Bloomsbury The Bloomsbury Anthology of Transcendental Thought: From Antiquity to the Anthropocene

What is real? What is the relationship between ideas and objects in the world? Is God a concept or a being? Is reality a creation of the mind or a power beyond it? How does mental experience coordinate with natural laws and material phenomena? The Bloomsbury Anthology of Transcendental Thought is the definitive anthology of responses to these and other questions on the nature and limits of human knowledge by philosophers, theologians, and writers from Plato to Zizek. The word transcendental is as prevalent and also as ambiguously defined as the name philosophy itself. There are as many uses, invocations, and allusions to the term as there are definitions on offer. Every generation of writers, beginning in earnest in ancient Greece and continuing through to our own time, has attempted to clarify, apply, and lay claim to the meaning of transcendental thought. Arranged chronologically, this anthology reflects the diverse uses the term has been put to over the course of two and a half millennia. It lends historical perspective to the abiding importance of the transcendental for philosophical thinking and also some sense of the complexity, richness, and continued relevance of the contested term. The Bloomsbury Anthology of Transcendental Thought, the first anthology of its kind,offers teachers and students a new viewpoint on the history and present of transcendental thought. Its selection of essential, engaging excerpts, carefully selected, edited, and introduced, brings course materials up-to-date with the state of the discipline. Review The concept of the transcendental is often invoked in philosophy and literature, but until now its history has been neglected. This volume, bringing together a variety of writings from different disciplines and different traditions, allows us to begin to reflect on the character of this elusive concept. In that sense, this volume is more than an overview of a field of study it is participating in the creation of one. --Todd May, Class of 1941 Memorial Professor of the Humanities, Clemson University, USA A splendid collection of some of the deepest thoughts of which humans are capable. The book is full of insights and surprises. --John Lachs, Centennial Professor of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University, USA In the editor's own words, this anthology is at once 'essential' and 'impossible,' since it portends to give textual shape to a topic that has defied the entire tradition of Western philosophy, which concerns the very question from which all philosophizing begins, i.e., the transcendental. In taking up this task, LaRocca assumes more the guise of a curator than an editor, and provides us with a veritable Kunstkammer, that is, a cabinet of curiosities, a theater of memory, a world theater of philosophers, artists, and writers from all ages who have addressed the transcendental as a constant and elemental aspect of philosophy and life. --Gregg Lambert, Dean's Professor of Humanities, Syracuse University, USA The Bloomsbury Anthology of Transcendental Thought brings together an excellent selection of texts from several philosophical perspectives on the question of the transcendental, demonstrating the complexity of the concept's meaning, its rich and often contradictory histories. Edited with great erudition and care by David LaRocca, the collection will be an indispensable handbook for anybody researching the heritage of that tradition. --Branka Arsic, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, USA In this unique and timely collection, David LaRocca offers us a thoughtful reminder that the very possibility and urgent task of thinking, of our acting and judging, ethics and politics, rests upon a willing exposure to an aspect of our everyday and ordinary experience that is hard to grasp and eludes most, perhaps all, epistemic criteria. Metaphysicians, mystics, and moral perfectionists of all stripes have called this 'the transcendental,' thu