenment resulted in a ‘disenchanted’ world, stripped of ‘anthropomorphised’ meaning and purpose. This world, in its capitalistic figuration, alienates us from others, and from nature. To rearticulate emancipatory possibilities requires a non-alienated relation to society and nature. Yet, modernist disenchantment cannot be undone by returning to pre-modern ‘enchantment’. Rather, such rearticulation calls for the recovery of ‘unalienated life’ from within non-reified modernity, by renewing its universalist dimension.

Illustrates the history, civilization, and social conditions of the United States via artifacts, paintings, and other objects from the collections of cultural institutions in Philadelphia and environs.

This is a partial summary of the ongoing quest by mankind to understand who he is, where he came from, how he relates to what his senses tell him about his physical and social environment. Does the continuum of change he experiences have a purpose other than what he gives it? His methods of inquiry and observations using created instruments and experimentation have allowed him to discover some of the history of the universe since the beginning of space-time. Also, the interpretation of the earth's history recorded in the rocks and rock structures, the history of life recorded as fossils in time rock sequences, and their relation to present day living forms and associated environments has become more clear as to man's place in the history of space-time. All these studies have led to a better understanding of how energy drives the forces at work that produce the ever changing present. What are changes in the future, that are believed by some, to be even more remarkable than the amazing physical changes and processes that have been observed in the history of space-time

New translations of the central mediaeval texts on the problem of universals are presented here in an affordable edition suitable for use in courses in mediaeval philosophy, history of mediaeval philosophy, and universals. Includes a concise Introduction, glossary of important terms, notes, and bibliography.