Author: Ernst Bloch File Type: pdf 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 Avicennas and Aquinass interpretations of Aristotle on form and matter to argue that Avicennas reading democratizes power and undermines clerical and political authority. Bloch explores Avicennas 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 Blochs 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. **Review Against the background of todays Islamophobia, Blochs study is an extraordinary achievement. It demonstrates how one of the hidden origins of European modernity is Avicennas interpretation of Aristotle. Islamic thought at the roots of our notions of freedom and emancipation? If you are shocked, read Blochs book! It is only now, almost a century after its first publication, that the time for this book has arrived. (Slavoj Zizek, author of Less Than Nothing and Absolute Recoil) In this beautiful and exciting essay, Ernst Bloch enables us to think differently, more alive, more openly and creatively, about matter and form by reading the history of metaphysics against the grain and across cultural divides. We get a taste of what real philosophy once was and what it might be again as the contours of world philosophy are beginning to emerge. Blochs irreducibly personal voice comes alive in this excellent translation. (Johan Siebers, Director, Ernst Bloch Centre for German Thought, School of Advanced Study, University of London) Over the years, Ernst Bloch has enjoyed a reputation as the most intransigently utopian of the Western Marxists, a prophetic figure with great erudition and a capacious imagination. This accessible and graceful translation makes his important book on the medieval roots of vitalist materialism available to English speakers for the first time. (Martin Jay, author of Reason after Its Eclipse On Late Critical Theory) Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left is seminal for understanding the utopian theory and cosmological interpretation of nature provided by one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century Ernst Bloch. Its linkage of two philosophical worlds is unique and it should refashion conventional views on materialism and the canon. The translators deserve our gratitude for making available a difficult work whose boldness and cosmopolitan character will surely inspire the intellectuals of our own time. (Stephen Eric Bronner, author of Modernism at the Barricades Aesthetics, Politics, Utopia) Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left, by Ernst Bloch, one of the most significant German philosophers of the twentieth-century, traces an alternative genealogy of materialism based on the identification of an important line of counter-interpretation of Aristotles ideas on form and matter. While the history of modern thought has been conventionally interpreted as a deliberate rejection of the Aristotelian tradition in science and philosophy, in this book Bloch introduces the surprising thesis of a connection between Aristotle and the Enlightenment. (Humberto Beck, Kilachand Honors College, Boston University) About the Author Ernst Bloch (18851977) was a major German philosopher, sometimes considered the foremost twentieth-century utopian thinker. His work influenced Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt School, and he collaborated with Georg Lukacs and Walter Benjamin. Among his most significant books are The Spirit of Utopia and The Principle of Hope. Loren Goldman is assistant professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. Peter Thompson is reader emeritus in German at the University of Sheffield. His books include The Privatization of Hope Ernst Bloch and the Future of Utopia (2013).

Author: M. Suzuki File Type: pdf During the seventeenth century, in response to political and social upheavals such as the English Civil Wars, women produced writings in both manuscript and print. This volume represents recent scholarship that has uncovered new texts as well as introduced new paradigms to further our understanding of womens literary history during this period. **Review ...a thorough introduction to current directions of research on women writers during the period...Summing Up Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty. - C. S. Vilmar, CHOICE About the Author BERNADETTE ANDREA Associate Professor of English, University of Texas at San Antonio, USA VICTORIA E. BURKE Associate Professor of English, University of Ottawa, Canada KATHARINE GILLESPIE Associate Professor of Seventeenth-Century English and Colonial American Literature, Miami University of Ohio, USA PAMELA HAMMONS Associate Professor of English, University of Miami, USA THEODORA A. JANKOWSKI Professor of English, Penn State Wilkes-Barre, USA CLARE R. KINNEY Associate Professor of English, University of Virginia, USA CRISTINA MALCOLMSON Professor of English, Bates College, USA MEGAN MATCHINSKE Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA SHANNON MILLER is Professor of English, Temple University, USA PATRICIA PHILLIPPY Professor of English, Texas A&M University, USA MARGARET REEVES Assistant Professor in the Department of Critical Studies, University of British Columbia, Canada PAUL SALZMAN Reader in English Literature, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia MIHOKO SUZUKI Professor of English, University of Miami, USA SUSAN WISEMAN Professor of Seventeenth-Century Literature, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK MARION WYNNE-DAVIES Chair of English Literature, University of Surrey, UK