Ben Sigmund's Books

Darwin's Psychology

By: Ben Bradley

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Darwin has long been hailed as forefather to behavioural science, especially nowadays, with the growing popularity of evolutionary psychologies. Yet, until now, his contribution to the field of psychology has been somewhat understated. This is the first book ever to examine the riches of what Darwin himself wrote about psychological matters. It unearths a Darwin new to contemporary science, whose first concern is the agency of organisms — from which he derives both his psychology, and his theory of evolution. A deep reading of Darwin's writings on climbing plants and babies, blushing and bower-birds, worms and facial movements, shows that, for Darwin, evolution does not explain everything about human action. Group-life and culture are also keys, whether we discuss the dynamics of conscience or the dramas of desire. Thus his treatment of facial actions sets out from the anatomy and physiology of human facial movements, and shows how these gain meanings through their recognition by others. A discussion of blushing extends his theory to the way reading others' expressions rebounds on ourselves — I care about how I think you read me. This dynamic proves central to how Darwin understands sexual desire, the production of conscience and of social standards through group dynamics, and the role of culture in human agency. Presenting a new Darwin to science, and showing how widely Darwin's understanding of evolution and agency has been misunderstood and misrepresented in biology and the social sciences, this important new book lights a new way forward for those who want to build psychology on the foundation of evolutionary biology

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Page Count

304

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0191017906

ISBN 13

9780191017902

Modernism, Ethics and the Political Imagination

Living Wrong Life Rightly

By: Ben Ware

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Modernism, Ethics and the Political Imagination

Living Wrong Life Rightly

By: Ben Ware

In this groundbreaking new study, Ben Ware carries out a bold reassessment of the relationship between modernism and ethics, arguing that modernist literature and philosophy offer more than simply a snapshot of the moral conflicts of the past: they provide a crucial point of reference for today’s emancipatory struggles. Modernism in this assessment is characterized not only by a concern with language and aesthetic creativity, but also by a preoccupation with the question of how to live. Investigating ethical ideas in Wittgenstein, Beckett, Kierkegaard, Kant, Cavell, Marx, Henry James and Lacan, Ware demonstrates how these thinkers can bring us to a new understanding of a constellation of issues which contemporary radical thought must re-visit: utopia, repetition, perfectionism, subtraction, negativity, critique, absence, duty, revolution and political love. The result is a timely and provocative intervention, which re-draws the boundaries for future debates on the ethics and politics of modernism.

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Page Count

193

Publisher

Springer

Published Date

ISBN 10

1137555033

ISBN 13

9781137555038

Lateness and Modern European Literature

By: Ben Hutchinson

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Lateness and Modern European Literature

By: Ben Hutchinson

Modern European literature has traditionally been seen as a series of attempts to assert successive styles of writing as 'new'. In this groundbreaking study, Ben Hutchinson argues that literary modernity can in fact be understood not as that which is new, but as that which is 'late'. Exploring the ways in which European literature repeatedly defines itself through a sense of senescence or epigonality, Hutchinson shows that the shifting manifestations of lateness since romanticism express modernity's continuing quest for legitimacy. With reference to a wide range of authors--from Mary Shelley, Chateaubriand, and Immermann, via Baudelaire, Henry James, and Nietzsche, to Val ry, Djuna Barnes, and Adorno--he combines close readings of canonical texts with historical and theoretical comparisons of numerous national contexts. Out of this broad comparative sweep emerges a taxonomy of lateness, of the diverse ways in which modern writers can be understood, in the words of Nietzsche, as 'creatures facing backwards'. Ambitious and original, Lateness and Modern European Literature offers a significant new model for understanding literary modernity.

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Page Count

403

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0198767692

ISBN 13

9780198767695

Book's by Ben Sigmund

Darwin's Psychology

Darwin's Psychology

Modernism, Ethics and the Political Imagination

Modernism, Ethics and the Political Imagination

Lateness and Modern European Literature

Lateness and Modern European Literature

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