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Edinburgh Dictionary of Continental Philosophy

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Edinburgh Dictionary of Continental Philosophy Edited by John Protevi Edited by John Protevi The Edinburgh Dictionary of Continental Philosophy The Edinburgh ‘John Protevi has put together a very useful dictionary and I expect it to be used The Edinburgh Dictionary of extensively by students seeking clear and crisp definitions of key concepts, as well as Continental Philosophy helpful and reliable accounts of the main intellectual figures, in continental philosophy. The entries are uniformly excellent and Protevi’s grasp of the key concepts is first-rate.’ Dictionary of Keith Ansell Pearson, University of Warwick ‘The Edinburgh Dictionary of Continental Philosophy can be recommended to novices and scholars alike because it satisfies the pressing need for a reliable guide to the most Continental Philosophy recent developments in Continental philosophy not only in Europe, but also, and more unusually, in North America.’ Professor Robert Bernasconi, Lillian and Morrie Moss Professor of Philosophy, The University of Memphis With over 450 clearly written definitions and articles by an international team of specialists, this authoritative dictionary covers the thinkers, topics and technical terms associated with the many fields known as ‘continental philosophy’. Special care has been husserl derrida taken to explain the complex terminology of many continental thinkers. Researchers, students and professional philosophers alike will find the dictionary an invaluable reference tool. Key features include: phenomenology • in-depth entries on major figures and topics Edited by John Protevi •over 190 shorter articles on other figures and topics •over 250 items on technical terms used by continental thinkers, from ‘abjection’ marxism time [Kristeva] to ‘worldhood’ [Heidegger] •coverage of related subjects that use continental terms and methods •extensive cross-referencing, allowing readers to relate and pursue ideas in depth. John Protevi is Associate Professor of French Studies at Louisiana State University. He is poststructuralism the author of Time and Exteriority (Bucknell, 1994); Political Physics (Athlone, 2001); and co-author, with Mark Bonta, of Deleuze and Geophilosophy (Edinburgh University Press, 2004). He is currently working on a book on ‘political physiology’ that will combine cognitive science and poststructuralism. epistemology ISBN 0-7486-1716-7 Cover design: River Design, Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press Edinburgh feminism irigaray 22 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF www.eup.ed.ac.uk 9 780748 617166 ISBN 0 7486 1716 7 deleuzegerman idealismfoucault The Edinburgh Dictionary of Continental Philosophy The Edinburgh Dictionary of Continental Philosophy Edited by John Protevi Edinburgh University Press # in this edition, Edinburgh University Press, 2005 # in the individual contributions is retained by the authors Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh Typeset in 11 on 13 Ehrhardt by Iolaire Typesetting, and printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wilts A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7486 1715 9 (hardback) ISBN 0 7486 1716 7 (paperback) The right of the contributors to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Contents Preface vii Entries A–Z 1 List of Contributors 619 Preface Rationale for the present work The Edinburgh Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy (EECP) has found a home among the leading reference works of various formats (‘Readers’, ‘Companions’, ‘Histories’) now available for readers inter- ested in continental philosophy. These works, consisting of large essays (5–10,000 words) on major figures, movements and topics in the field, serve certain purposes very well, but cannot serve all the needs of readers interested in help with continental philosophy, in particular those new to the field. Limited by the very size of the entries to a restricted number of subject headings, these works are not as nimble or user-friendly as they could be for quick orientation and as guides for further study. For instance, a reader wanting a quick orientation on a particular term used in continental circles (for example, ‘difference’) must be able to associate that term with a particular author and then wade through a long essay hoping for a discussion of it. And while that discussion may provide cross-references to uses of the term in other philosophers, it may again not do so. With the Edinburgh Dictionary of Continental Philosophy (EDCP) we aim then to complement the EECP by providing brief entries on a much wider range of subject headings. Along with explicit cross-references, these mini-orientations will en- able readers to quickly and accurately target their subsequent research in the EECP and other resources. Working definition of ‘continental philosophy’ ‘Continental philosophy’ has always been an exceedingly difficult term to define. In fact, it may even be impossible to define. After all, Nietzsche tells us in On the Genealogy of Morals that ‘only that which is without history can be defined’, and not only does continental philosophy have a history, but most – although perhaps not all – of viii preface its practitioners would agree with Nietzsche that a historical treatment (or what he would call a ‘genealogy’) of philosophical texts is vitally important. Thus, in lieu of a definition, this Preface offers a (synchronic) operational treatment and a (diachronic) genealogy of continental philosophy. By an operational treatment, we mean that we shall treat as con- tinental those thinkers who are now or who have been at some time in the past so labelled by a reasonable portion of the philosophical or general intellectual community, whether or not that labelling consti- tutes a set whose essence can be defined by a set of necessary and sufficient conditions that demarcates it from other types of philosophy. Indeed we will not even bind ourselves to what Wittgenstein would call a family resemblance, since the fact that philosophers as diverse in aim, method and style as Hegel and Nietzsche, Deleuze and Levinas, Heidegger and Habermas, Irigaray and Gadamer, have all been called continental philosophers would seem to strain even that generous way of treating groups. By a genealogy of continental philosophy we mean to trace not only the history of the term, but also the various movements whose convergence and divergence have made up the shifting field of con- tinental philosophy over the years. First, what is the genealogy of the term ‘continental philosophy’? As Simon Glendinning points out in his article on Analytic Philosophy in the EDCP, it was first used as a term of opprobrium by the Oxbridge philosophers of the 1950s for those ‘not like us’, those over there on ‘the Continent’. Over the years ‘continental philosophy’ has come to lose its geographical sense, however, due to the strong interest in such a philosophy in the Anglophone world – it makes little sense to call someone working with Derridean concepts in North America, Australia (or indeed the United Kingdom or Ireland), a ‘continental philosopher’ if that term is intended geographically! It has also lost some but not all of its polemical sting when used in analytic circles, and in fact it has come to be adopted as a positive self- designation by many, as evidenced by the shift of the title of the influential journal Man and World to its current Continental Philosophy Review. Second, the genealogy of the various convergent and divergent movements of continental philosophy is often begun by citing a certain appropriation of Kant and has come to include the philosophical and intellectual movements of German Idealism, Marxism, phenomenol- ogy, hermeneutics, existentialism, Frankfurt School Critical Theory, that branch of feminism sometimes called ‘French feminism’, struc- turalism and poststructuralism, the French ‘philosophy of difference’ preface ix of the 1960s, philosophies based on or influenced by Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, and the multitude of subfields produced by the intersections and mutual influences these movements have exerted on each other. Indeed the best reason for offering an operational and genealogical treatment of continental philosophy rather than a definition of it lies in precisely the sort of combinatorial explosion that results when these movements are put into relation with one another. The resulting field provides an ever-shifting profusion of positions, theses, methodologies and so forth, no one of which can be said to unify the field. (The logic of Derrida’s ‘quasi-transcendentality’ could be cited here: any term that aspires to rise from an empirical field to a transcendental ordering or conditioning position will leave behind it a mark of its absence from the field.) Among the factors in the field of continental philosophy are: (1) a reaction to the transcendental turn of Kant; (2) a materialist ‘overturning’ of Hegel; (3) the ‘overcoming of Platonism’; (4) a focus on corporeality or embodiment, often combined with a focus on gender; (5) a type of ‘linguistic turn’ via Saussure; (6) the disbelief in ‘grand narratives’; (7) the structuralist or poststructuralist ‘death of the subject’; (8) the philosophical implications of the ‘new sciences’ variously called catastrophe theory, chaos theory, or complexity theory; and many other themes, almost all of which can be combined with each other. For example, one could imagine a cross of the readings of Deleuze and Guattari by Brian Massumi and Elizabeth Grosz as
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