The Bloomsbury Anthology of Transcendental Thought

Informationen zum Autor David LaRocca is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the State University of New York College at Cortland, USA; Visiting Scholar in the Department of English at Cornell University, USA; and Lecturer in Screen Studies in the Department of Cinema, Photography, and Media Arts at the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College, USA. He is the author of On Emerson (2003) and Emersonâ™s English Traits and the Natural History of Metaphor (2013) and Estimating Emerson: An Anthology of Criticism from Carlyle to Cavell (2013). Vorwort The definitive single-volume anthology of transcendental thought from Plato through Kant and the American transcendentalists to the present day. Zusammenfassung What is real? What is the relationship between ideas and objects in the world? Is God a concept or a being? Is reality a creation of the mind or a power beyond it? How does mental experience coordinate with natural laws and material phenomena? The Bloomsbury Anthology of Transcendental Thought is the definitive anthology of responses to these and other questions on the nature and limits of human knowledge by philosophers, theologians, and writers from Plato to Zizek. The word âtranscendental❠is as prevalent and also as ambiguously defined as the name âphilosophy❠itself. There are as many uses, invocations, and allusions to the term as there are definitions on offer. Every generation of writers, beginning in earnest in ancient Greece and continuing through to our own time, has attempted to clarify, apply, and lay claim to the meaning of transcendental thought. Arranged chronologically, this anthology reflects the diverse uses the term has been put to over the course of two and a half millennia. It lends historical perspective to the abiding importance of the transcendental for philosophical thinking and also some sense of the complexity, richness, and continued relevance of the contested term. The Bloomsbury Anthology of Transcendental Thought , the first anthology of its kind, offers teachers and students a new viewpoint on the history and present of transcendental thought. Its selection of essential, engaging excerpts, carefully selected, edited, and introduced, brings course materials up-to-date with the state of the discipline. Inhaltsverzeichnis Editorâ™s Introduction Plato (c. 428-348 BC) selections from Phaedrus, Phaedo , and Parmenides Aristotle (c. 384-322 BC) Metaphysics , Book II, c. 1, 9993 b 30; Book IV c. 2, 1003 b 23-4; Book X.1-2;Book VI, c. 4, 1027 b 17; 1005b35-1006a28 Topics , 144b, 145a Vimalakirti (c. 100-300 AD) from The Holy Teachings of Vimalakirti: A Mahayana Scripture Longinus (c. 210-273) from On the Sublime Plotinus (c. 204-270) from the Enneads , VI.2.17; VI.1.4 Augustine of Hippo (354-430) from the Confessions , Book VII Benedict of Norcia (c. 480-547) from The Rule , Chs. 7, 19 Ibn Sina (Avicenna) (980-1037) Metaphysics , selections from The Salvation, Books I and II Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) selections from the âTreatise on Manâfrom the Summa Theologica , Vol. 1, Part I, Sections 75-88 Duns Scotus (c. 1265-1308) âConcerning Metaphysics, The Science of the Transcendentals❠Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) Fourth Sphere (The Sun: The Wise) from the Divine Comedy: Paradiso William Shakespeare (1564-1616) [Seven Soliloquies] from Hamlet George Herbert (1593-1633) from The Temple, Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations René Descartes (1596-1650) Sixth Meditationfrom Meditations on First Philosophy Blaise Pascal (1629-1662) Pensées , §§...

In this unique and timely collection, David LaRocca offers us a thoughtful reminder that the very possibility and urgent task of thinking, of our acting and judging, ethics and politics, rests upon a willing exposure to an aspect of our everyday and ordinary experience that is hard to grasp and eludes most, perhaps all, epistemic criteria. Metaphysicians, mystics, and moral perfectionists of all stripes have called this 'the transcendental,' thus risking the fatal misunderstanding that this means only 'the transcendent,' leading to the dualist assumption that we are citizens of two separate (earthly and heavenly) cities or (phenomenal and noumenal) worlds. Yet the truth is far more simple, if much harder to accept and then also live by. We are what we are, here and now. Yet we're not, therefore, irrevocably bound by what thus is said 'to be'much less by the proverbial powers that will always bein what we can still further imagine and aim or hope for, against the odds, as it were. In this brilliantly edited and introduced anthology, LaRocca presents us with the broadest selection of authors, philosophers, visionaries, and artists, who have expressed this simple, difficult truth and freedom in the most profound and varied of ways.

Vorwort
The definitive single-volume anthology of transcendental thought from Plato through Kant and the American transcendentalists to the present day.

Autorentext
David LaRocca is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Cinema Department at Binghamton University, USA. Recently, he was Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the State University of New York College at Cortland, USA; Visiting Scholar in the Department of English at Cornell University, USA; and Lecturer in Screen Studies in the Department of Cinema, Photography, and Media Arts at the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College, USA. He is the author of On Emerson (2003), Emerson's English Traits and the Natural History of Metaphor (2013), and Estimating Emerson: An Anthology of Criticism from Carlyle to Cavell (2013).

Zusammenfassung
What is real? What is the relationship between ideas and objects in the world? Is God a concept or a being? Is reality a creation of the mind or a power beyond it? How does mental experience coordinate with natural laws and material phenomena? The Bloomsbury Anthology of Transcendental Thought is the definitive anthology of responses to these and other questions on the nature and limits of human knowledge by philosophers, theologians, and writers from Plato to Zizek. The word transcendental is as prevalent and also as ambiguously defined as the name philosophy itself. There are as many uses, invocations, and allusions to the term as there are definitions on offer. Every generation of writers, beginning in earnest in ancient Greece and continuing through to our own time, has attempted to clarify, apply, and lay claim to the meaning of transcendental thought. Arranged chronologically, this anthology reflects the diverse uses the term has been put to over the course of two and a half millennia. It lends historical perspective to the abiding importance of the transcendental for philosophical thinking and also some sense of the complexity, richness, and continued relevance of the contested term. The Bloomsbury Anthology of Transcendental Thought, the first anthology of its kind, offers teachers and students a new viewpoint on the history and present of transcendental thought. Its selection of essential, engaging excerpts, carefully selected, edited, and introduced, brings course materials up-to-date with the state of the discipline.

Inhalt
Introduction by David LaRocca Defying Definition: Opening Remarks on the Transcendental PLATO Phaedrus Phaedo Parmenides ARISTOTLE Metaphysics Posterior Analytics Svetasvatara Upanishad First, Second, and Third Adhyâya Vimalakirti from The Vimalakirti Sutra Beyond Comprehension Lucretius from On the Nature of Things Longinus from On the Sublime Plotinus from the Enneads Third Tractate: The Knowing Hypostases and the Transcendent Augustine of Hippo from the Confessions Benedict of Norcia from The Rule Ibn Sina (Avicenna) On the Rational Soul Ibn Rushd (Averroës) from On the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy…