GENERAL INTEREST
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The Self in the West and East Asia Being or Becoming JIN LI Brown University ‘This book’s comparison of the “East Asian self” with the “Western self” features extensive crosscultural knowledge of psychological theories and studies of how the self is conceived and functions. The presentation is immensely clear, engaging, and rich in its details, vivid in its recounting of the author’s illustrative personal experiences in Confucian and Western societies. Researchers in the field will benefit from this book, but perhaps more importantly, we all need to better understand one another in a world riven by misperception and antagonism.’ David Wong, Duke University ‘Jin Li brings the entire academy in all of its parts to her interrogation of how “self” has been understood within the Western and East Asian cultural narratives. The argument she mounts for fundamental cultural differences is kaleidoscopic, looking at the phenomenon of self from a broad range of intradisciplinary perspectives. Capacious and compelling, her thesis is certainly informed by her own discipline of psychology, both the theoretical and the empirical, but also by history, philosophy, philology, classical studies, and perhaps most importantly, by her own personal story.’ Roger T. Ames, Peking University 229 x 152mm • 367 pages • UK September 2024, US November 2024 HB • 978-1-5095-6136-0 • £30.00 / $45.00 / €36.90 ebook available
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Byung-Chul Han A Critical Introduction STEVEN KNEPPER, ETHAN STONEMAN & ROBERT WYLLIE Virginia Military Institute; Hillsdale College; Ashland University ‘Han’s most striking qualities are his unfailing sense for topicality and his ability to write philosophy “for all and none“. This introduction brings coherence to a work that seems to follow the ever-changing buzzwords of the present. The authors reveal the overall ethos in Han’s thought: philosophy as a therapy to survive neoliberal modernity.’ Eva Horn, University of Vienna Byung-Chul Han is one of the most important living philosophers. In response to the idea that new technological devices expand our freedom, he argues that they lead to burnout and self-absorption and that we must redevelop contemplative practices which slow us down. He has brought to his thought forms of deep cosmopolitanism developed from both Zen Buddhism and a renewed Romanticism. This book is the first critical introduction to Han’s body of work. Knepper, Stoneman, and Wyllie explore Han’s rich oeuvre and his contributions to a range of disciplines. This lively book is essential reading for anyone getting to grips with Han’s extraordinary work. Series: Key Contemporary Thinkers 229 x 152mm • 208 pages • UK June 2024, US August 2024 HB • 978-1-5095-6098-1 • £55.00 / $69.95 / €67.90 PB • 978-1-5095-6099-8 • £17.99 / $24.95 / €21.90 ebook available For more Key Contemporary Thinkers titles, see pages 3, 27, and backlist.
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The Spirit of Hope BYUNG-CHUL HAN Translated by Daniel Steuer These are bleak times – pandemic, wars, climate catastrophe. There are many reasons for despair. But it is precisely at such moments of fear and despair that hope arises like a phoenix from the ashes. Hope pushes forward into the unknown. It inspires fantasy and enables us to think about what is yet to come. It makes action possible in the midst of despair because it infuses our world with purpose and meaning. In this short essay on hope, Byung-Chul Han gives us the perfect antidote to the climate of fear that pervades our world. 210 x 140mm • 100 pages • UK November 2024, US January 2025 HB • 978-1-5095-6519-1 • £45.00 / $59.95 / €55.90 PB • 978-1-5095-6520-7 • £12.99 / $16.95 / €15.90
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Vita Contemplativa In Praise of Inactivity BYUNG-CHUL HAN Translated by Daniel Steuer In a beautifully crafted ode to the art of being still, Han pleads for bringing our ceaseless activities to a stop and making room for the magic that happens in between. Life receives its radiance only from inactivity. 210 x 140mm • 128 pages • UK November 2023, US January 2024 HB • 978-1-5095-5800-1 • £45.00 / $59.95 / €55.90 PB • 978-1-5095-5801-8 • £12.99 / $16.95 / €15.90 ebook available For more Han titles, see backlist.
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The Crisis of Narration BYUNG-CHUL HAN Translated by Daniel Steuer Narratives produce the ties that bind us. They create community, eliminate contingency and anchor us in being. And yet in our contemporary information society, where everything has become arbitrary and random, storytelling becomes storyselling and narratives lose their binding force. Whereas narratives create community, storytelling brings forth only a fleeting community – the community of consumers. No amount of storytelling could recreate the fire around which humans gather to tell each other stories. That fire has long since burnt out. It has been replaced by the digital screen, which separates people rather than bringing them together. Through storytelling, capitalism appropriates narrative: stories sell. They are no longer a medium of shared experience. The inflation of storytelling betrays a need to cope with contingency, but storytelling is unable to transform the information society back into a stable narrative community. Rather, storytelling as storyselling is a pathological phenomenon of our age. Byung-Chul Han, one of the most perceptive cultural theorists of contemporary society, dissects this crisis with exceptional insight and flair. 210 x 140mm • 96 pages • UK February 2024, US April 2024 HB • 978-1-5095-6042-4 • £45.00 / $59.95 / €55.90 PB • 978-1-5095-6043-1 • £12.99 / $16.95 / €15.90 ebook available
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