The Fate of Place: A Philosophical HistoryIn this imaginative and comprehensive study, Edward Casey, one of the most incisive interpreters of the Continental philosophical tradition, offers a philosophical history of the evolving conceptualizations of place and space in Western thought. Not merely a presentation of the ideas of other philosophers, The Fate of Place is acutely sensitive to silences, absences, and missed opportunities in the complex history of philosophical approaches to space and place. A central theme is the increasing neglect of place in favor of space from the seventh century A.D. onward, amounting to the virtual exclusion of place by the end of the eighteenth century. Casey begins with mythological and religious creation stories and the theories of Plato and Aristotle and then explores the heritage of Neoplatonic, medieval, and Renaissance speculations about space. He presents an impressive history of the birth of modern spatial conceptions in the writings of Newton, Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant and delineates the evolution of twentieth-century phenomenological approaches in the work of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Bachelard, and Heidegger. In the book's final section, Casey explores the postmodern theories of Foucault, Derrida, Tschumi, Deleuze and Guattari, and Irigaray. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
absolute space Apsu architecture Archytas Aristotelian Aristotle Aristotle's Atomists Bachelard becomes bodily Bruno century chaos chap chora cited conceived Concepts of Space constitute cosmic cosmogony Cosmology cosmos creation critique Damascius Dasein Deleuze Demiurge Derrida Descartes dimensions discussion dwelling earth Edmund Husserls empty entities Enuma Elish Epicurus essay exist extension external place finite Gassendi geometrical God’s Heidegger Heidegger’s human Husserl Iamblichus Ibid idea implacement infinite space infinity Irigaray italics Kant Kant's Leibniz limit lived body locus Marduk matter merely Merleau-Ponty metaphysical modern motion move nature Neoplatonic Newton occupy orientation particular places Philoponus Philosophical phrase physical place and space Plato Poetics of Space position possible precisely present-at-hand Process and Reality Proclus pure ready-to-hand Receptacle region relation sense simple location Simplicius situation smooth space spatial substance surface things thinkers thinking Thousand Plateaus Tiamat Timaeus tion topos trans translation University Press void Whitehead