Thinking Through French Philosophy
Subtitle: The Being of the Question (Studies in Continental Thought)
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: June 2003
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 212
ISBN-13: 9780253342256
Subjects: Western philosophy; Philosophy Of The 20th Century; Structuralism; Philosophy; History & Surveys - Modern; Movements - Phenomenology; Merleau-Ponty, Maurice; 1908-1961; 20th century; Merleau-Ponty, Maurice,; Philosophy, French; Poststructuralism
First sentence: The essays collected in this volume attempt to determine the philosophical system that arose in France during the 1960s.
Description: For many, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze represent one of the greatest movements in French philosophy. But these philosophers and their works did not materialize without a philosophical heritage. In Thinking through French Philosophy, Leonard Lawlor shows how the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty formed an important current in sustaining the development of structuralism and post-structuralism. Seeking the "point of diffraction," or the specific ideas and concepts that link Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze, Lawlor discovers differences and convergences in these thinkers who worked the same terrain. Major themes include metaphysics, archaeology, language and documentation, expression and interrogation, and the very experience of thinking. Lawlor's focus on the experience of the question brings out critical differences in immanence and transcendence. This illuminating and provocative book brings new vitality to debates on contemporary French philosophy.