Overview

Since its inception, philosophy has struggled to perfect individual understanding through discussion and dialogue based in personal, poetic, or dramatic investigation. The positions of such philosophers as Socrates, Spinoza, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Derrida differ in almost every respect, yet these thinkers all share a common method of practicing philosophy-not as a detached, intellectual discipline, but as a worldly art. What is the love that turns into knowledge and how is the knowledge we seek already a form of love? Reading key texts from Socrates to Derrida, this book addresses the fundamental tension between love and knowledge that informs the history of Western philosophy. LoveKnowledge returns to the long tradition of philosophy as an exercise not only of the mind but also of the soul, asking whether philosophy can shape and inform our lives and communities.

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9780231160445

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Reviews

Brand steps away from the technicalities that populate the history of philosophy as an academic discipline, just as he shows himself a truly sanguine observer who stays above the fray of the different and diverging currents and debates of our days. What results is an at once greatly informative and deeply personal book, whose chapters serve as vignettes and epitomize the best of philosophical thinking about a question that matters to most. -- Hent de Vries, John Hopkins University Brand takes the reader on a journey through the history of philosophy, examining works by Plato, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Derrida. Brand does a wonderful job of showing how the relation between love/knowledge weaves its way through these various authors. -- Steven Levine, University of Massachusetts

Brand steps away from the technicalities that populate the history of philosophy as an academic discipline, just as he shows himself a truly sanguine observer who stays above the fray of the different and diverging currents and debates of our days. What results is an at once greatly informative and deeply personal book, whose chapters serve as vignettes and epitomize the best of philosophical thinking about a question that matters to most. -- Hent de Vries, John Hopkins University Brand takes the reader on a journey through the history of philosophy, examining works by Plato, Spinoza, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Derrida. Brand does a wonderful job of showing how the relation between love/knowledge weaves its way through these various authors. -- Steven Levine, University of Massachusetts

Roy Brand steps away from the technicalities that populate the history of philosophy as an academic discipline, just as he shows himself a truly sanguine observer who stays above the fray of the different and diverging currents and debates of our days. What results is an at once greatly informative and deeply personal book, with chapters that serve as vignettes and epitomize the best of philosophical thinking about a question that matters to most. -- Hent de Vries, John Hopkins University, author of Religion and Violence: Philosophical Perspectives from Kant to Derrida Roy Brand takes the reader on a journey through the history of philosophy, examining works by Plato, Spinoza, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Derrida. He does a wonderful job of showing how the relation between love/knowledge weaves its way through these various authors. -- Steven Levine, University of Massachusetts, Boston compelling Portland Book Review 5/10/2013

Author Information

Roy Brand is Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate School of Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem and the Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in the Arts at Tel Aviv University; he also founded and served as Director and Chief Curator of Yaffo 23, a center for art and culture in downtown Jerusalem. He is the author of LoveKnowledge: The Life of Philosophy from Socrates to Derrida (Columbia, 2012), the editor and translator of Borradori: Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Habermas and Derrida (Chicago, 2004), and the editor and consultant curator of Bare Life (Museum on the Seam, 2007).

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