Trouble with Strangers (eBook)

A Study of Ethics

Terry Eagleton (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2009
John Wiley & Sons (Verlag)
978-1-4443-0464-0 (ISBN)

Infos

In this major new book, Terry Eagleton, one of the world’s greatest cultural theorists, writes with wit, eloquence and clarity on the question of ethics. Providing rare insights into tragedy, politics, literature, morality and religion, Eagleton examines key ethical theories through the framework of Jacques Lacan’s categories of the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real, measuring them against the ‘richer’ ethical resources of socialism and the Judaeo-Christian tradition.

• a major new book from Terry Eagleton, one of the world’s greatest cultural theorists
• investigates ethical theories from Aristotle to Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek
• engages with the whole modern European tradition of thought about ethics
• brings together personal and political ethics and makes a passionate case for political love

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TROUBLE WITH STRANGERS Written in Eagleton s very readable, clear and witty style, this book may achieve the unthinkable: bridging the gap between academic High Thought and popular philosophy manuals. Slavoj i ek This is a fine book. It is hugely ambitious in its scope, develops an original thesis to illuminating effect and is written with a compelling passion and commitment. Peter R. Sedgwick, Cardiff University Written with Eagleton s usual wit, panache and uncanny ability to summarise and criticize otherwise complex philosophical positions ... this is an important book by a hugely important voice. Simon Critchley, The New School for Social Research In this ambitious new book, Terry Eagleton, one of the world s greatest cultural theorists, turns his attention to the now much-discussed question of ethics. In a work full of rare insights into tragedy, politics, literature, morality and religion, Eagleton investigates ethical theories from Aristotle to Alain Badiou and Slavoj i ek, weighing the merits and deficiencies of each theory, and measuring them all against the richer ethical resources of socialism and the Judaeo-Christian tradition. In a remarkably original move, he assigns each of the theories he examines to one or other of Jacques Lacan s three psychoanalytical categories of the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real, and shows how this can illuminate the strengths and weaknesses of an ethics of personal sympathy, an impersonal morality of obligation, and a morality based on death and transformation.

Autor

Terry Eagleton is John Edward Taylor Professor of English Literature at the University of Manchester. His recent publications include How to Read a Poem (2006), The English Novel (2004), Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic (2003), The Idea of Culture(2000), Scholars and Rebels in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (1999), and The Illusions of Postmodernism (1996), all published by Wiley-Blackwell.

Inhalt

Preface vi

PART I THE INSISTENCE OF THE IMAGINARY 1

Introduction: The Mirror Stage 1

1 Sentiment and Sensibility 12

2 Francis Hutcheson and David Hume 29

3 Edmund Burke and Adam Smith 62

PART II THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SYMBOLIC 83

Introduction: The Symbolic Order 83

4 Spinoza and the Death of Desire 91

5 Kant and the Moral Law 101

6 Law and Desire in Measure for Measure 130

PART III THE REIGN OF THE REAL 139

Introduction: Pure Desire 139

7 Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche 154

8 Fictions of the Real 180

9 Levinas, Derrida and Badiou 223

10 The Banality of Goodness 273

Conclusion 317

Index 327

Rezensionen

"In his inimitable way, Eagleton is helping to develop this
intriguing scene, and further framings of his thought are keenly
anticipated.." (New Left Review, July - August, 2010)

"Readers who know the writers being discussed will enjoy the
book." (Choice, April 2009)

"Eagleton has laboured diligently in tracing the wellsprings of
ethics across literature, philosophy, morality and religion.
Trouble With Strangers is an engrossing book, peppered with
remarkable insights into theory, philosophy and psychoanalysis."
(Australian Book Review, March 2009)

"Eagleton is absolutely correct to ask why do we have
'trouble with strangers?' It is to ask, after all, how
we might be able to recreate solidarity. And it is in pursuit of
this answer that he examines the attempts of moral philosophers to
give altruism a firm footing." (Culture Wars, March
2009)

"This difficult, highly abstract, yet extremely closely
reasoned study touches on so many topics and ideas that the reader
may come away from it wondering whether Eagleton has made a
convincing argument for his main thesis which is that most ethical
theories can be assigned to one of Jacques Lacans three
psychoanalytical categories of the imaginary the symbolic and the
Real or in some combination of the three." (Library
Journal, December 2008)

"Confronted now with Eagleton's eighth book in 11 years ...
One finds his trademark qualities in abundance: impishness,
prodigious breadth of reading, a poacher's disregard of boundaries
and of 'no trespassing' notices, sublime self-confidence, and an
opening up of the heart to old allegiances as sudden as a blow to
the chest." (Times Higher Education Supplement, December
2008)









"Written in Eagleton's very readable, clear and witty style, this
book may achieve the unthinkable: bridging the gap between academic
High Thought and popular philosophy manuals."

-Slavoj Zizek



"... An engagement with the whole modern European tradition
of thought about ethics, drawing on both philosophical and literary
texts, and paying close attention to shifting cultural currents and
historical contexts. The insights are often sharp, and the
criticisms both pointed and - usually - laced with
humour"

-Peter Dews, University of Essex



"This is a fine book. It is hugely ambitious in its scope,
develops an original thesis to illuminating effect and is written
with a compelling passion and commitment"

-Peter R. Sedgwick, Cardiff University



"Written with Eagleton's usual wit, panache and uncanny ability
to summarise and criticize otherwise complex philosophical
positions ... this is an important book by a hugely important
voice"

-Simon Critchley, The New School for Social
Research

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 30.1.2009
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Ethik
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften
• Schlagworte: ambitious • between academic • Book • Commitment • compelling • Complex • eagletons • effect • ethics • Ethik • fine book • GAP • High • illuminating • important book • Original • Passion • Philosophical • Philosophie • Philosophy • Positions • Scope • Simon • Thesis • University • Unthinkable • usual • Wit
• ISBN-10: 1-4443-0464-X / 144430464X
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4443-0464-0 / 9781444304640