How is it that the most carefully-laid business strategies can go horribly wrong when put into practice? Robert Rowland Smith's answer, based on years of experience in high-level consultancy, is that 'reality eats strategy for breakfast': strategy, based on projections and assuming business is a rational pursuit, can't deal with the messy reality of life. More helpful are these practical questions that can help you plan what to do when your business comes into contact with reality. From learning the lessons of the past (rather than fixating on the future) to finding out what your business is really about, he explains the real-life factors that lead to success or failure. Including many new examples from the front line, from all around the world, The Reality Test will help you establish yourself as more effective and distinctive than your competitors, who follow the same rigid theoretical avenues. Whether you ask 'Are you making enough of your weaknesses?' or 'Are you 100% productive 100% of the time?', it's time to stop living in strategy La-La Land and face reality.
If life is meaningless as Sartre suggests, what is the point of being born? What does Freud have to say about losing one's virginity or Nietzsche about having a mid-life crisis? From birth to death (and beyond), the best brains in history have thought long and hard about the meaning behind the landmarks that shape our lives - and now acclaimed popular philosopher Robert Rowland Smith brings their genius together for the first time in this smart, witty and accessible journey through life's ups and downs. Drawing on philosophy, art, literature and psychology, Driving with Plato explores the real meaning of the hoops we all have to jump through. You'll hear from Aristotle on starting school, learn from St Paul about falling in love, and get tips from Cicero on becoming wise in your old age. Whether you are learning to drive or about to get married, Driving with Plato is certain to enlighten and entertain.
Robert Rowland Smith takes Freud's work on the death-drive and compares it with other philosophies of death - Pascal, Heidegger and Derrida in particular. He also applies it in a new way to literature and art - to Shakespeare, Rothko and Katharina Fritsch, among others. He asks whether artworks are dead or alive, if artistic creativity isn't actually a form of destruction, and whether our ability to be seduced by fine words means we don't put our selves at risk of death. In doing so, he proposes a new theory of aesthetics in which artworks and literary texts have a death-drive of their own, not least by their defining ability to turn away from all that is real, and where the effects of the death-drive mean that we are constantly living in imaginary, rhetorical or 'artistic' worlds. The book also provides a valuable introduction to the rich tradition of work on the death-drive since Freud.Key Features* Includes a general introduction to the death-drive* Presents an original theory of aesthetics* Analyses both theoretical and clinical psychoanalysis* Offers in-depth treatment of Freud* Provides an overview of philosophies of death
All too often, the history of poetry criticism in the 20th Century is told as a tale of two sides. While 'Lit crit' pored over the author's every line, 'Theory' stood on the shoulder of texts to gaze into the metaphysical mists. Drawing on the key insights of both Lit crit and Theory, On Modern Poetry tries to get beyond the opposition between them, proposing instead a 'total criticism' that draws on all resources available. It combines 'analytic irony' with 'imaginative empathy' in order to generate fresh insights. The themes discussed in the first part of the book include tradition, voice, rhyme, rhetoric, and objects, bringing in critics such as Eliot, Heidegger, Empson, Blackmur, and De Man. The second part examines texts by Tennyson, Symons, Hopkins, Larkin and Prynne. An original exploration of poetry and its criticism, On Modern Poetry is an essential guide for readers and students at all levels.
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