This book explores future philosophical inquiries through the question "What is the Matrix?" Using the Matrix film trilogy as a lens, it delves into themes like simulation, culture, and mythology, challenging the distinction between appearance and reality by emphasizing the concrete difference between dreaming and waking.
The book addresses questions in the history and philosophy of mathematics. It is part of a long-term project rethinking the status of metaphysics in the modern European-American tradition.
Exploring the nature of reason, this book challenges traditional philosophical perspectives that focus solely on rational justifications. It delves into the complexities of human thought, examining how emotions, experiences, and social contexts influence reasoning. By integrating various philosophical traditions, the author offers a nuanced understanding of reason that transcends mere logic, inviting readers to reconsider the foundations of rational thought and its implications for personal and societal decision-making.
Wittgenstein said that philosophers should greet each other, not by saying "hello," but rather "take your time." But what is time? Time is money, but this points to an even better answer to this basic question for our modern epoch: time is acceleration. In a cultural system which stresses economic efficiency, the quicker route is always the more prized, if not always the better one. Wittgenstein's dictum thus constitutes an act of rebellion against the dominant vector of our culture, but as such it threatens to become (quickly) anti-modern. We need an approach to "reading" our information-rich culture which is not reactionary but rather meets its accelerated condition. In this book, O. Bradley Bassler develops a toolkit for acute reading of our modern pace, not through withdrawal but rather through active engagement with a broad range of disciplines. The main characters in this drama comprise a cast of master readers: Hannah Arendt, Jean Starobinski, Harold Bloom, Angus Fletcher, Hans Blumenberg and John Ashbery, with secondary figures drawn from the readers and critics whom this central group suggests. We must develop a vocabulary of pacing, reflecting our modern distance from classical sources and the concomitant acceleration of our contemporary condition. Only in this way can we begin to situate the phenomenon of modernity within the larger scales of human culture and history.
This book addresses the philosophy of Kant and the poetry of Shelley as historical starting points for a new way of thinking in the modern age. Fusing together critical philosophy and visionary poetry, Bassler develops the notion of visionary critique, or paraphysics, as a model for future philosophical endeavor. This philosophical practice is rooted in the concept of the indefinite power associated with the sublime in both Kant and Shelley’s work, to which the notion of the parafinite or indefinitely large is extended in this book.