| Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left Contributor(s): Bloch, Ernst (Author), Goldman, Loren (Translator), Thompson, Peter (Translator) |
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ISBN: 0231175345 ISBN-13: 9780231175340 Publisher: Columbia University Press OUR PRICE: $84.15 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: December 2018 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Philosophy | Movements - Critical Theory - Philosophy | Political - Political Science | History & Theory - General |
| Dewey: 181.5 |
| LCCN: 2018010142 |
| Series: New Directions in Critical Theory |
| Physical Information: 0.7" H x 5.7" W x 8.6" (0.65 lbs) 144 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Ernst Bloch was one of the most significant twentieth-century German thinkers, yet he remains overshadowed by his Frankfurt School contemporaries. Known for his engagement with utopianism and religious thought, Bloch also wrote incisively about ontological questions. In his short masterpiece Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left, Bloch gives a striking account of materialism that traces emancipatory elements of modern thought to medieval Islamic philosophers' encounter with Aristotle. Bloch argues that the great medieval Islamic philosopher Avicenna (Ibn Sina) planted the seeds of a radical materialism still relevant for critical theory today. He contrasts Avicenna's and Aquinas's interpretations of Aristotle on form and matter to argue that Avicenna's reading democratizes power and undermines clerical and political authority. Bloch explores Avicenna's world and metaphysics in detail, showing how even his most recondite theoretical concerns prove capable of pointing toward radical social transformation. He blazes an original path through the history of ideas, including Averroes (Ibn Rushd), Spinoza, and Marx as well as lesser-known figures. Here translated into English for the first time, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left is at once a succinct summation of Bloch's own idiosyncratic materialism, a provocative reconstruction of the Western philosophical tradition in light of its exchanges with Islamic thought, and a vital resource for contemporary debates about materialism in critical theory. |
Contributor Bio(s): Thompson, Peter: - Peter Thompson is Reader in the Department of Germanic Studies and Director of The Centre for Ernst Bloch Studies at the University of Sheffield. He is the author of The Crisis of the German Left: the PDS, Stalinism and the Global Economy (Bergahn, 2005), God's Atheist: Ernst Bloch and Transcendental Materialism (Brill, 2014), Does Marx Still Matter? (Zero, 2014), and The Metaphysics of Pure Contingency (Upper West Side Philosophers, forthcoming) and the editor of The Privatization of Hope: Ernst Bloch and the Future of Utopia (Duke, 2013).Goldman, Loren: - Loren Goldman (PhD, Political Science, Chicago) is Assistant Professor of Political Theory at the University of Pennsylvania. He has published articles in Political Theory, William James Studies, and Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society and is currently completing a book titled Hope, Modernity, and Politics. |