Intersections in Continental and Analytic Philosophy
Deleuze, Mathematics, Metaphysics provides new solutions to the central problems of the philosophy of mathematics by reconstructing Deleuze’s metaphysics. It does so through direct engagement with analytic and continental philosophy, along with the formal and natural sciences. These new Deleuzian solutions reject equally other-worldly accounts of mathematics, such as Platonism, and accounts which treat mathematics as a useful fiction or an empty formalist game. Instead, Deleuze, Mathematics, Metaphysics argues that mathematical truth is grounded in the necessity of difference itself. Since difference is entirely this-worldly, the truth of mathematics does not require us to posit the reality of transcendent entities or possible worlds. Doing so not only provides a new metaphysics of mathematics; it also explains the usefulness of mathematics for science and why mathematical truth appear to have such otherworldly properties in the first place.
Jeffrey Bell argues that a motivating problematic for existentialist writers is the attempt to think through the implications of the problematic nature of life. He applies a Deleuzian theory of problems to an analysis of some key concepts in contemporary social and political theory. Building on the metaphysics of problems set out in his book, An Inquiry into Analytic-Continental Metaphysics, he provides a new way of integrating the concerns of existentialist writers into contemporary political and social debates.
Jeffrey Bell offers a novel approach to thinking about a number of longstanding problems in metaphysics, issues that have persisted throughout the history of philosophy. By developing a metaphysics of problems, he shows how the history of both the analytic and continental traditions of philosophy can be seen to be an ongoing response to the problem of regresses. By highlighting this shared history, Bell brings these two traditions back together to address problems that have been essential to their projects all along and central to much of the history of philosophy.
Asks if reality is simply static, or dynamic and relational
- Establishes and develops the idea of dynamic realism in contrast to dynamic/temporal/powers ontologies developed both in the analytic and continental tradition
- Establishes and develops engaged experience
- Re-interprets and develops the ideas of adequacy and correlation
- Engages debates on the new forms of metaphysical thought that are currently emerging in the continental tradition
- Addresses ideas from biology and physics
- Argues for shared ground between process philosophy and phenomenology
- Uses ancient Greek thought to examine contemporary issues in new ways
Philosophy has traditionally considered reality as a set of static objects. Tina Röck transcends this understanding to explore the realistic potential of relational and dynamic ontology. These explorations are both complex and problematic as we attempt to reconceptualise being, truth and knowledge as processual.
To navigate this thinking, Röck takes a new phenomenological path into a realism that discloses the world as temporal and relational, without dismissing the epistemological difficulties surrounding genuine change. A fundamental challenge to outdated ways of thinking in our rapid, interconnected world, this book provides a provocative and contemporary understanding of our temporal reality.
A process-inspired approach to understanding language and the world through the work of Alfred North Whitehead
- Develops a new approach to understanding language and the world by adopting a Whiteheadian perspective
- Uses a broad range of examples and literature, bringing together ideas and writers that have not been previously compared
- Presents a process-inspired investigation of the interrelations of language and the world, incorporating philosophy and social theory
Michael Halewood uses ideas from analytic philosophy and continental philosophy as well as social theory to look at how language relates to the world, and the world to language. He addresses important questions such as whether words are able to capture the world (nouns); whether the properties of things, such as colours, are real (adjectives); and how we can think about the world as process (verbs).
Primarily using the work of the innovative British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, but also incorporating the ideas of Gilles Deleuze, John Dewey and Luce Irigaray, he argues that viewing both the world and language as ‘in process’ can help reframe and move beyond some enduring problems and shed new light for future research.
