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. |
Contents
Avoiding the Void Primeval Patterns | 3 |
Mastering the Matrix The Enuma Elish and Platos Timaeus | 23 |
Place as Container Aristotles Physics | 50 |
Interlude | 75 |
The Emergence of Space in Hellenistic and Neoplatonic Thought | 79 |
The Ascent of Infinite Space Medieval and Renaissance Speculations | 103 |
Interim | 133 |
Modern Space as Absolute Gassendi and Newton | 137 |
Modern Space as Site and Point Position Panopticon and Pure Form | 180 |
Transition | 197 |
By Way of Body Kant Whitehead Husserl MerleauPonty | 202 |
Proceeding to Place by Indirection Heidegger | 243 |
Giving a Face to Place in the Present Bachelard Foucault Deleuze and Guattari Derrida Irigaray | 285 |
Places Rediscovered | 331 |
Notes | 343 |
479 | |
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Common terms and phrases
absolute space Apsu architecture Archytas Aristotelian Aristotle Aristotle's Atomists Bachelard becomes bodily Bruno century chaos chap chōra cited conceived Concepts of Space constitute cosmic cosmogony Cosmology cosmos creation critique Damascius Dasein Deleuze Demiurge Derrida Descartes discussion dwelling earth Edmund Husserls empty entities Enuma Elish Epicurus essay exist extension external place finite Gassendi geometrical given 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 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 thought Thousand Plateaus Tiamat Timaeus tion topos trans translation University Press void Whitehead