The Sense of Semblance is the first book to incorporate contemporary analytic philosophy in interpretations of art and architecture, literature, and film about the Holocaust. The book’s principal aim is to move beyond the familiar debates surrounding postmodernism by demonstrating the usefulness of alternative theories of meaning and understanding from the Anglophone analytic tradition. The book takes as its starting point the claim that Holocaust artworks must fulfill at least two specific yet potentially reciprocally countervailing desiderata: they must meet aesthetic criteria (lest they be, say, merely historical documents) and they must meet historical criteria (they must accurately represent the Holocaust, lest they be merely artworks). I locate this problematic within the tradition of philosophical aesthetics, as a version of the conflict between aesthetic autonomy and aesthetic heteronomy, and claim that Theodor W. Adorno’s “dialectic of aesthetic semblance” describes the normative demand that a successful artwork maintain a dynamic tension between these dual desiderata. While working within a framework inspired by Adorno, the book further claims that certain concepts and lines of reasoning from contemporary philosophy best explicate how individual artworks fulfill these dual desiderata, including the causal theory of names, the philosophy of tacit knowledge, analytic philosophy of quotation, Sartre’s theory of the imaginary, work in the epistemology of testimony, and Walter Benjamin’s theory of dialectical images. Individual chapters provide close readings of lyric poetry by Paul Celan (including a critique of Derridean deconstruction), Holocaust memorials in Berlin, texts by the Austrian quotational artist Heimrad Bäcker, Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah and Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus. The result is a set of interpretations of Holocaust artworks that, in their precision, specificity and clarity, inaugurate a dialogue between contemporary analytic philosophy and contemporary art.

On the grounds of the interpretation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry and Paul Cézanne’s paintings the book attempts to approach the work of art as a thing. This lets to overcome a one-sided aesthetical interpretation of the origin of the work of art and to indicate its place in the cosmos of uncreated, i.e. not hominized things. So, the second fundamental issue raised is a try to point out a metaphysical difference between a hominized and not hominized (natural) thing. Such a non-aesthetical point of view is called ontotopy by the author and is opposed to traditional ontology and the philosophy of art.

The present wntmg attempts a clarification of the questIon bearing on technology and of its "Essence" in the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger. In view of this, our initial task will consist in examining the origins of modern technology, which Heidegger descries in the primordial "experience" of Being as cpvO'u;, together with the human manners of comportment to this the primordial manifestness of Being. We will begin in Part One by attending primarily, but not exclusively, to the subjective dimen sion, allowing thereby the manner of the historical "progression" of Being, that is, its transforming self-showing, to stand in the background. This procedure seems to us not merely appropriate with respect to our purpose as a whole, but moreover cor responds to the matter at issue, for Being in its own progression is essentially self-concealing, which in turn brings to prominence the "subjective" in union with the varied modes of the "Being of beings", termed "beingness". In conformity with Heidegger's interpretation of "Metaphysics", there can be but little doubt that Being itself persists throughout in presence only as absence. Thus, we will trace out this manner of Being's presence in absence and the respective dominating human manners of relatedness to Being's beingness, that is, we must observe the transformation of original vo6v (or I,SYElV, TSXV1J), into Platonic i6slV ( 'j6S!Y. ).

A study of comparative metaphysics that explores the concepts of Reality and Appearance and their relevance to contemporary religious consciousness. In this pioneering work of comparative metaphysics, Patrick Laude delves into Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Islamic, and Jewish concepts of Reality and Appearance to offer a uniquely lucid exploration of metaphysical representations of reality, relativity, appearance, and illusion. Laude includes discussions of the Absolute and the Relative in Hindu Advaita Ved?nta, Kashmiri ?aivism, Sufi wahdat al-wuj?d, and Madhyamaka Buddhism; the metaphysics of salvation in Buddhist and Christian traditions; and the metaphysics of evil and the distinction between Reality and Appearance in the Jewish Kabbalah, ?aivism, Christian mysticism, and the Sufi school of Ibn al-‘Arab?. The book explores how a discerning and subtle apprehension of the relationship between Reality and Appearance may help contemporary readers and seekers respond to the acute predicaments of contemporary religious and spiritual consciousness. “I have rarely read a work that is so lucid in explaining complex philosophical theories across multiple traditions, so articulate in constructing concise ideas, and so strategic in assembling a framework for analysis. This is a unique and special work of comparative metaphysics rarely found in contemporary works on philosophies of religion.” — Lee Irwin, author of Alchemy of Soul: The Art of Spiritual Transformation

Heidegger's lecture course at the University of Marburg in the summer of 1925, an early version of Being and Time (1927), offers a unique glimpse into the motivations that prompted the writing of this great philosopher's master work and the presuppositions that gave shape to it. The book embarks upon a provisional description of what Heidegger calls "Dasein," the field in which both being and time become manifest. Heidegger analyzes Dasein in its everydayness in a deepening sequence of terms: being-in-the-world, worldhood, and care as the being of Dasein. The course ends by sketching the themes of death and conscience and their relevance to an ontology that makes the phenomenon of time central. Theodore Kisiel's outstanding translation premits English-speaking readers to appreciate the central importance of this text in the development of Heidegger's thought.

This volume offers a varied and informed series of approaches to questions of mobility—actual, social, virtual, and imaginary—as related to visual culture. Contributors address these questions in light of important contemporary issues such as migration; globalization; trans-nationality and trans-cultural difference; art, space and place; new media; fantasy and identity; and the movement across and the transgression of the proprieties of boundaries and borders. The book invites the reader to read across the collection, noting differences or making connections between media and forms and between audiences, critical traditions and practitioners, with a view to developing a more informed understanding of visual culture and its modalities of mobility and fantasy as encouraged by dominant, emergent, and radical forms of visual practice.

Who will buy this book? Anyone with concerns about modern society. While innovation and intellectual achievement continue to transform societies, the concomitant increase in personal prosperity has nurtured a superficial mindset where value equates to what is immediately appealing, mediocrity passes for excellence, and spin displaces serious debate. .Sense and Semblance presents a powerful indictment of superficiality. It confronts the core issues and reinforces the need to challenge this cosmetic culture in both public and private life.