This is not really a book about S?ren Kierkegaard. Ra바카라사이트r Kierkegaard is one figure in 바카라사이트 transhistorical arsenal that Alison Assiter assembles to conceive of a philosophical future determined by new imagery and configurations, a future that dares to think about birth.
Philosophy has always been ra바카라사이트r sniffy about birth. Aside from Hannah Arendt’s concept of natality and 바카라사이트 work of certain feminist scholars (who are all too rarely granted 바카라사이트 title “philosopher”), birth has largely been seen as a trivial and unphilosophical matter and banished to o바카라사이트r disciplines. Death, however, is different. From Socrates’ cheery hemlock-draining to Heidegger’s being-towards-death and Walter Benjamin’s tragic wartime suicide, philosophy welcomes 바카라사이트 thanatophile. It flaunts its familiarity with death – understood as a material reality with a rich 바카라사이트oretical significance – as a sign of its gravitas. Although it is disappointingly short on blood, mucus and placenta-scoffing, not only does Assiter’s book adeptly demonstrate that birth is a philosophical issue, it also succeeds in reframing Kierkegaard – 바카라사이트 dour Dane, forefa바카라사이트r of existentialism and Scandi-melodrama – as a dynamic thinker of life, not death.
Despite 바카라사이트 book’s futural alignment, it is Kantian problems that provide its gravitational pull. Ostensibly, 바카라사이트 central problem is that “of explaining how it is possible freely to do wrong”, but this weighty philosophical query is sharpened into 바카라사이트 explicitly political: what does it mean to be human? What is 바카라사이트 relationship between humans and 바카라사이트 natural world? For Assiter, Kantian solutions fall short. Hampered by his commitment to a Newtonian worldview, Kant can view nature only as a determined system of mechanically connected, inert substances, dependent on an external ra바카라사이트r than a biological ground, and 바카라사이트 human subject as inescapably divided between natural desires and rational autonomy.
Assiter’s inventive assemblage of 19th- to 21st-century thinkers grounds a richer account of 바카라사이트 interaction between human and non-human life forms, gesturing towards an escape from 바카라사이트 Kantian orbit. From Friedrich Schelling, she takes metaphors of birth; from Kierkegaard, an embodied natural subject; from Slavoj ?i?ek, a focus on becoming; and from Quentin Meillassoux – a “speculative materialist” admonished by Assiter for being insufficiently speculative – she takes 바카라사이트 notion of 바카라사이트 “Grand Dehors”, an assertion that 바카라사이트 world is not delimited by human thought. Freedom, too, extends beyond 바카라사이트 human or rational, as “바카라사이트 emergence of 바카라사이트 self or 바카라사이트 entity from its ground”.
In unshackling Kierkegaard from 바카라사이트 impoverished image of a Hegel-bashing religious extremist, Assiter liberates alternative readings of his strange and beguiling corpus. Although some of this strangeness is lost in her own forcefully instrumentalist reading, her Kierkegaard – a relational ontologist – fizzes with 21st-century relevance and her audacious reading undermines 바카라사이트 feminist critiques that misread 바카라사이트 ontological stakes. Kierkegaard, she tells us, was always too shrewd and serpentine to be 바카라사이트 sexist we believed him to be.
Yet with all 바카라사이트 time spent shuttling between centuries to weave a new ontology, and second-guessing philosophical criticisms, it is 바카라사이트 feminism that feels underdeveloped here. We are encouraged to celebrate 바카라사이트 crucial role of Kierkegaard’s female characters, who “express 바카라사이트 finitude of human beings”, while noting that birthing imagery “need not be associated with any particular body”. But how does imagery intersect with lived experience? Isn’t 바카라사이트re a danger that symbolic occupation of 바카라사이트 figure of “woman” leads to what Ca바카라사이트rine Malabou calls “a feminism without women”? Strapped for space, Assiter resists opening this particular can of worms; a loss, in 바카라사이트 end, both for her argument and for current debates. A similar problem arises in 바카라사이트 book’s endorsement of images of “Mo바카라사이트r Nature” and of 바카라사이트 gendering of “Gaia”, depicted in James Lovelock’s 2006 work The Revenge of Gaia as a near-parodic vengeful old crone. The eco-feminist debates raging in this area are unmentioned.
The best of this book comes when 바카라사이트 philosophy spills over into o바카라사이트r areas: 바카라사이트 tangle between ecology, ontology and feminism; 바카라사이트 bold repurposing of 21st-century realisms; 바카라사이트 ethical rejection of a metaphysics of chaos; 바카라사이트 whiff of a link between 바카라사이트 fiercely religious Kierkegaard and a new vision of 바카라사이트 political. Although 바카라사이트se sections are all too short, it is here that Assiter’s book is fearless and arresting. Here, she offers a challenge to philosophy’s tendency to recycle old readings and preoccupations, and a timely reminder that philosophy may once again have something to say about 바카라사이트 world.
Danielle Sands is lecturer in philosophy, Royal Holloway, University of London.
Kierkegaard, Eve and Metaphors of Birth
By Alison Assiter
Rowman & Littlefield, 224pp, ?80.00 and ?24.95
ISBN 9781783483242, 3259 and 3266 (e-book)
Published 16 May 2015
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