Readers familiar with Mark C. Taylor's previous writing will immediately recognize Altarity as a remarkable synthetic project. This work combines the analytic depth and detail of Taylor's earlier studies of Kierkegaard and Hegel with the philosophical and theological scope of his highly acclaimed Erring. In Altarity, Taylor develops a genealogy of otherness and difference that is based on the principle of creative juxtaposition. Rather than relying on a historical or chronological survey of crucial moments in modern philosophical thinking, he explores the complex question of difference through the strategies of contrast, resonance, and design. Taylor brings together the work of thinkers as diverse as Hegel, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Lacan, Bataille, Kristeva, Levinas, Blanchot, Derrida, and Kierkegaard to fashion a broad intellectual scheme. Situated in an interdisciplinary discourse, Altarity signifies a harnessing of continental and American habits of intellectual thought and illustrates the singularity that emerges from such a configuration. As such, the book functions as a mirror of our intellectual moment and offers the academy a rigorous way of acknowledging the limitations of its own interpretive practices.

This volume is a collection of phenomenological investigations of the political domain. Its aim is to present recent examinations of political matters and to foster a renewal of this sort of inquiry in phenomenology generally. Although it has often gone unrecognized, investigations of this sort have been a part of the phenomenological project since its inception. Two phases can be identified: the first governed primarily by the methods of realistic and constitutive phenomenology, and the second under the guidance of existential and hermeneutical approaches. Standard accounts of the history of phenomenology begin, of course, with the publication of Husserl's Logische Untersuchungen (1900-1901) in which for the first time he publicly developed and applied his distinctively descriptive approach-the so-called method of eidetic analysis with its unique emphasis on the concept of evidence understood as intention fulfillment-to the fields of logical and mathematical systems. But those around him in Gottingen quickly saw the innovative character of this method and began employing it in a wide variety of other areas of research: literature, sociology, ethics, action theory, and even theology, for example.

DIVThe first full-length survey of contemporary Chicana artists/div

The Encyclopedia of Postmodernism provides comprehensive and authoritative coverage of academic disciplines, critical terms and central figures relating to the vast field of postmodern studies. With three cross-referenced sections, the volume is easily accessible to readers with specialized research agendas and general interests in contemporary cultural, historical, literary and philosophical issues. Since its inception in the 1960s, postmodernism has emerged as a significant cultural, political and intellectual force that many scholars would argue defines our era. Postmodernism, in its various configurations, has consistently challenged concepts of selfhood, knowledge formation, aesthetics, ethics, history and politics. This Encyclopedia offers a wide-range of perspectives on postmodernism that illustrates the plurality of this critical concept that is so much part of our current intellectual debates. In this regard, the volume does not adhere to a single definition of postmodernism as much as it documents the use of the term across a variety of academic and cultural pursuits. The Encyclopedia of Postmodernism, it must be noted, resists simply presenting postmodernism as a new style among many styles occuring in the post-disciplinary academy. Documenting the use of the term acknowledges that postmodernism has a much deeper and long-lasting effect on academic and cultural life. In general, the volume rests on the understanding that postmodernism is not so much a style as it is an on-going process, a process of both disintegration and reformation.

This book examines and compares the philosophical positions of various postmodern thinkers and Zen Buddhist philosophers on: language and play; modes of thinking; skepticism and doubt; self and other; time and death; nihilism and metaphysics; and the conception of the end of philosophy. The Zen thinkers dealt with are Dogen and Nishitani, and the Western thinkers are Derrida, Lacan, Heidegger, Lyotard, Foucault, Deleuze and Guatarri, Kristeva, and Levinas. Although each share similar notions concerning the shortcomings of representational thinking, major differences still exist. By clarifying these differences, Olson counters the tendency to overtly assert or covertly imply that postmodern and Zen philosophies are moving in the same direction. Some postmodern thinkers and Zen Buddhist philosophers share common philosophical ground with regard to a mutual philosophical attack and attempt to overcome the perceived shortcomings of the representational mode of thinking that conceives of the mind like a mirror and assumes a correspondence between appearance and reality that is supported by a metaphysical structure.

An introduction and evaluation of contemporary approaches to theology, 'Postmodern Theologies' sets out to discern movements shaping the postmodern study of religion in a unique collaborative venture born of a postgraduate seminar at Florida State University. While some might say that theology after the death of God is like biology after the end of life - a discipline without a subject - 'Postmodern Theologies' identifies four general patterns of postmodernisms in theology today: constructive theologies (with Helmut Peukert, David Ray Griffin, and David Tracy cited as examples); postmodernisms of dissolution (Thomas J. J. Altizer, Mark C. Taylor, and Edith Wyschogrod); postliberal theologies (George Lindbeck); and communal praxis (exemplified by Gustavo Gutierrez and other Latin American theologians, and James Wm. McClendon and Sharon Welch among North Americans). These theologies eschew debates on traditional religious foundations to define true religion as the result of - rather than the impetus to - living one's beliefs. As these disparate approaches to theology are not directly comparable, the final chapter of 'Postmodern Theologies' instead analyzes how each one accounts for the plurality of religions. Exploring the postmodern strategies for coping with one of the most difficult questions in any theological age offers a fascinating way to assess their inherent strengths and weaknesses.

This volume offers essays on the nature of God and the fundamental tasks of philosophy and theology written by internationally recognized thinkers in the distinct fields of philosophy, religious studies, and theology. The Otherness of God traces the lineage of its theme from Plato and Aristotle through Neoplatonic, medieval, and Renaissance expression, and on through Reformation thought and German idealism to dialectical theology and deconstruction. This provocative collection, drawn primarily from an interdisciplinary conference at the University of Virginia, should attract those interested in the philosophy of religion, the history of philosophy and theology, and the theological interpretation of secular culture.