Philosophy and Kafka (eBook)

Brendan Moran, Carlo Salzani (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: EPUB

2013
302 Seiten
Lexington Books (Verlag)
978-0-7391-8090-7 (ISBN)

Infos

Philosophy and Kafka is a collection of original essays interrogating the relationship of literature and philosophy. The essays either discuss specific philosophical commentaries on Kafka’s work, consider the possible relevance of certain philosophical outlooks for examining Kafka’s writings, or examine Kafka’s writings in terms of a specific philosophical theme, such as communication and subjectivity, language and meaning, knowledge and truth, the human/animal divide, justice, and freedom.

---

The relationship of philosophy with Kafka's oeuvre is complex. It has been argued that Kafka's novels and stories defy philosophic extrapolation; conversely, it has also been suggested that precisely the tendency of Kafka's writings to elude discursive solution is itself a philosophical tendency, one that is somehow contributing to a wiser relationship of human beings with language. These matters are the focus of the proposed volume on Philosophy and Kafka.The proposed collection brings together essays that interrogate the relationship of philosophy and Kafka, and offer new and original interpretations. The volume obviously cannot claim completeness, but it partially does justice to the multiplicity of philosophical issues and philosophical interpretations at stake.This variety informs the composition of the volume itself. A number of essays focus on specific philosophical commentaries on Kafka's work, from Adorno's to Agamben's, from Arendt's to Benjamin's, from Deleuze and Guattari's to Derrida's. A number of essays consider the possible relevance of certain philosophical outlooks for examining Kafka's writings: here Kafka's name goes alongside those of Socrates, Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Buber, Heidegger, Blanchot, and Levinas. Finally, a number of essays consider Kafka's writings in terms of a specific philosophical theme, such as communication and subjectivity, language and meaning, knowledge and truth, the human/animal divide, justice, and freedom. In all contributions to the volume, such themes, motifs, and interpretations arise. To varying degrees, all essays are concerned with the relationship of literature and philosophy, and thus with the philosophical significance of Kafka's writings.

Autor

Brendan Moran is currently research scholar at the Calgary Institute for the Humanities, and Adjunct associate professor at the University of Calgary, Canada, where he has taught in the Department of Philosophy, the Faculty of Humanities, and the Faculty of Arts. Under the anagrammatic “pseudonym,” Monad Rrenban, he has published Wild, Unforgettable Philosophy, a book on Walter Benjamin’s early writings. He has also published essays on Benjamin, Agamben, and Salomo Friedlaender, and is completing a book on Benjamin’s Kafkan politics.Carlo Salzani holds a degree in Philosophy from the University of Verona (Italy) and a PhD in Comparative Literature from Monash University (Australia). He has published Crisi e possibilità: Robert Musil e il tramonto dell’Occidente (Bern: Peter Lang, 2010), Constellations of Readings: Walter Benjamin in Figures of Actuality (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009) and co-edited Essays on Boredom and Modernity (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009). He has translated into Italian some of Slavoj Žižek’s books.

Inhalt

IntroductionPart 1: Philosophical InvestigationsChapter 1: I Don’t Want to Know that I Know: The Inversion of Socratic Ignorance in the Knowledge of the DogsChapter 2: Kafka’s Empty Law: Laughter and Freedom in The TrialChapter 3: A Kafkan Sublime: Dark Poetics on the Kantian PhilosophyChapter 4: The Everyday’s Fabulous Beyond: Nonsense, Parable, and the Ethics of the Literary in Kafka and WittgensteinChapter 5: You’re nobody ‘til somebody loves you: Communication and the Social Destruction of Subjectivity in Kafka’s MetamorphosisChapter 6: Kafka’s InsomniaPart 2: Philosophical TopicsChapter 7: Animal Bachelors and Animal Brides: Fabulous Metamorphosis in Kafka and GarnettChapter 8: Kafka’s Political AnimalsChapter 9: The Calamity of the Rightless: Hannah Arendt and Franz Kafka on Monsters and MembersChapter 10: Knowing Life Before the Law: Kafka, Kelsen, DerridaPart 3: Philosophical ReadingsChapter 11: Anxiety and Attention: Benjamin and OthersChapter 12: On the Mimesis of Reification: Adorno’s Critical Theoretical Interpretation of KafkaChapter 13: “In the Penal Colony” in the Philosophy of Gilles DeleuzeChapter 14: In a Messianic Gesture: Agamben’s Kafka IndexAbout the Contributors

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 19.4.2013
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Philosophie des Mittelalters
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Philosophie der Neuzeit
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
• Schlagworte: 20th Century Philosophy • Aesthetics, Literature, and the Arts • Continental Philosophy • European Literature • Existential Philosophy • German Literature • Literary Studies • Literary Theory • philosophy and literature • Political Philosophy
• ISBN-10: 0-7391-8090-8 / 0739180908
• ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-8090-7 / 9780739180907