Ermanno Bencivenga

"Can we regard ourselves as having free will? What is the place of values in a world of facts? What grounds the authority of moral injunctions, and why should we care about them? Unless we provide satisfactory answers to these questions, ethics has no credible status and is likely to be subsumed by psychology, history, or rational decision theory. According to Ermanno Bencivenga, this outcome is both common and regrettable." "Bencivenga points to Immanuel Kant for the solution. Kant's philosophy is a sustained, bold, and successful effort aimed at offering us the answers we need. Ethics Vindicated is a clear and thorough account of this effort that builds on Bencivenga's previous interpretation of transcendental philosophy (as articulated in his Kant's Copernican Revolution) and draws on the entire Kantian corpus."--Jacket.

"In Dancing Souls Bencivenga addresses the crucial question of how the subject can be one and multiple at the same time. Without reducing multiplicity to juxtaposition (or phenomenological schizophrenia), or simple unity to objectivity, Bencivenga locates the subject's unity between various existential positions. He finds that this phenomenon is like the disciplined movement of the dancer through space. Bencivenga explores the structure of this ontological betweenness in its various levels of complexity from the most intimately personal to the communal and the political.". "Written in a style that is at once highly informed by scholarship while also remaining very personal and honest, Bencivenga does not provide easy answers but struggles with the reader. The novel and engaging form of this book, along with its unique treatment of some of the most perennially engaging philosophical questions will satisfly the most serious scholars, while also appealing to educated readers interested in social ethics and existentialism."--BOOK JACKET.

"This account of Hegelian logic makes a case for its enormous seductiveness, its surprising presence in the collective consciousness, and the dangers associated therewith. Offering comprehensive coverage of Hegel's important works, Ermanno Bencivenga avoids getting bogged down in short-lived scholarly debates to provide a work of permanent significance and usefulness.". "This study first sets dialectical logic in opposition to its fundamental alternative - Aristotelian, analytic logic - by presenting a concise account of the latter and bringing out the main points of contrast. Bencivenga then introduces Hegel's logic as a semantics of narratives: the initial metaphor is Wittgenstein's family resemblances, which gets articulated by addressing Hegelian absolute idealism. The notion of a narrative is further clarified in terms of (narrative) probability. Bencivenga also discusses both memory and consciousness, and he addresses the puzzle of how spiritual movement can be dominated by necessity and yet be creative at the same time. The book considers the many ways in which Hegel can be conceived to be at the end of history: some much less problematic than ordinarily thought, others responsible for serious intellectual dangers. The book ends with applications of Hegelian logic to the history of philosophy, discursive strategies, and promises, as well as with a final formulation of the challenge presented by the Hegelian viewpoint." "This fresh re-evaluation of the significance of Hegel on the contemporary scene is written in a clear and accessible style, making it excellent reading for philosophers, political scientists, literary theorists, and their students."--BOOK JACKET.

Ermanno Bencivenga offers a stylistically and conceptually exciting investigation of the nature of language, mind, and personhood and the many ways the three connect. Bencivenga, an important iconoclastic voice in contemporary American philosophy, contests the basic assumptions of analytic (and also, to an extent, postmodern) approaches to these topics. His exploration leads through fascinating discussions of education, courage, pain, time and history, selfhood, subjectivity and objectivity, reality, facts, the empirical, power and transgression, silence, privacy and publicity, and play - all themes that are shown to be integral to our thinking about language. Relentlessly bending the rules, Bencivenga frustrates our expectations of a "proper" theory of language. He invokes the transgressions of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein even as he appropriates the aphoristic style of Wittgenstein's Tractatus.

Paluten ist ein echter Abenteurer und kann schon gar nicht mehr zählen, wie oft er Freedom nun schon gerettet hat. Professor Entes Klonmaschine hat sich dabei in der Vergangenheit als besonders hilfreich erwiesen. Doch ausgerechnet die geht jetzt kaputt. Für die Reparatur benötigt er ein besonders seltenes Metall, welches es nur auf dem Gipfel des höchsten und gefährlichsten Berg Freedoms gibt: Mount Schmeverest. Paluten und Edgar machen sich natürlich sofort auf den Weg, um das seltene Metall zu besorgen, stoßen dabei allerdings auf unerwartete Gefahren und unvorhergesehene Hindernisse. Schaffen sie es, diesen Widrigkeiten zu trotzen und das Metall zu bekommen?