As a scholar who resides in some "odd" intellectual space (phenomenology, psychoanalysis, psychologist-aiming-to-be-philosopher, etc.), it is easy to feel like you are constructing your own language in a manner not unlike how Lacan conceptualized the structure of psychosis (especially when addressing content that itself already gets accused of obscurantism). So, it's relieving and exciting to finally get some feedback on my first book that I published a little over a year ago. Though I prefer criticism to silence, getting a very positive review is all the more uplifting, especially when it is by one of the premier reviewers of academic books in the U.S. I thought I'd share it with you all for any who are interested. The one thing that was missed by this review, perhaps because it's very understated in the work, is how much psychoanalysis inspired the very categories by which I sought to develop this phenomenological approach.
Evil and Givenness: The Thanatonic Phenomenon, by Brian W. Becker MN, Hardback, 9781793651167, Lexington Books, $95.00, Qty. Avail.: 8, 2/23/2022
Choice Reviews, June 2023 Issue: Philosophers in the Platonist tradition understood evil as nonbeing. That is to say, if being and goodness are convertible, then logically evil must be understood as nonbeing. In short, evil is not a thing but the absence of something, a gap in existence that parasitically perverts the underlying good of being. The classic example here is blindness understood as the absence of sight. Phenomenology, since at least the work of Martin Heidegger, has wanted to break with this kind of metaphysics. Jean-Luc Marion's phenomenology replaces the metaphysical analysis of being with an investigation of the givenness of phenomena in all forms. In this volume, Becker develops Marion's phenomenology into a phenomenology of evil. In other words, in response to the question of how evil is given, Becker answers that it is given in a parasitic mode—repeating classical metaphysics in a phenomenological register. The parasitic givenness of evil subdivides into four modes, which Becker calls "The Four Horsemen of the Thanatonic" (the second part of three of this volume). A careful, rigorous development of Marion's phenomenology, the book is unique and thought-provoking, but it is not for the faint-hearted or those unfamiliar with recent French phenomenology in general and Marion's work in particular. Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.
Singularity as Sublimity | A Philosophy Channel
As a scholar who resides in some "odd" intellectual space (phenomenology, psychoanalysis, psychologist-aiming-to-be-philosopher, etc.), it is easy to feel like you are constructing your own language in a manner not unlike how Lacan conceptualized the structure of psychosis (especially when addressing content that itself already gets accused of obscurantism). So, it's relieving and exciting to finally get some feedback on my first book that I published a little over a year ago. Though I prefer criticism to silence, getting a very positive review is all the more uplifting, especially when it is by one of the premier reviewers of academic books in the U.S. I thought I'd share it with you all for any who are interested. The one thing that was missed by this review, perhaps because it's very understated in the work, is how much psychoanalysis inspired the very categories by which I sought to develop this phenomenological approach.
Evil and Givenness: The Thanatonic Phenomenon, by Brian W. Becker
MN, Hardback, 9781793651167, Lexington Books, $95.00, Qty. Avail.: 8, 2/23/2022
Choice Reviews, June 2023 Issue: Philosophers in the Platonist tradition understood evil as nonbeing. That is to say, if being and goodness are convertible, then logically evil must be understood as nonbeing. In short, evil is not a thing but the absence of something, a gap in existence that parasitically perverts the underlying good of being. The classic example here is blindness understood as the absence of sight. Phenomenology, since at least the work of Martin Heidegger, has wanted to break with this kind of metaphysics. Jean-Luc Marion's phenomenology replaces the metaphysical analysis of being with an investigation of the givenness of phenomena in all forms. In this volume, Becker develops Marion's phenomenology into a phenomenology of evil. In other words, in response to the question of how evil is given, Becker answers that it is given in a parasitic mode—repeating classical metaphysics in a phenomenological register. The parasitic givenness of evil subdivides into four modes, which Becker calls "The Four Horsemen of the Thanatonic" (the second part of three of this volume). A careful, rigorous development of Marion's phenomenology, the book is unique and thought-provoking, but it is not for the faint-hearted or those unfamiliar with recent French phenomenology in general and Marion's work in particular. Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.
2 years ago | [YT] | 26