Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2018 -

In this ambitious, provocative reconstruction of the European metaphysical tradition, Karatani (a respected philosopher and theorist formerly associated with Columbia Univ. and with Hosei Univ. and Kinki Univ., both in Japan) argues that "Athenocentric" accounts that locate the origin of Western philosophy and democracy in Athens marginalize the contribution made by philosophers from Ionia (Thales, Anaximander, et al.). To do so is to lose contact with a democratic egalitarianism (isonomia, "no rule") that these thinkers reflected and gave philosophical justification. What is suggestive about Karatani's argument is that these Ionian philosophers have traditionally been read as almost exclusively philosophical materialists, bereft of any significant content that would contribute to understanding political and moral life. However, a close reading of these thinkers, Karatani contends, shows that the Ionians looked at human affairs from the perspective of nature. From this vantage point, the Ionian intellectual tradition, long marginalized and given a subsidiary position in the history of Western thought, provides a storehouse of possibilities to rethink the seemingly intractable tension between freedom and equality that the isonomia practiced in Ionia reconciled. A work of historical importance, this book should be read by all who are interested in the innumerable conflicts that beset the contemporary world.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

Nietzsche's "eternal return of the same" has long puzzled scholars, few of whom regard it as anything more than a bravura fireworks display. Yet of all the many arrows in Nietzsche's conceptual quiver, none seems more suitable for application today--in this age of unlimited rebooting and cultural recycling--than Nietzsche's contention that individuals are destined to repeat every last detail of their lives for an infinity of occasions. Unlike the notions of "Dionysian unleashing" and "the death of God" (which now seem depleted, having lost their capacity to shock), Nietzsche's "eternal return" seems oddly cogent and surprisingly expansive in its affirmative stance toward the inescapability of repetition. In this landmark study, which spans the entirety of Nietzsche's golden decade (viz., the 1880s), Gillespie (Duke Univ.) reconstructs Nietzsche's larger, philosophical strategy--a strategy that is behind both his adoption of the concept and the unwritten magnum opus it was intended to support. In the process, Gillespie patiently reconstructs Nietzsche's adversarial relationship to such canonical rivals as Socrates, Plato, Dostoevsky, and Wagner in very readable and clear prose. A highly original argument, supported by peerless erudition and scholarship.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.