Mahasweta Devi’s works can be categorised under the “literature of resistance” the purpose of which, according to Sartre, “was not the enjoyment of the reader but his torment. What it presented was not a world to be contemplated, but to… Read More ›
Philosophy
Key Theories of Alain Badiou
Alain Badiou (b. 1937) was born in Rabat, Morocco. With a father an agrégé, like himself, in philosophy, and a mother agre´ge´e in French, Badiou is also a product of the E´ cole Normale Superieure (ENS) (rue d’Ulm). It was… Read More ›
Key Theories of Michel Serres
Michel Serres (1 September 1930 – 1 June 2019) was born at Agen in France, son of a bargeman. In 1949, he went to naval college and subsequently, in 1952, to the E´ cole Normale Supe´rieure (rue d’Ulm). In 1955,… Read More ›
Literary Criticism and Theory in the Twentieth Century
Twentieth-century literary criticism and theory has comprised a broad range of tendencies and movements: a humanistic tradition, descended from nineteenth-century writers such as Matthew Arnold and continued into the twentieth century through figures such as Irving Babbitt and F. R…. Read More ›
The Philosophy of Henri Bergson
Schopenhauer’s thought impinges considerably not only on the thought of Nietzsche but also on Bergson’s philosophy and his theories of art and humor. Notwithstanding his self-dissociation from Schopenhauer,1 Bergson’s philosophy stands in direct line of descent. In fact, his student… Read More ›
The Philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860)– who is the most widely read philosopher in Germany today – offered an incisive critique of the bourgeois world: its vision of the present as alone real, its exaltation of a rationality answering merely to pragmatic needs,… Read More ›
Chaos Theory, Complexity Theory and Literary Criticism
Chaos theory and complexity theory challenge some of our most deeply held beliefs about the nature of reality. The former claims that natural systems (for example, the weather) are controlled by mysterious forces, called ‘strange attractors‘, such that they are… Read More ›
Political Philosophy of Hannah Arendt
German born (although naturalised American) political philosopher, who contributed significantly to the analysis of totalitarianism, and the fate of Jewry in the twentieth century, Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) is perhaps best known for a single utterance, her response to the Nazi… Read More ›
Key Theories of Theodor Adorno
German philosopher, sociologist and musicologist who was a leading member (and eventually director) of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research (the institutional basis of the Frankfurt School of German critical theory), Theodor Adorno’s (1903-1969) work may be understood as an… Read More ›
The Philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein
Austrian-born philosopher. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) originally studied engineering. In 1912, he went to Cambridge and became a student of one of the founders of the analytic philosophy, Bertrand Russell (1872—1970). Wittgenstein served in the Austrian army during the First World… Read More ›
Key Theories of Jean-Paul Sartre
French philosopher, novelist and playwright, who was in many respects the model of a politically engaged intellectual, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) was offered, but refused, the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964 . An indication of the esteem in which he was… Read More ›
Key Theories of Edward Said
American literary critic, postcolonial theorist and political commentator who was born in the Middle East. In 1963 Edward Said (1935- 2003) was made Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature, at Columbia University, New York, where he has remained to… Read More ›
The Social Philosophy of Gillian Rose
British social theorist, who through a profound reading of Hegel sought to navigate between the excesses and dangers of modernist absolutism and postmodernist relativism, Gillian Rose‘s (1947-1995) work draws upon philosophy (not least in a close knowledge of the German tradition),… Read More ›
The Philosophy of Richard Rorty
Although trained within the so-called ‘analytic’ tradition, Richard Rorty (1931-2007) espouses an approach to philosophy that is generally referred to as ‘neo-pragmatist’. Rorty draws heavily on the works of C. S. Peirce, William James and John Dewey, and also displays an… Read More ›
Moral and Political Philosophy of John Rawls
John Rawls (1921-2002) was an American philosopher, whose defence of liberalism was responsible for the revitalisation of English-language political philosophy from the late 1960s onwards. His philosophy, presented in A Theory of Justice (1972), draws its inspiration in large part… Read More ›
Karl Popper and the Philosophy of Science
Prior to Karl Popper (1902-1994), the philosophers of science had generally sought to explain how scientific theories could be proven to be true. Popper, building upon the doubts expressed in the eighteenth century by David Hume, rejected the possibility of… Read More ›
Key Theories of Michael Oakeshott
British philosopher and political theorist. Michael Oakeshott (1901-1990) read for a history degree at Cambridge, but while doing so took courses in philosophy and political theory. In the 1920s he visited Germany, where he attended lectures in theology at Marburg… Read More ›
Key Concepts of John Stuart Mill
English philosopher, social critic, political economist, civil servant and liberal. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) was educated by his father. As Mill notes in his Autobiography, the latter handled his son’s education by introducing him to a wide range of very… Read More ›
Key Theories of Maurice Merleau-Ponty
French philosopher and psychologist, who developed an approach to phenomenology that centred upon the embodied nature of human existence, Merleau-Ponty’s (1907-1961) work encompasses psychology (1963) and the attempt to articulate a humanist Marxism (1964a, 1973a) as well as the philosophies… Read More ›
Key Theories of Georg Lukacs
The Hungarian philosopher and literary critic Gyorgy (or Georg) Lukacs (1885-1971) had a major influence on the development of Western Marxism (that is to say, the largely Hegelian Marxism developed in Western Europe), while also being the most sophisticated literary… Read More ›
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