Northwestern The Logic of Being: Realism, Truth, and Time

In The Logic of Being, Paul Livingston examines the relationship of truth and time from a perspective that draws on Martin Heidegger's inquiry into the question of being, as well as twentieth-century analytic philosophy of language and logic. In his influential earlier work The Politics of Logic, Livingston elaborated an innovative ""formal"" or ""metaformal realism."" In the Logic of Being, he now extends this concept into a ""temporal realism"" that accounts for the reality of temporal change and becoming while also preserving realism about logic and truth. Livingston employs a formal and phenomenological method of analysis to articulate and defend a position of realism about being, time, and their relationship, on which all of these are understood as structured and constituted in a way that does not depend on the human mind, consciousness, or subjectivity. This approach provides a basis for new logically and phenomenologically based accounts of the structure of linguistic truth in relation to the appearance of objects and of the formal structure of time as given. Livingston draws on philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to Davidson and Heidegger in this exploration of truth and time. In it, readers and scholars will discover innovative connections between Continental and analytic philosophy. Review "Livingston's work stands out as highly original and daring. Rather than providing primarily an exegesis of Heidegger's text, The Logic of Being uses his philosophy to open up a much wider ontological horizon while nonetheless succeeding in carrying out a rigorous close reading. With specific regard to Heidegger, Livingston provides thorough and thought-provoking accounts of the different stages of his oeuvre."--Lorenzo Chiesa, author of The Virtual Point of Freedom: Essays on Politics, Aesthetics, and Religion "Livingston's analysis (and synthesis) is topically wide-ranging--grappling with philosophical problems of being, truth, sense, the infinite, and time--and touches on the work of many significant analytic thinkers, including Michael Dummett, Donald Davidson, and Graham Priest. Livingston demonstrates familiarity with both Continental and analytic methodologies, but he makes a concerted effort to avoid unnecessary jargon, so that the work may speak meaningfully to philosophers in both camps. This in itself makes The Logic of Being a valuable read. Recommended."-- CHOICE The Logic of Being "is significant and promises to forever alter our assumptions about the analytic-continental divide." --Jeffrey Bell, author of Philosophy at the Edge of Chaos: Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of Difference About the Author Paul M. Livingston is a professor of philosophy at the University of New Mexico and author of three previous books: Philosophical History and the Problem of Consciousness, Philosophy and the Vision of Language, and The Politics of Logic: Badiou, Wittgenstein, and the Consequences of Formalism. He is coauthor with Andrew Cutrofello of The Problems of Contemporary Philosophy and coeditor with Jeffrey Bell and Andrew Cutrofello of Beyond the Analytic-Continental Divide: Pluralist Philosophy in the Twenty-First Century.