Taking a fresh look at the state of autobiography as a genre, The Phenomenology of Autobiography: Making it Real takes a deep dive into the experience of the reader. Dr. Schmitt argues that current trends in the field of life writing have taken the focus away from the text and the initial purpose of autobiography as a means for the author to communicate with a reader and narrate an experience. The study puts autobiography back into a communicational context, and putting forth the notion that one of the reasons why life writing can so often be aesthetically unsatisfactory, or difficult to distinguish from novels, is because it should not be considered as a literary genre, but as a modality with radically different rules and means of evaluation. In other words, not only is autobiography radically different from fiction due to its referentiality, but, first and foremost, it should be read differently.

Our memories, many believe, make us who we are. But most of our experiences have been forgotten, and the memories that remain are often wildly inaccurate. How, then, can memories play this person-making role? The answer lies in a largely unrecognized type of memory: Rilkean memory.

One of the founders of modern philosophical thought Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) has gained the reputation of being one of the most abstruse and impenetrable of thinkers. This major biography of Hegel offers not only a complete account of the life, but also a perspicuous overview of the key philosophical concepts in Hegel's work in a style that will be accessible to professionals and non-professionals alike. Terry Pinkard situates Hegel firmly in the historical context of his times. The story of that life is of an ambitious, powerful thinker living in a period of great tumult dominated by the figure of Napoleon. The Hegel who emerges from this account is a complex, fascinating figure of European modernity, who offers us a still compelling examination of that new world born out of the political, industrial, social, and scientific revolutions of his period.

Reputed to be one of the most difficult yet rewarding works of philosophical literature, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit has long been in need of an introduction for English readers. Without using jargon or technical terms, Donald Phillip Verene provides that introduction, guiding the reader through Hegel's text as a whole and offering a way to grasp the major insights and sections of Hegel's text without oversimplifying its narrative. A glossary of sixty of Hegel's terms, discussed in both their original German and English equivalents, is included.

For the first time—and in the best translation ever—the complete Book of Disquiet, a masterpiece beyond comparison The Book of Disquiet is the Portuguese modernist master Fernando Pessoa’s greatest literary achievement. An “autobiography” or “diary” containing exquisite melancholy observations, aphorisms, and ruminations, this classic work grapples with all the eternal questions. Now, for the first time the texts are presented chronologically, in a complete English edition by master translator Margaret Jull Costa. Most of the texts in The Book of Disquiet are written under the semi-heteronym Bernardo Soares, an assistant bookkeeper. This existential masterpiece was first published in Portuguese in 1982, forty-seven years after Pessoa’s death. A monumental literary event, this exciting, new, complete edition spans Fernando Pessoa’s entire writing life.

This text provides a phenomenological account of the experience of anti-black racism as described by Malcolm X. Central to this analysis is the phenomenology that emerges over the course of Malcolm’s life, which emerges through the various personal transformations that the autobiography introduces and explores. As this process unfolds, a variety of different aspects of lived-experience can be witnessed that becomes situated within the process of naming that Malcolm employs to situate the specifics of his experience. For example, the phenomenology of Malcolm’s early childhood experience, is defined by two very different competing definitions for blackness. Though Malcolm Little and his family exist or find themselves “thrown” within a social structure that employs a narrative of anti-black racism, his parents are able to provide a powerful alternative meaning for blackness that is informed by the perspective taken from the Marcus Garvey Movement of the early 1900s.When that narrative is effectively silenced given Malcolm’s separation from his family, the positive meanings for black-being-in-the-world disappear and leave Malcolm with few alternatives to this new reality. As the Autobiography moves forward, Malcolm’s experience becomes defined by the phenomenology that these overlapping narratives construct. During certain moments of this phenomenology, the negative aspects of anti-black racism seem to impose very specific challenges to Malcolm’s lived-experience that become difficult to overcome and in others, powerful alternative meanings for black-being-in-the-world are taken-up and successfully employed to address the consequences of this type of racism. Though the fact of anti-black racism is never actually defeated, Malcolm’s relationship to this process is drastically transformed over the course of his reflection.

Taking a fresh look at the state of autobiography as a genre, The Phenomenology of Autobiography: Making it Real takes a deep dive into the experience of the reader. Dr. Schmitt argues that current trends in the field of life writing have taken the focus away from the text and the initial purpose of autobiography as a means for the author to communicate with a reader and narrate an experience. The study puts autobiography back into a communicational context, and putting forth the notion that one of the reasons why life writing can so often be aesthetically unsatisfactory, or difficult to distinguish from novels, is because it should not be considered as a literary genre, but as a modality with radically different rules and means of evaluation. In other words, not only is autobiography radically different from fiction due to its referentiality, but, first and foremost, it should be read differently.