Continuum Philosophy News

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