A Philosophy of the Possible

Modalities in Thought and Culture
Erscheinungsjahr 2019
ISBN: 978-90-04-39833-7
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 333, 366 Seiten, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 239 mm, Gewicht: 590 g

Reihe: Value Inquiry Book Series / Contemporary Russian Philosophy

In this book, Mikhail Epstein offers a systematic theory of modalities (the actual, possible, and necessary), as applied to the discourse of philosophy in its post-Kantian and especially post-Derridean perspectives. He relies on his own experience of living in the USSR and the US, dominated respectively by imperative and possibilist modalities. Possibilism assumes that a thing or event acquires meaning only in the context of its multiple possibilities, inviting counterfactual and conditional modes of description. The author focuses on the creative potentials of possibilistic thinking and its heuristic value. The book demonstrates the range of modal approaches to society, culture, ethics, and language, and outlines potentiology as a new philosophical discipline interacting with ontology and epistemology.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Epstein, Mikhail

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Erkenntnistheorie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Kulturphilosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface

&emspIntroduction: Fundamental Concepts of the Theory of the Possible

1 The Problem of Modalities in Contemporary Thought

2 A Preliminary Definition of the Modality of the Possible

3 The Ontological Status of Possible Worlds. Nominalism and Realism

4 The Principle of “Fullness” and the Problem of Realization of Possibilities

5 Duality and “Demonism” of the Possible

6 A Possibilistic Approach to the Possible

7 The Plan of the Book

Part 1: The Possible in Philosophy

1 Criticism and Activism

2 Philosophy and Reality

3 Change of Modalities in the History of Philosophy

4 Philosophy as Possibilistic Thinking

5 The Area of the Thinkable: the Value of Thinking in Itself

6 Theory, Utopia, and Hypothesis

7 Catharsis of Thinking

8 Personified Thinking

9 Possible and Impossible: Aporia of Thinking

10 Language, Thinking, and Signifiability

11 Universals as Potentials: Conceptualism

12 From the General to the Concrete and Universal

13 Multiplication of Entities

14 Philosophy as Parody and Grotesque

Part 2: The Fate of Metaphysics: from Deconstruction to Possibilization

Introduction to Part 2

Section 2.1: Reverse Metaphysics: Critique and Deconstruction

15 Beyond Being and Nothingness: the Feeling of the Possible

16 A World View, Not a Point of View: “A Net with No Knots”

17 The Possible in Jean Derrida

18 The Metaphysics of Deconstruction: the Main Terms

19 The Radical Nature of Difference: Profit and Transcendence

20 Center and Structure

21 Reverse Metaphysics: the Other, the Play, and the Writing

22 Différance and the Tao

Section 2.2: C

Über Autor(innen)

Mikhail Epstein, Ph.D. (1990), Academy of Sciences, USSR; S.C.Dobbs Professor of Cultural Theory and Russian literature at Emory University (USA). He has published 35 books and hundreds of articles in philosophy and cultural and literary studies translated into 23 languages.