
The Universal (In the Realm of the Sensible)
Beyond Continental Philosophy
Dorothea Olkowski(Author)
Columbia University Press
Published on 19. April 2007
Book
Hardback
256 pages
978-0-231-14198-7 (ISBN)
Description
The Universal proposes a radically new philosophical system that moves from ontology to ethics. Drawing on the work of De Beauvoir, Sartre, and Le Doeuff, among others, and addressing a range of topics from the Asian sex trade to late capitalism, quantum gravity, and Merleau-Ponty's views on cinema, Dorothea Olkowski stretches the mathematical, political, epistemological, and aesthetic limits of continental philosophy and introduces a new perspective on political structures. Straddling a course between formalism and conventionalism, Olkowski develops the concept of an ontological unconscious that arises from our "sensible" relation to the world-the information we absorb and emit that affects our encounters with the environment and others. In this "realm of the senses," or the field of vulnerability defined by our experience with pleasure and pain, Olkowski is able to rethink the space-time relations put forth by Irigaray's notion of the "interval," Bergson's "recollection," Merleau-Ponty's idea of the "flesh," and Deleuze's "plane of immanence." This aesthetic sense is shared by all humankind and nonhuman entities in the organic and inorganic world.
The sensible universal can be applied to categories of pure and practical reason; experiential binaries of male-female and subject-object; and issues of autonomy, moral laws, and the regulation of perception.
The sensible universal can be applied to categories of pure and practical reason; experiential binaries of male-female and subject-object; and issues of autonomy, moral laws, and the regulation of perception.
Reviews / Votes
Olkowski's new work will come to seem just as essential as those breakthrough Irigarayan texts. -- Margarit Shildrick Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist PhilosophyMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Trade binding
Weight
567 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-231-14198-7 (9780231141987)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Dorothea Olkowski is professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. Her publications include Gilles Deleuze and the Ruin of Representation and, with Constantin Boundas, Gilles Deleuze and the Theater of Philosophy. She has also edited books on Merleau-Ponty and on French feminism.