The Science, Politics, and Ontology of Life-Philosophy

This book should be in every library and in many personal collections. Campbell and Bruno have assembled essays from an international selection of today's leading thinkers on philosophy of life, offering new directions to this ongoing branch of thought. -- Bernard Freydberg, Scholar in Residence, Duquesne University, USA 20121213 This collection provides a highly original synthesis of conceptions of life that bring philosophy, especially the "life-philosophy" initiated by Nietzsche, Dilthey and Bergson, into dialogue with contemporary life sciences. Accessible and eminently readable, the essays in this volume give a broad, comprehensive account of the many complications that we face today, with increased impact of technology and life sciences on "life itself." Key issues concerning the "right to life" and artificial reproduction of life, the ontology and politics of genomics and "the good life," are productively brought to light by first-class philosophical analysis engaging post-existentialist thought in Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Arendt, Foucault, Jonas, Lyotard and Derrida. -- Emilia Angelova, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Trent University, Canada 20130107 In a world where we encounter new technologies and new forms of life every day, this volume is a clarion call to think about what life means now. Each author uncovers fresh resources in the western philosophical tradition for thinking deeply about life and meaning by reaching behind debates over biotechnology and biopower and beyond the dominant figures of Foucault and Deleuze. They tap into strands of thought running from Bergson back through Nietzsche and Dilthey, and from Foucault all the way back to Pyrrho and the Ancient Sceptics. This is a valuable volume that belongs on the bookshelf of everyone who believes in keeping the life in the examined life. -- Anne O'Byrne, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Stony Brook University, USA 20130108