1st Edition
Thought: A Philosophical History
Of all the topics in the history of philosophy, the history of different forms of thinking and contemplation is one of the most important, and yet is also relatively overlooked. What is it to think philosophically? How did different forms of thinking—reflection, contemplation, critique and analysis—emerge in different epochs?
This collection offers a rich and diverse philosophical exploration of the history of contemplation, from the classical period to the twenty-first century. It covers canonical figures including Plato, Aristotle, Descartes and Kant, as well as debates in less well-known areas such as classical Indian and Islamic thought and the role of speculation in twentieth-century Russian philosophy.
Comprising twenty-two chapters by an international team of contributors, the volume is divided into five parts:
• Flourishing and Thinking from Homer to Hume
• The Thinking of Thinking from Augustine to Gödel
• Images and Thinking from Plotinus to Unger
• Bodies of Thought and Habits of Thinking from Plato to Irigaray
• The Efficacy of Thinking from Sextus to Bataille
Thought: A Philosophical History is the first comprehensive investigation of the history of philosophical thought and contemplation. As such, it is a landmark publication for anyone researching and teaching the history of philosophy, and a valuable resource for those studying the subject in related fields such as literature, religion, sociology and the history of ideas.
Introduction: Patterns of Thinking Panayiota Vassilopoulou and Daniel Whistler
Part 1: Flourishing and Thinking from Homer to Hume
1. Thinking Like a Hero Casey Perin
2. The Primacy of Practice and the Centrality of Outlook: Reflections on Chinese Ethical Traditions Kwong-loi Shun
3. Thinking, Theorising and Theoria Stephen Clark
Part 2: The Thinking of Thinking from Augustine to Gödel
4. The Myth of the Mental: an Augustinian critique of Dreyfus and McDowell Catherine Pickstock
5. Romantic Thinking Nicholas Halmi
6. Pure and Impure Thinking in Hegel’s Encyclopedia Markus Gabriel
7. Denkicht—Thicket-Thinking with Walter Benjamin around 1917 Peter Fenves
8. Formal-Syntactical Thinking and the Structure of the World Paul M. Livingston
Part 3: Images and Thinking from Plotinus to Unger
9. Plotinus: Philosophical Thinking as Self-Creation Panayiota Vassilopoulou
10. Thinking’s History: Descartes and the Past Tense of Thought Andrea Gadberry
11. Polyp-Thinking in the Eighteenth Century Lydia Azadpour and Daniel Whistler
12. The Mythic Imagination as an ‘Experiment in Philosophy’: Erich Unger’s Contribution to the Phenomenology of Thinking Bruce Rosenstock
Part 4: Bodies of Thought and Habits of Thinking from Plato to Irigaray
13. Thinking about the Unthinkable: Hypothesizing the khôra in the Timaeus Luc Brisson
14. Thought in Motion: Lucretius’ Materialist Practice Thomas Nail
15. Thinking Philosophically in the Middle Ages: The Case of the Early Franciscans Lydia Schumacher
16. The ‘Thought-Work’; Or, The Exuberance of Thinking in Kant and Freud Stella Sandford
17. Thinking Otherwise with Irigaray and Maximin Rachel Jones
Part 5: The Efficacy of Thinking from Sextus to Bataille
18. Thinking without Commitment: Two Models Richard Bett
19. Thinking, Acting, and Acting by Thinking: Marx and Althusser Gregor Moder
20. ‘Thoughts and purposes have come to me in the shadow I should never have learned in the sunshine’: The Development of Philosophical Thinking in the Literature of Frances E.W. Harper Catherine Villanueva Gardner
21. The Void of Thought and the Ambivalence of History: Chaadaev, Bakunin, Fedorov Kirill Chepurin and Alex Dubilet
22. The Destruction of Thought Gil Anidjar.
Index
Biography
Panayiota Vassilopoulou is Reader in Philosophy at the University of Liverpool, UK. Her work connects history-of-philosophy research with contemporary philosophical practice, particularly social and reflective practices in the cultural industries and the health sector. With Stephen R. L. Clark she is editor of Late Antique Epistemology: Other Ways to Truth (2009).
Daniel Whistler is Reader in Modern European Philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. He is co-author of The Schelling-Eschenmayer Controversy, 1801: Nature and Identity, author of Schelling’s Theory of Symbolic Language: Forming the System of Identity and has edited numerous volumes including the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Modern French Philosophy.
