State University of New York Press strana 2 z 4

Explores the connection between Jean-Luc Nancy's political works on community and his works on art and literature, thus providing not only a comprehensive introduction into Nancy’s work but also a broader examination of the social and political role of literature. What is the connection between the work of community and the work of literature? And in what way is literature implied in Jean-Luc Nancy's "inoperative" community? The Unraveled Plot investigates the relation between two domains that have only separately been addressed in the reception of Nancy's work: his political works on community on the one hand and his works on art and literature on the other. Lucidly traversing Nancy's entire oeuvre, Aukje van Rooden offers not only a comprehensive introduction into Nancy’s work but also a much broader reflection on the social and political role of literature. Situating Nancy's thought within a larger philosophical tradition leading from German Romanticism to contemporary social and political theory, she offers new insights, with and beyond Nancy, on the forming of communities and how literature can play a role.

Places comics studies in lively dialogue with landscape art and regional studies to shed new light on the Hudson River Valley as an artistic, social, cultural, and natural environment. Drawn by the River engages readers in a lively exploration of the interplay between comics and regional culture. Connecting comics, cartoons, and animated films to Hudson River School landscapes and to the valley’s industrial history, Drawn by the River demonstrates the varied and overlapping ecosystems that have generated creative work in the area. The book tells of the massive impact of the Western Printing facility, the stunning success of the valley-based creators of the fantasy series ElfQuest, the surprising connections between landscapes and comic art, and the experiences of comics writers, artists, and editors past and present who have called the Hudson River Valley home. Richly illustrated with over one hundred images, Drawn by the River provides new frameworks for understanding comics and the culture, history, and community of the Hudson River Valley.

An original reading of three Platonic dialogues concerned with the soul, tyranny, self-knowledge, and the beautiful. Guided by the question "What is Socratic self-knowledge," this study begins with Plato's Charmides because it is within this work, more than any other, that the utility of self-knowledge becomes the predominant theme. In this dialogue, Socrates explores the possibility of the very culmination of his philosophical investigations—knowledge of ignorance. This happens through an investigation of the perplexing concept, sôphrosune. Alan Pichanick's approach offers a new perspective upon the perplexing exploration of sôphrosune in the Charmides by placing much greater emphasis on the neglected "erotic setting" in the dramatic introduction and argues that our reading of the rest of the dialogue should be done in light of this dramatic setting. The erotic setting of the Charmides combined with the discussion of philosophical wonder in the Symposium and tyrannical erôs in the Republic gives guidance about how to think about the potential connection between Socratic self-knowledge and knowledge of the good and also shows why the characters of Charmides and Critias fail to come to such knowledge. Here we have the Platonic diagnosis of the tyrant, whose soul never wonders at anything beyond itself.

Comprehensive examination of the different senses in which Aristotle uses a group of the most important expressions in his political writings, with the aim of making possible a firmer understanding of his positions. Aristotle's Political Terminology offers a fresh approach to Aristotle's political thought by examining the language he uses in a more complete way than was possible before the appearance of the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae. It allows the reader to see clearly the difficulty scholars have had in commenting on and translating Aristotle's political works, which often ends in sharp differences among scholars who approach Aristotle with differing prior philosophical, political, historical, or ideological commitments. The book addresses eleven words and cognates or phrases that are fundamental to understanding Aristotle's text, many of them related to one another. They include the Greek expressions often translated, and sometimes mistranslated, by nature, property, constitution, and ideal. Helpful in teaching both undergraduate and graduate students, this work gives examples of Aristotle's uses of an expression in a defined universe, as in the case of the 522 occurrences in the Politics alone of the word often rendered by constitution, to give a flavor for how Aristotle might be read to avoid misimpressions. These examples sometimes are accompanied by tabular worksheets so that readers may check the author's work more easily. Further, the pages use transliteration in the main text, with a few mandatory exceptions, as in quoted titles of articles, so that readers whose Greek is not strong can follow the argument; the Greek text is provided in footnotes.

Brings together the most remarkable essays on classical and modern philosophy by noted political philosopher Christopher Bruell. Christopher Bruell (1942–2024) was one of the great modern interpreters of classical and modern political philosophy. This volume includes almost all the essays, lectures, and book chapters that he published during a remarkable scholarly career that spanned more than four decades. Five of these writings focus on Leo Strauss, with whom Bruell studied as a young man. But the scope of the collection extends beyond Bruell's work on Strauss. The essays take up a wide range of topics, including liberal education, the problem of relativism, the American Founding, the nature of citizenship, and the question of happiness. Above all, the collection focuses on the recovery of classical political philosophy and includes pathbreaking essays on Thucydides, Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle. Also included in this volume are three previously unpublished essays.

Argues that nature in all of its aspects is its own creative, sustaining, sacred, salvific ground—and is the most appropriate focus today of ardent religious faith. In Beyond Monotheism, Donald A. Crosby carefully and respectfully examines the experiential, rational, moral, religious, philosophical, and scientific reasons alleged by philosophers, theologians, scientists, and others for believing in the existence of a single personal God. He concludes that these reasons, while fascinating and historically important, are neither universally compelling nor, for him, personally convincing. Nor is monotheism an essential feature of all vital religious faith, as the fact of long-lasting, deeply nourishing forms of non-monotheistic faith such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Daoism convincingly show. Crosby contends, instead, that nature itself in all its grandeur, mystery, and profound workings is inherently sacred and richly deserving of the reverence, faith, and commitment formerly reserved for God—if we have the wit, determination, imagination, and receptivity of heart and mind to search for and find them there. Nature, Crosby argues, is its own basis or ground—and nature, properly understood and revered, is through and through sacred ground and, as such, an appropriate focus of profoundly evocative, hopeful, meaningful, and sustaining religious faith. In the midst of global climate change, widespread species extinctions and endangerments, and fast-approaching earth-wide ecological disaster, Beyond Monotheism calls attention to another religious way of life, one of singular relevance and importance for our time.

Chronicles the history of Zionism, Israel, and the United States. Fleeing from History offers an understanding of Zionism not as ideology or movement but rather as a multidimensional cosmopolitan arena for Jewish political debate and argument. Drawing on conversations in currently developing literature on colonialism and decolonization, exile and diaspora studies, as well as comparative history, Ylana N. Miller argues that Zionism must be seen through a multinational lens that illuminates the historical process by which it was reduced from a broad, diverse, generative arena of Jewish political creativity to an exclusionary nationalism. Central to the history of this process is the gradual transformation of the American political environment within which Zionism came to be identified with the state of Israel. A key and abiding insight that this history advances is that Jewish history cannot be told without recognition of parallel developments among other groups; for this study, Palestinian Arabs and Algerians. The shift in the diaspora/Zionist center of gravity from European dominance to that of the United States should be understood as representing a break and change rather than continuity. The US–Israel relationship that appears unquestionable today was not inevitable. It was the result of the gradual winnowing of dissenting voices and the embrace of a specific version of state identity.

Explores how African American literary representations of maroons in the decade leading up to the Civil War complicate conventional narratives and geographies of slavery and freedom in the United States. Beyond Emancipation revisits classic works of nineteenth-century American literature, especially by Black writers, to uncover a hidden history of maroons-enslaved people who ran away but remained hidden in the South. Sean Gerrity argues that literary depictions of "small acts" of marronage reveal an expanded sense of what freedom might look like and where and when it might occur. While taking care not to romanticize historical realities, Gerrity vividly shows how works by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and Martin Delany gesture toward possibilities for Black freedom-making beyond legal emancipation, liberalism, and the white abolitionist literary tradition passed down from Harriet Beecher Stowe. While Beyond Emancipation focuses on texts produced during the brief period between the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and the Civil War, the book's range of reference and implications are broad, unsettling still dominant ideas and engaging pressing questions in literary criticism, history, geography, and Black studies.

One of China's most prominent contemporary philosophers reads and comments on one of the central texts in the Chinese philosophical tradition. In this book, one of contemporary China's most prominent philosophers, Li Zehou, explores one of the central texts in the Chinese philosophical tradition, the Analects of Confucius. While the book provides an introduction to the Analects itself and to Confucianism in general, it also serves as an introduction to Li's own thought, particularly the ways in which he regarded the Confucian tradition as relevant to postrevolutionary contemporary China. Key topics include the role of Confucianism in the Chinese tradition and in contemporary China; Confucianism's quasi-religious, quasi-philosophical character; Li's views on emotion, morality, and fate in Confucianism; and his call for a separation of public social morality from private religious morality in modern China. Translated here by Maija Bell Samei, Reading the "Analects" Today is among the most accessible of Li Zehou's works and will be of interest not only to philosophers but to scholars and students of both modern and traditional Chinese intellectual, social, and religious history.

The most comprehensive collection of writing by award-winning US poet, renowned translator of Sappho, and trailblazing archivist Mary Barnard. Born in the Pacific Northwest, Mary Barnard (1909–2001) struck up correspondence with Ezra Pound in 1933, won Poetry magazine's prestigious Levinson Award in 1935, and moved to New York City the following year. There she met Marianne Moore and William Carlos Williams, who proclaimed her writing emblematic of "what we have been about all these years." This fully annotated volume makes available Barnard's complete poems for the first time, along with a robust selection of her translations and prose. Most well-known for her bestselling Sappho and her influential role as the inaugural poetry curator at the University at Buffalo, Barnard was a "second-wave" modernist and "late" Imagist whose regionally grounded writing also anticipated later eco-poetry. The volume's editor, Barnard scholar and biographer Sarah Barnsley, situates Barnard's work within these broader literary and cultural currents. Previously unpublished poems appear alongside Barnard's essays on her creative practice and friendships, illuminating the career, oeuvre, and ethos of this pivotal yet still underappreciated twentieth-century figure. With a foreword by Mary de Rachewiltz (author of Ezra Pound, Father and Teacher) and afterword by Barnard's literary executor Elizabeth J. Bell, Mary Barnard is essential reading for poets, scholars, and translators.

Compares Chinese and Western perspectives on the family. This book is a timely contribution to the growing field of the philosophy of the family. Drawing on a lifetime of research in Western and Chinese philosophy, Zhang Xianglong adopts a comparative perspective to navigate between Greek philosophy, phenomenology, and Confucianism to explore such topics as the nature of the family, filiality, human nature, temporality, memory, incest taboos, the future of Confucianism, and popular literature. He weaves his vast intercultural knowledge and understanding into penetrating philosophical, social, literary, and anthropological insights that reveal the strengths and weaknesses of Western and Chinese conceptions of the family. This book is a paradigm of comparative philosophy and demonstrates the value of the Chinese intellectual tradition for modern philosophy.

An in-depth and unique take on Martin Heidegger's understanding of animality, showing that the question of the animal was central to Heidegger's philosophical project from beginning to end. The Great Detour offers an in-depth and unique take on Martin Heidegger's understanding of animality, showing that the question the animal's nature in comparison to the human was central to Heidegger's philosophical project from beginning to end. More importantly, by engaging certain key texts from across his corpus, including some of the Black Notebooks, author S. Montgomery Ewegen shows that Heidegger's understanding of animality is much more nuanced than has typically been presented. Whereas most scholars have argued that Heidegger held a somewhat dismissive and ill-informed view of animals (as "world-poor," as lacking language, etc.), Ewegen argues that animals for Heidegger hold an inestimable value, serving as one of the primary ways through which the human is able to become aware of its own being and, indeed, Being itself. In short, the question of the animal was, for Heidegger, indissolubly connected with the question of the human being's relation to Being, the latter of which serves as the focal point of Heidegger's philosophy.

An intimate narrative of John Brown and his family in the Adirondack Mountains. With passion and sound scholarship, Sandra Weber introduces a fresh and intimate portrayal of John Brown in his time and favorite place, the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York. This intertwining story of sublime scenery and human rights concentrates on John's relationships with his family and black neighbors, which brings forth the essence of the man: his inner self, moral fiber, and principles. Weber reveals a vital piece of the John Brown story. It creates a conduit through which to reconcile the poor pioneer farmer, family patriarch, preacher, and devoted friend of blacks with John Brown's public persona.

Collects Walter Feinberg's classic writings on the meaning of democracy for public education. For over fifty years, Walter Feinberg has been a leader in interpreting democracy in and its meaning for public education. In this collection, Feinberg explores the question of how to study education, the necessary role of history and philosophy in this endeavor, and the need for educational theorists to engage with the lived realities of students, parents, and teachers through philosophical anthropology. He demonstrates a particular way of paying attention to public education that brings an interpretive sensitivity for others to the big philosophical questions of what public schooling should be in democratic societies. Feinberg explores many of the central questions that vex educational policy and practice: What should be the purpose of public schools? What should we think of school choice proposals? What are the relationships between religion and public schools? Should schools promote an American identity? How should we think about affirmative action? In this tour of educational ideas, democracy is the central concern, as it both presents questions that demand answers and becomes an approach to studying education with rigor and sensitivity.

A personal narrative that considers the ecological, social, and human interests around dams in New York's Hudson River Valley. Sixty-seven tributaries flow into the Hudson River watershed, and over half are impeded by some sixteen-hundred-plus dams. Vestiges of early American infrastructure, most have outlived their purposes. Today, they restrict biodiversity; obstruct fish migration; raise the temperature of impounded water; and trap sediment, creating artificial flow patterns. Focusing on four key sites in the watershed, From the Millpond to the Sea advocates for their removal and the reconnection of free-flowing waterways and in doing so considers three options: maintenance, neglect, and removal. Along with the ecology of dam removal, the book looks to the abiding associations we have with waterways, arteries we use in our own cognitive mapmaking. Free-flowing water and still water imprint themselves differently on the human psyche, whether drawing us to meditative thought or conveying ideas about continuity and momentum. A fast-moving stream and a reflective pond speak to contrasting health of facets of human experience: motion and stillness, force and passivity. In considering how reconnecting streams answers to urgent ecological concerns, the book also reflects on the abiding associations we have with the water and land around us.

An authoritative new edition and translation, with commentary, of one of the masterpieces of Persian Sufi poetry. The Gulshan-i Raz, by Mahmud Shabistari (1288–1340), is widely regarded as a masterpiece of Persian Sufi poetry and philosophy. This new edition, by the renowned scholar of Islam Seyyed Hossein Nasr, not only includes a translation of the poem, it also establishes a new, authoritative edition of the Persian text and provides extensive commentary on the poem and its place in the Islamic, Sufi, and philosophical traditions. The work also introduces readers to the world of Islamic esotericism and mysticism, and it includes extensive discussion of deep metaphysical, cosmological, and anthropological ideas of universal interest beyond the realm of Sufi and Islamic studies. Written in language that is accessible to both Muslim and non-Muslim readers, it provides a compelling introduction to Sufi thought through the lens of poetry.