Böcker av Daniel (Princeton University) Heller-Roazen

Homer recounts how, trapped inside a monster's cave, with nothing but his wits to call upon, Ulysses once saved himself by twisting his name. He called himself Outis: "No One,¿ or "Non-One,¿ "No Man,¿ or "Non-Man.¿ The ploy was a success. He blinded his barbaric host and eluded him, becoming anonymous, for a while, even as he bore a name. Philosophers never forgot the lesson that the ancient hero taught. From Aristotle and his commentators in Greek, Arabic, Latin, and more modern languages, from the masters of the medieval schools to Kant and his many successors, thinkers have exploited the possibilities of adding "non-¿ to the names of man. Aristotle is the first to write of "indefinite¿ or "infinite¿ names, his example being "non-man.¿ Kant turns to such terms in his theory of the infinite judgment, illustrated by the sentence, "The soul is non-mortal.¿ Such statements play major roles in the philosophies of Maimon, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Hermann Cohen. They are profoundly reinterpreted in the twentieth century by thinkers as diverse as Carnap and Heidegger.

The philosophical genealogy of a remarkable antagonist: the pirate, the key to the contemporary paradigm of the universal foe.

An original, elegant, and far-reaching philosophical inquiry into what it means to feel alive.

A far-reaching philosophical investigation into the persistence and disappearance of speech, in individuals and in linguistic communities.