Through a curated selection of papers written over four decades by one of Australias leading philosophers, this collection demonstrates the impact of Continental philosophy on philosophical thought in Australia.
The development of specific philosophical problems, over a period of more than forty years by a philosopher whose first training was pre-continental, shows that it is possible to achieve interaction between continental and pre-continental methods in philosophy, even while recognizing their distinctiveness. These essays work towards continental philosophy in the ways they pay attention to language, to how we experience things and are experienced by others, and to the structures of language and power that frame what it is possible to say and to hear, to write and to read.
Max Deutscher is emeritus professor of philosophy and honorary research associate at Macquarie University and honorary professor of philosophy at The University of Queensland.
Chapter 2: ‘Sartre’s Story of Consciousness’ (2001)
Chapter 3: ‘Being Paul Edwards’ (2007)
Chapter 4: ‘Sartre and Ryle on Imagination’ (2015)
II Truth in difference: feminism, the imaginary: Le Dœuff
Chapter 5: ‘Stories, Pictures and Arguments’ (1986)
Chapter 6: ‘Between genres: how philosophy moves’ (1996)
Chapter 7: ‘Textualist’, ‘Imaginary’ and ‘Operative’ practice (1998)
Chapter 8: ‘Utopias and Dreams’ (2003)
Chapter 9: ‘Flights to Transcendence’ (2020)
III Truth in feeling: motive, society, politics:Arendt
Chapter 10: “Simulacra, Enactment and Feeling (1988)
Chapter 11: ‘Thinking Trauma’ (2008)
Chapter 12: ‘Thinking from Underground’ (2010)
Chapter 13: ‘ Reasons within motivated emotion’ (2017)
IV Truth in text and context : Derrida and Foucault
Chapter 14: ‘Chasing after modernity: some friendly words for the post-modern’(2007)
Chapter 15: ‘Foucault’s Madmen’ (2014)
Chapter 16: ‘Il n’y a pas de hors-texte – once more’ (2014)
This fascinating and highly enjoyable collection of essays from one of the most respected philosophers in Australia ranges across an impressive number of philosophical topics and traditions with unfailing expertise. Deutscher is a beautiful writer with a varied, precise and rigorous use of language. Although the essays are conceptually tight, none of them are overly technical, and the collection is a pleasure to read. Covering nearly four decades of writing, each essay opens a new window onto philosophical questions of method and approach. Together, the essays relate from a fresh perspective the story of the emergence of various fault-lines in contemporary philosophy, and how the discipline has changed and is changing. Deutscher writes from the rare position of someone equally at ease with the technical problems at issue in Ryle and Wittgenstein, as with those driving the projects of Le Doeuff, de Beauvoir and Arendt. This is a model of philosophy sure to appeal to anyone who places a high value on intellectual curiosity and inquiry rather than the affiliations of a school.
— Alison Ross, professor of philosophy, Monash University
