Continuum Philosophy News

COMPETITION TIME!

Astonishingly, we're about to reach 5000 followers on the @ContinuumPhilos twitter page. If you're one of our followers then thank you so much for helping us to reach this milestone!

 

I believe this calls for a celebration and I only know one way to do that: By giving away a load of books! A book for every thousand followers, in fact:

 

So that's all of the following up for grabs:

How Is Nature Possible?: Kant's Project in the First Critique by Daniel N. Robinson

Aesthetics: The Key Thinkers edited by Alessandro Giovannelli

Žižek: A Guide for the Perplexed by Seán Sheehan

Cinema After Deleuze by Richard Rushton

Jacques Rancière and the Contemporary Scene edited by Jean-Philippe Deranty and Alison Ross

 

To be in with a chance to win, just answer this question:

 

In what year was Kant's first critique (The Critique of Pure Reason) published in the original German?

 

To enter please email your answer, along with your name and address, to philosophy.uk@continuumbooks.com with the subject line 'COMPETITION' by the end of Friday 27th January 2012. The winner will be picked at random by one of my colleagues and will be announced on Monday 30th January.

 

Best of luck!

 

Charlotte Hoare

Marketing Executive UK and ROW

Karl Marx and Edmund Husserl: From A to Z

The start of 2012 sees two excellent additions to our popular Continuum Philosophy Dictionaries series with The Marx Dictionary and The Husserl Dictionary.

              

Providing a comprehensive companion to Karl Marx, The Marx Dictionary discusses all his major works and ideas as well as his philosophical and political influences and contemporaries. Extensively researched, it offers a wealth of useful information, analysis and criticism.

"This dictionary will be invaluable for anyone interested in Marx's ideas. The research is thorough, the ground covered is comprehensive, and the careful organisation of the book means that its contents are unusually accessible. Highly recommended." David McLellan, Emeritus Professor of Political Theory, University of Kent, UK

"An impressive achievement. Based on up-to-date scholarship and executed with scrupulous scholarly standards, it offers an excellent introduction to Marx's work and major ideas. This even-handed work of reference will get anyone off to a good start." Terrell Carver, Professor of Political Theory, University of Bristol, UK

While for anyone reading or studying Husserl, Phenomenology or Modern European Philosophy, The Husserl Dictionary covers everything essential to understanding Husserl's phenomenology, offering clear and accessible explanations of often complex terminology.

"The Husserl Dictionary should be welcomed by all those interested in Husserl and phenomenology. Novices will find its entries helpful in providing clear orientation in Husserl's difficult thought, while specialists will appreciate especially the numerous cross-references to Husserl's Collected Works that support the accounts of central terms." Steven Crowell, Joseph and Joanna Nazro Mullen Professor of Philosophy, Rice University, USA and Editor of Husserl Studies

Happy New Year!

On behalf of the Philosophy team at Continuum I would like to wish you a very Happy New Year! 2012 promises to be an exciting year for us, with a full and varied publishing programme ranging from textbooks and other resources for students, to reference works and monographs and - of course - original works in translation.

We shall be in touch shortly with news and details of several new Continuum Philosophical Dictionaries and we will contrinue to keep you up-to-date with other developments throughout the year. In addition, we look forward to meeting you at conferences and events in the UK, US and elsewhere.

Finally, we love to hear from you, so please do contact us with your prposals and ideas for new publishing projects.

With all good wishes for 2012

Camilla, Acting Publisher for Philosophy

Best Books of 2011

Fantastic news: Manuel DeLanda’s Philosophy and Simulation has made it into The Guardian's Best Books of the Year 2011. Selected by the novelist Hari Kunzu, DeLanda was praised for his ‘unified description of everything’: an earlier review in the same paper described the renowned philosopher’s latest book as 'fascinating material to chew on'.

Whether you are still in search of a Christmas present or compiling your own list, you can find out more about the book in the above preview.

APA Eastern Division annual meeting in Washington, 27-30 December 2011

It is nearly a week to go until the start of this year's APA Eastern Division annual meeting in Washington, 27-30 December 2011.

Whether you have a new book proposal or an existing project you would like to discuss, or if you are just interested in talking about our Publishing, I'd be delighted to meet with you so please do email me if you’d like to set up a meeting: ccoalter@continuumbooks.com

Otherwise feel free to drop by the Continuum stand during the conference.

I look forward to meeting you there.

Colleen Coalter, Commissioning Editor

Merry Christmas from Continuum Philosophy

Wishing all of our readers a very merry Christmas and a happy new year!

The Existentialist's Guide to Death, the Universe and Nothingness - New book from bestselling author Gary Cox

Very excited to announce that the new title on existentialism from the fantastic Gary Cox - The Existentialist's Guide to Death, the Universe and Nothingness - has now published.

Gary has previously written several successful books for us, including The Sartre Dictionary, Sartre and Film and Sartre: A Guide for the Perplexed but he is perhaps most well-known for the bestselling How to Be an Existentialist and its follow-up How to Be A Philosopher. His witty yet informative style makes his books not only must-have guides for students and teachers of philosophy but also entertaining enough for the general reader.

This new book - with its title inspired, as you might have guessed, by the late great Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - aims to fascinate, inform, provoke and inspire as it explores existentialism’s uncompromising view of human reality. A realistic self-help book for anyone interested in personal empowerment, The Existentialist’s Guide offers a wealth of profound philosophical insight into life, the universe and everything.

Check out a preview of the book online here. For more information on Gary and his books, be sure to check out his website or follow him @garycox01 over on Twitter.

 

Charlotte Hoare

Marketing Executive UK & Rest of World

Gabriel Marcel's Ethics of Hope Now Available

We have recently published Gabriel Marcel’s Ethics of Hope by Jill Hernandez who is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at San Antonio. The book presents Garbriel Marcel’s existentialism as a convincing, relevant moral theory, founded on the creation of hope.

The idea of ‘hope’ has received significant attention in the political sphere recently. But is hope just wishful thinking, or can it be something more than a political catch-phrase? This book argues that hope can be understood existentially, or on the basis of what it means to be human. Under this conception of hope, given to us by Gabriel Marcel, hope is not optimism, but the creation of ways for us to flourish. War, poverty and an absolute reliance on technology are real-life evils that can suffocate hope.

Marcel’s thought provides a way to overcome these negative experiences. An ethics of hope can function as an alternative to isolation, dread, and anguish offered by most existentialists. This book presents Marcel’s existentialism as a convincing, relevant moral theory; founded on the creation of hope, interwoven with the individual’s response to the death of God. Jill Hernandez argues that today’s reader of Marcel can resonate with his belief that the experience of pain can be transcended through a philosophy of hope and an escape from materialism.

Check out more information about Gabriel Marcel’s Ethics of Hope here.

Stanley Cavell and Literary Studies

Continuum is extremely proud to announce the publication of Stanley Cavell and Literary Studies: Consequences of Skepticism, available now in the US and coming to the UK in just three short weeks. Though Cavell has been a towering figure in philosophy departments for decades, his thought and work have been largely absent from debates in literary studies and literary theory. Editors Richard Eldridge (Charles and Harriett Cox McDowell Professor of Philosophy, Swarthmore College, PA, USA) and Bernard Rhie (Associate Professor of English, Williams College, USA) have now begun to fill this gap by commissioning and collecting essays on Cavell's relevance to literary studies from a truly impressive array of scholars. Stanley Cavell and Literary Studies is sure to become required reading for anyone interested in the intersections between philosophy and literature. Cavell's is an essential voice that demands to be heard; now, literary scholars, critics and theorists are sure to begin listening.

For now, here's a table of contents to whet your appetite:

1. Introduction:
Cavell, Literary Studies, and the Human Subject: Consequences of Skepticism
    Richard Eldridge and Bernard Rhie

I. Principles
2. The Adventure of Reading: Literature and Philosophy, Cavell and Beauvoir
    Toril Moi
3. “Is ‘Us’ Me?”  Cultural Studies and the Universality of Aesthetic Judgments
    R. M. Berry
4. Cavell and Kant: The Work of Criticism and the Work of Art
    Anthony J. Cascardi
5. Cavell and Wittgenstein on Morality: The Limits of Acknowledgment
    Charles Altieri
6. The Word Viewed: Skepticism Degree Zero
    Garrett Stewart
7. A Storied World: On Meeting and Being Met
    Naomi Scheman
8. Skepticism and the Idea of an Other: Reflections on Cavell and Postcolonialism
    Simona Bertacco and John Gibson

II. Practices
9. William Shakespeare and Stanley Cavell: Acknowledging, Confessing, and Tragedy
    Sarah Beckwith
10. Competing for the Soul: Cavell on Shakespeare
    Lawrence F. Rhu
11. “Communicating with Objects”: Romanticism, Skepticism, and “The Specter of Animism” in Cavell and Wordsworth
    Joshua Wilner
12. Emerson Discomposed:  Skepticism, Naturalism, and the Search for Criteria in “Experience”
    Paul Grimstad
13. Beside Ourselves: Near, Neighboring and Next-to in Cavell’s The Senses of Walden and William Carlos Williams’s “Fine Work with Pitch and Copper”
    Elisa New
14. For all You Know
    Andrew H. Miller
15. Empiricism, Exhaustion, and Meaning What We Say: Cavell and Contemporary Fiction
    Robert Chodat

Farewell (for now)...

Today is my last full day at Continuum before I head off on maternity leave with baby #2 - this one seems to have come round very quickly, so apologies to any authors I haven't managed to contact personally in advance! I'll be back sometime next summer and in the meantime we have recruited Camilla Erskine (camilla.erskine@bloomsbury.com) to cover my role - no doubt you will hear from her in due course. And of course Colleen Coalter (Commissioning Editor) and Rachel Eisenhauer (Editorial Assistant) will continue to hold down the fort on the editorial side here in the London office, so you can look forward to hearing more from them in the coming months too.

Very best wishes to you all,

Sarah Campbell

Publisher, Philosophy