Arne Vetlesen's Books

A Philosophy of Pain

By: Arne Vetlesen

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“Living involves being exposed to pain every second—not necessarily as an insistent reality, but always as a possibility,” writes Arne Vetlesen in A Philosophy of Pain, a thought-provoking look at an inevitable and essential aspect of the human condition. Here, Vetlesen addresses pain in many forms, including the pain inflicted during torture; the pain suffered in disease; the pain accompanying anxiety, grief, and depression; and the pain brought by violence. He examines the dual nature of pain: how we attempt to avoid it as much as possible in our daily lives, and yet conversely, we obtain a thrill from seeking it. Vetlesen’s analysis of pain is revealing, plumbing the very center of many of our most intense and complicated emotions. He looks at pain within different arenas of modern life such as family and work, and he specifically probes at a very common modern phenomenon, the idea of pushing oneself to the limit. Engaging throughout with the ideas of thinkers such as Søren Kierkegaard, Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Alice Miller, Susan Sontag, and Melanie Klein, A Philosophy of Pain asks which came first, thinking or feeling, and explores the concept and possibility of empathy. Vetlesen offers an original and insightful perspective on something that all of us suffer and endure—from a sprained ankle to a broken heart. Although pain is in itself unpleasant, our ability to feel it reminds us that we are alive.

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170

Publisher

Reaktion Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1861897006

ISBN 13

9781861897008

Evil and Human Agency

Understanding Collective Evildoing

By: Arne Johan Vetlesen

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Evil and Human Agency

Understanding Collective Evildoing

By: Arne Johan Vetlesen

Arne Johan Vetlesen argues that to do evil is to intentionally inflict pain on another human being, against his or her will, and cause serious and foreseeable harm. Vetlesen investigates why and in what sort of circumstances such a desire arises, and how it is channeled, or exploited, into collective evildoing. He argues that such evildoing, pitting whole groups against each other, springs from a combination of character, situation, and social structure. Vetlesen shows how closely perpetrators, victims, and bystanders interact, and how aspects of human agency are recognized, denied, and projected by different agents.

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Page Count

328

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0521856949

ISBN 13

9780521856942

Animal Lives and Why They Matter

By: Arne Johan Vetlesen

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Animal Lives and Why They Matter

By: Arne Johan Vetlesen

This book engages with the changing ways in which we, as a society and culture, look upon and interact with animals, stressing how much animals differ among themselves. An invitation to appreciate the peculiar role of animals in telling important if uncomfortable truths about who we are and where we are heading – namely, towards a world so much poorer in cultural, moral, and biological diversity – as a result of the ongoing decimation of so many other species. Drawing on a variety of thought ranging from that of Midgley, Plumwood, and Murdoch to Levinas, Derrida, and Habermas, from ecophilosophers to conservation biologists, Animal Lives and Why They Matter asks how we have come to this, and what an alternative, less destructive approach to our now precarious coexistence with animals might look like. Spanning the disciplines of philosophy, psychology, and anthropology, this enquiry into various cross-species relationships and encounters will appeal to scholars and students across the humanities and social sciences with interests in philosophy, ethics, human-animal interaction, and environmental thought.

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290

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Published Date

ISBN 10

1000736040

ISBN 13

9781000736045

Animal Lives and Why They Matter

By: Arne Johan Vetlesen

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Animal Lives and Why They Matter

By: Arne Johan Vetlesen

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290

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Taylor & Francis

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1000736040

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9781000736045

The Denial of Nature

Environmental philosophy in the era of global capitalism

By: Arne Johan Vetlesen

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The Denial of Nature

Environmental philosophy in the era of global capitalism

By: Arne Johan Vetlesen

A study of the increasingly precarious relationship between humans and nature, this book seeks to go beyond work already contributed to the environmental movement. It does so by highlighting the importance of experiencing, rather than merely theorizing nature, while realizing that such experience is becoming increasingly rare, thus reinforcing the estrangement from nature that is a source of its ongoing human-caused destruction. In his original approach to environmental philosophy, the author argues for the reinstatement of nature's value outside of its exploitative usefulness for human ends. Such a perspective emphasizes the extent to which the environmental problem is a concrete reality requiring urgent action, based on a multi-sensuous appreciation of humans' dependence on nonhuman lifeforms. Designed as an accompaniment to undergraduate and postgraduate research, The Denial of Nature draws on empirically informed literature from the social sciences to examine what life is really like for humans and nature in the era of global capitalism. The book contends that capitalist society exploits nature - both in the form of human capital and natural capital - more relentlessly than any other and offers an environmental philosophy which actively opposes current developments. Through discussions of the work of Teresa Brennan, Theodor Adorno, Martin Heidegger and Hans Jonas, and through a radical critique of the nature deficit in Jürgen Habermas' theory of capitalist modernity, The Denial of Nature relies on insights from Critical Realism to bring together several, seldom-linked philosophies and suggest a new approach to the heavily-discussed question of environmental ethics. Arne Johan Vetlesen is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oslo, Norway and the author of twenty books among them Perception, Empathy and Judgment: An Inquiry into the Preconditions of Moral Performance (1994), Closenes: An Ethics (with H. Jodalen; 1997), Evil and Human Agency (2005) and A Philosophy of Pain (2010). .

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Page Count

251

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1317906373

ISBN 13

9781317906377

Perception, Empathy, and Judgment

An Inquiry into the Preconditions of Moral Performance

By: Arne Johan Vetlesen

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Perception, Empathy, and Judgment

An Inquiry into the Preconditions of Moral Performance

By: Arne Johan Vetlesen

In Perception, Empathy, and Judgment Arne Johan Vetlesen focuses on the indispensable role of emotion, especially the faculty of empathy, in morality. He contends that moral conduct is severely threatened once empathy is prevented from taking part in an interplay with cognitive faculties (such as abstraction or imagination) in acts of moral perception and judgment. Drawing on developmental psychology, especially British "object relations" theory, to illuminate the nature and functioning of empathy, Vetlesen shows how moral performance is constituted by a sequence involving perception, judgment, and action, with an interplay between the agent's emotional (empathic) and cognitive faculties occurring at each stage. In the powerful tradition from Kant to present-day theorists such as Kohlberg, Rawls, and Habermas, reason is privileged over feeling and judgment over perception, in such a way that basic philosophical questions remain unasked. Vetlesen focuses our attention on these questions and challenges the long-standing assertion that emotions are damaging to moral response. In the final chapter he relates his argument to recent feminist critiques that have also castigated moral theorists in the Kantian tradition for their refusal to recognize a role for emotion in morality. While the book's argument is philosophical, its method and scope are interdisciplinary. In addition to critiques of such philosophers as Arendt, MacIntyre, and Habermas, it contains discussions of specific historical, ideological, and sociological factors that may cause "numbing"—selective or broad-ranging, pathological insensitivity—in humans. The Nazis' mass killing of Jews is studied to illuminate these and other relevant empirical aspects of large-scale immoral action.

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Page Count

410

Publisher

Penn State Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0271043393

ISBN 13

9780271043395

Evil and Human Agency

Understanding Collective Evildoing

By: Arne Johan Vetlesen

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Evil and Human Agency

Understanding Collective Evildoing

By: Arne Johan Vetlesen

Evil is a poorly understood phenomenon. In this provocative 2005 book, Professor Vetlesen argues that to do evil is to intentionally inflict pain on another human being, against his or her will, and causing serious and foreseeable harm. Vetlesen investigates why and in what sort of circumstances such a desire arises, and how it is channeled, or exploited, into collective evildoing. He argues that such evildoing, pitting whole groups against each other, springs from a combination of character, situation, and social structure. By combining a philosophical approach inspired by Hannah Arendt, a psychological approach inspired by C. Fred Alford and a sociological approach inspired by Zygmunt Bauman, and bringing these to bear on the Holocaust and ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, Vetlesen shows how closely perpetrators, victims, and bystanders interact, and how aspects of human agency are recognized, denied, and projected by different agents.

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Page Count

336

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1139448846

ISBN 13

9781139448840

A Philosophy of Pain

By: Arne Vetlesen

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A Philosophy of Pain

By: Arne Vetlesen

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170

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Reaktion Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1861897006

ISBN 13

9781861897008

Cosmologies of the Anthropocene

Panpsychism, Animism, and the Limits of Posthumanism

By: Arne Johan Vetlesen

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Cosmologies of the Anthropocene

Panpsychism, Animism, and the Limits of Posthumanism

By: Arne Johan Vetlesen

This book engages with the classic philosophical question of mind and matter, seeking to show its altered meaning and acuteness in the era of the Anthropocene. Arguing that matter, and, more broadly, the natural world, has been misconceived since Descartes, it explores the devastating impact that this has had in practice in the West. As such, alternatives are needed, whether philosophical ones such as those offered by figures such as Whitehead and Nagel, or posthumanist ones such as those developed by Barad and Latour. Drawing on recent anthropological work ignored by philosophers and sociologists alike, the author considers a radical alternative cosmology: animism understood as panpsychism in practice. This understanding of mind and matter, of culture and nature, is then turned against present-day posthumanist critiques of what the Anthropocene amounts to, showing them up as philosophically misguided, politically mute, and ethically wanting. A ground-breaking reconceptualization of the natural world and our treatment of it, Cosmologies of the Anthropocene will appeal to scholars of sociology, social theory, philosophy and anthropology with interests in our understanding of and relationship with nature.

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378

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

0429594097

ISBN 13

9780429594090

Cosmologies of the Anthropocene

Panpsychism, Animism, and the Limits of Posthumanism

By: Arne Johan Vetlesen

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Cosmologies of the Anthropocene

Panpsychism, Animism, and the Limits of Posthumanism

By: Arne Johan Vetlesen

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378

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Routledge

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0429594097

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9780429594090

Book's by Arne Vetlesen

A Philosophy of Pain

A Philosophy of Pain

Evil and Human Agency

Evil and Human Agency

Animal Lives and Why They Matter

Animal Lives and Why They Matter

Animal Lives and Why They Matter

Animal Lives and Why They Matter

The Denial of Nature

The Denial of Nature

Perception, Empathy, and Judgment

Perception, Empathy, and Judgment

Evil and Human Agency

Evil and Human Agency

A Philosophy of Pain

A Philosophy of Pain

Cosmologies of the Anthropocene

Cosmologies of the Anthropocene

Cosmologies of the Anthropocene

Cosmologies of the Anthropocene

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