Drawing connections between madness, philosophy and autobiography, this book addresses the question of how Nietzsche's madness might have affected his later works. It also explores why continental philosophy after Nietzsche is so fascinated with madness, and how it (re)considers, (re)evaluates and (re)valorizes madness. To answer these questions, the book analyzes the work of three major figures in twentieth-century French philosophy who were significantly influenced by Nietzsche: Bataille, Foucault and Derrida, examining the ways in which their responses to Nietzsche’s madness determine how they understand philosophy as well as philosophy’s relation to madness. For these philosophers, posing the question about madness renders the philosophical subject vulnerable and implicates it in a state of responsibility towards that about which it asks. Out of this analysis of their engagement with the question of madness emerges a new conception of 'autobiographical philosophy', which entails the insertion of this vulnerable subject into the philosophical work, to which each of these philosophers adheres or resists in different ways.

"What is the pervasive character of the world? The answer is force. But, as Heidegger asks next: ""What is force?"" Connors sets out to answer this question, tracing a genealogy of the idea of force through the writings of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault and Derrida. These thinkers try to pin down what force is, but know too that it is something which cannot be neutrally described. Their vigorously literary writings must therefore be read as much for the stylistic and rhetorical ways in which they render force's powerful elusiveness as for the content of their arguments. And it is perhaps literature, rather than philosophy, which best engages with force. Certainly, for Connors, these philosophical positions are foreshadowed in remarkable detail by Shakespeare's Henry V - a play shot through with forces, imaginary, military, rhetorical and bodily."

In this book, the author presents an interpretation of four thinkers: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida. In an attempt to place these thinkers within the wider context of the crisis-oriented modernism and postmodernism that have been the source of much of what is most original and creative in twentieth-century art and thought.

In The Abyss Above, Silke-Maria Weineck offers the first sustained discussion of the relationship between poetic madness and philosophy. Focusing on the mad poet as a key figure in what Plato called "the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry," Weineck explores key texts from antiquity to modernity in order to understand why we have come to associate art with irrationality. She shows that the philosophy of madness concedes to the mad a privilege that continues to haunt the Western dream of reason, and that the theory of creative madness always strains the discourse on authenticity, pitching the controlled, repeatable, but restrained labor of philosophy against the spontaneous production of poetic texts said to be, by definition, unique.

Derrida's controversial "deconstructions" of Nietzsche's meaning.

Derrida and Foucault offers a major contribution to the interpretation of these two highly influential thinkers. By tracing the moments where Derrida and Foucault’s arguments converge but also where they deviate, this book fundamentally recasts our understanding not only of these two philosophers, but of the political more broadly. Organised thematically around questions of epistemology, ethics, and politics, this is the only work to bring Derrida and Foucault’s whole oeuvres into dialogue with one another. This book frames a dialogue not only between their works of the 1960s and 1970s but also their works that deal with political questions around liberalism, capitalism and democracy. This book offers the first substantial critical assessment of Derrida and Foucault’s political work and also situates these crucial thinkers in contemporary debates in political theory.

Explores the biographical, historical and philosophical connections between Jacques Derrida and Michel FoucaultBetween Foucault and Derrida explores the notorious Cogito debate and includes: the central articles, an important piece by Jean-Marie Beyssade, along with a letter Foucault wrote to Beyssade in response both these pieces available for the first time in English translation. In the second part of the book, 10 essays written by some of the most well-known scholars working in contemporary continental philosophy address the various philosophical intersections and divergences of these two profoundly important thinkers.Key FeaturesThe first collection of the central essays involved in the Cogito debate between Foucault and DerridaIncludes the first English translations of Jean-Marie Beyssades important 1973 article on the debate and Foucault's letter in responseSome of the best-known scholars working in continental philosophy today examine where Foucault and Derrida converge and diverge, and how they ultimately shaped each others projectsContributorsAmy Allen, Penn State University, Pennsylvania, USA.Ellen Armour, Vanderbilt Divinity School, Tennessee, USA. Yubraj Aryal, University of Montreal, Canada and New York University, USA. Jean-Marie Beyssade, University of Paris IV, France.Vernon W. Cisney, Gettysburg College, Pennsylvania, USA.Fred Evans, Duquesne University, Pennsylvania, USA.Peter Gratton, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada.Leonard Lawlor, Penn State University, Pennsylvania, USA.Edward McGushin, Stonehill College, Massachusetts, USA.Nicolae Morar, University of Oregon, Oregon, USA. Jeff Nealon, Penn State University, Pennsylvania, USA.Christopher Penfield, Purdue University, Indiana, USA.Arkady Plotnitsky, Purdue University, Indiana, USA. Paul Rekret, Richmond, The American International University in London, UK. Alan Schrift, Grinnell College, Iowa, USA.

This is the author's most influential work of literary theory and criticism in which she explores the relations between literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis.

The effects of Derrida's writings have been widespread in literary circles, where they have transformed current work in literary theory. By contrast Derrida's philosophical writings--which deal with the whole range of western thought from Plato to Foucault--have not received adequate attention by philosophers. Organized around Derrida's readings of major figures in the history of philosophy, Derrida and Deconstruction focuses on and assesses his specifically philosophical contribution. Contemporary continental philosophers assess Derrida's account of philosophical tradition, with each contributor providing a critical study of Derrida's position on a philosopher she or he has already studied in depth These figures include Plato, Meister Eckhart, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Foucault.