Description
The thinkers in this counter-history of the eternal return lingered long enough on the question of time to learn how to resist separating eternity from time, and how to reflect on the possible identity of time and eternity as a way of resisting all prior metaphysical determinations. Drawing out the implications of Nietzsche's reinvention of the doctrine of return, Lukacher ranges across a broad spectrum of ancient and modern thinkers. Shakespeare's role in this history as the "poet of time" is particularly significant, for not only does Shakespeare reactivate the pre-Christian arguments of eternal return, he regards them, and all arguments and images concerning the essence of time and Being, from an inimitably ironic perspective.
As he makes transitions from literature to philosophy and psychoanalysis, Lukacher displays a theoretical imagination and historical vision that bring to the forefront a host of pre- and post-Christian texts in order to decipher in them an encounter with the thought of eternal recurrence that has been too long buried under layers of rigid metaphysical interpretation.
About the Author
Ned Lukacher is Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author of Primal Scenes: Literature, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and Daemonic Figures: Shakespeare and the Question of Conscience.
Book Information
ISBN 9780822322733
Author Ned Lukacher
Format Paperback
Page Count 192
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 399g