Vision's Invisibles

Philosophical Explorations

By Véronique M. Fóti

Subjects: Aesthetics
Series: SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy
Paperback : 9780791457344, 144 pages, July 2003
Hardcover : 9780791457337, 144 pages, July 2003

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Table of contents

Acknowledgments

Prospect

PART I. GREEK PHILOSOPHY

1. Glimpsing Alterity and Differentiation: Vision and the Heraclitean Logos

2. Beauty, Eros, and Blindness in the Platonic Education of Vision

PART II. THE LEGACY OF DESCARTES

3. Mechanism, Reasoning, and the Institution of Nature

4. The Specularity of Representation: Foucault, Velázquez, Descartes

PART III. POST-PHENOMENOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

5. The Gravity and (In)Visibility of Flesh: Merleau-Ponty, Nancy, Derrida

6. Imaging Invisibles: Heidegger's Meditation

Retrospect

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index of Persons

Index of Topics

Examines the construction of vision in the works of Heraclitus, Plato, Descartes, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Nancy, and Derrida.

Description

Although philosophy today has abandoned its former fascination with transcendent invisibles, it has left largely unexamined historical articulations of the divide between 'the visible' and 'the invisible. ' Vision's Invisibles argues that such a self-examination is necessary for the sensitization of philosophical sight, as well as for engagements with visuality in other domains. To this end, it investigates a range of challenging understandings of visuality in its relation to invisibles, as articulated in the texts of key historical thinkers—Heraclitus, Plato, and Descartes—and of twentieth-century philosophers, including Foucault, Merleau-Ponty, Nancy, Derrida, and Heidegger.

Véronique M. Fóti is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Penn State at University Park.