The Budapest School: Beyond Marxism represents the first systematic and comprehensive study of the post-Marxist writings of the Budapest School to be published in English. The School itself has long been known in English-speaking circles for its neo-Marxist critique of the now-defunct Soviet system. The Budapest School: Beyond Marxism enriches this understanding by situating the confrontation with ‘actually existing socialism’ as but one moment, however formative, within a much richer and much more theoretically relevant philosophical itinerary. From the early critique of alienation through to the contemporary critical theories of modernity, The Budapest School: Beyond Marxism charts the evolution of the School’s thinking with a specific emphasis on the themes of culture, critique, history and the contingency of modern subjectivity.

In Fichte’s late philosophy, the concept of image becomes the central notion of the Science of Knowledge. Both the representational reference of consciousness to the objects of its experience and its relation to an absolute being which transcends all appearances are explained from the image-like character which consciousness acquires through its own activity. The present volume collects contributions which contextualize Fichte’s theory of image in various respects, focusing on its relation to pre-modern theories of image, its changing role in the development of Fichte’s thinking and its place within Fichte’s foundation of philosophy in the area between theory of truth or validity and ontology. Der Bildbegriff wird in Fichtes Spätphilosophie zum zentralen Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre. Sowohl der repräsentationale Bezug des Bewusstseins zu den Gegenständen seiner Erfahrung, als auch sein Verhältnis zu einem alle Erscheinungen übersteigenden absoluten Sein wird hierbei aus der von ihm selbst aktiv ausgebildeten Bildeigenschaft des Bewusstseins verstanden. Der vorliegende Band versammelt Beiträge, die Fichtes Bildtheorie in verschiedenen Hinsichten kontextualisieren, wobei ihr Verhältnis zu prä-modernen Bildtheorien, ihre wechselnde Rolle in der Entwicklung von Fichtes Denken und ihre im Spannungsfeld von Wahrheits- bzw. Geltungstheorie und Ontologie angesiedelte Stellung in Fichtes Grundlegung der Philosophie im Mittelpunkt stehen.

With Fred D'Aguiar and Caribbean Literature: Metaphor, Myth, Memory, Leo Courbot offers the first research monograph entirely dedicated to a comprehensive reading of the verse and prose works of Fred D'Aguiar, prized American author of Anglo-Guyanese origin. “Postcolonial” criticism, when related to the history of the African diaspora, regularly inscribes itself in the wake of Sartrean philosophy. However, Fred D'Aguiar's both typical and untypical Caribbean background, in addition to the singularity of his diction, call for a different approach, which Leo Courbot convincingly carries out by reading literature in the light of Jacques Derrida and Édouard Glissant's less conventional sense of the intrinsically metaphorical and cross-cultural nature of language.

This book offers a synoptic introduction to an important chapter of Polish 20th century philosophy, by introducing the studies of Kazimierz Twardowski, Tadeusz Czeżowski, Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Władysław Tatarkiewicz, Roman Ingarden, Henryk Elzenberg, Maria Ossowska, and Józef Maria Bocheński and how they contributed to value theory, ethics and aesthetics. These philosophers differed in their more definite interests, methodological approaches, and main results and yet their investigations share a number of characteristic features. Questions of value, considered as extremely vital, are treated with care and precision. In spite of the richness of their insights and an impressive number of detailed results these philosophers refrain from hasty conclusions, trying here, as elsewhere, to conduct their studies in an intellectually and morally responsible way.

Wittgensteins Bilddenken schließt an die gegenwärtigen Bemühungen sowohl um eine allgemeine Bildtheorie als auch eine Theorie des Wissenschaftsbildes an. Der hier gehobene Schatz bildtheoretischer Einsichten Wittgensteins sowie die Besonderheit seines Bilddenkens bringen neue Impulse in die Diskussion.
Ulrich Richtmeyer zeigt, dass der allgemein als ein Sprachphilosoph anerkannte und dabei im Laufe vieler Jahre der Rezeption entsprechend kanonisierte Philosoph Ludwig Wittgenstein auch ein sehr produktiver und eigenständiger Bildphilosoph gewesen ist. Es soll dabei keineswegs um die provozierende These einer Verschiebung der Medienpräferenz in der Auslegeordnung des Philosophen gehen, sondern vielmehr um zwei andere, ganz bodenständige Ziele, die sich glücklicherweise miteinander verbinden lassen: erstens um eine Erweiterung unseres Verständnisses seines philosophischen Gesamtwerkes und zweitens um eine Bereicherung unseres Verständnisses der genuinen Medialität des Bildes.

In Fantasies of Self-Mourning Ruben Borg describes the formal features of a posthuman, cyborgian imaginary at work in modernism. The book’s central claim is that modernism invents the posthuman as a way to think through the contradictions of its historical moment. Borg develops a posthumanist critique of the concept of organic life based on comparative readings of Pirandello, Woolf, Beckett, and Flann O’Brien, alongside discussions of Alfred Hitchcock, Chris Marker, Béla Tarr, Ridley Scott and Mamoru Oshii. The argument draws together a cluster of modernist narratives that contemplate the separation of a cybernetic eye from a human body—or call for a tearing up of the body understood as a discrete organic unit capable of synthesizing desire and sense perception.

Evald Ilyenkov is a unique figure among the many interesting (and many dull) Soviet thinkers that have recently been introduced to English-speaking readers. Although a thoroughly academic philosopher (both in the choice of his subject matter and in his institutional locations), Ilyenkov’s ideas are presented in a manner that one does not often find among academics. Texts selected for this collection are not the only texts dedicated to Hegel and dialectics but they are representative of Ilyenkov’s main themes and interests. It is hoped that this collection will continue to draw interest to the Soviet engagement with Hegel and dialectics.

Biological Time, Historical Time presents a new approach to 19th century thought and literature: by focussing on the subject of time, it offers a new perspective on the exchanges between French and German literary texts on the one hand and scientific disciplines on the other. Hence, the rivalling influences of the historical sciences and of the life sciences on literary texts are explored, texts from various scientific domains – medicine, natural history, biology, history, and multiple forms of vulgarisation – are investigated. Literary texts are analysed in their participation in and transformation of the scientific imagination. Special attention is accorded to the temporal dimension: this allows for an innovative account of key concepts of 19th century culture.

Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution in Permanence for Our Day, a selection of writings by the Marxist-Humanist philosopher and revolutionary Raya Dunayevskaya, brings out the contemporary urgency of Marx’s work as a philosophy of revolution in permanence. That dialectic permeates the totality of Marx’s body of ideas and activities. Major themes include Marx’s transformation of the Hegelian dialectic; the inseparability of Marx’s economics, humanism, and dialectic; the battle of ideas with post-Marx Marxism, beginning with Engels; Black liberation, internationalism, and women’s liberation; today’s burning question of the relationship between spontaneity, organization, and philosophy; the emergence of counter-revolution from within the revolution; and the problem of what happens after the revolution.

Perspektiven der Philosophie. Neues Jahrbuch eröffnet Forschern, denen die philosophische Begründung des Denkens wichtig ist, eine Publikationsmöglichkeit. Wir verstehen uns nicht als Schulorgan einer philosophischen Lehrmeinung, sondern sehen unsere Aufgabe darin, an der Intensivierung des wissenschaftlichen Philosophierens mitzuwirken. Besonders fördern wir den wissenschaftlichen Nachwuchs und laden ihn zur Mitarbeit ein. Beitragende sind Jutta Georg, Georges Goedert, Christina Kast, Salvatore Lavecchia, Cordelia Mühlenbeck, Peter Nickl, Rebecca Paimann, Leonhard G. Richter, Tina Röck, Alfred Rohloff, Werner Schmitt, Harald Seubert, Thorsten Streubel und Andreas Woyke.