Dialectics Beyond Dialectics

Dialectics beyond Dialectics is a study of contemporary French philosophy from Bataille to Derrida. It analyses, on the first level of generalization, the decomposition of Hegelianism understood as philosophy of totality. Many French philosophers of the 20 century deconstruct Hegelian dialectics and harshly criticize the very idea of totality as either dangerous or impossible. The thesis of the book is that, on doing so, they do not really break with dialectics, but transform it. On the second level of generalization, the issue of the book is modernity and the thesis is that transformations of dialectics reveal transformations of modern consciousness which - despite hasty declarations on the end of modernity - still remains ours.

Autorentext

Malgorzata Kowalska is professor of Philosophy at the University of Bialystok (Poland). She specializes in French philosophy and moral and political philosophy. Her field of interest comprises Sartre, Levinas and other French contemporary thinkers, the idea of democracy and that of Europe.

Inhalt

Contents: Spectres of totality - Criticism of the idea of totality as insufficient - Dangerous, impossible totality and identity - Aspects of difference: division and dispersion - Divided and dispersed subject, devided and dispersed history - Dialectics as the way of thinking totality and difference - Modernity and postmodernity - Dialectics and «postdialectics» - Bataille, Levinas, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Aron, Foucault, Deleuze, Lyotard, Derrida.