Bøger af Markus Gabriel

The climate crisis has forced us to recognize that we are not separate from nature but are part of the natural world on which we depend: human beings are animals and we must understand much better our place in nature and our impact on our environment if we are to avoid our own annihilation as a species.  And yet we feel nevertheless that we do not entirely fit into nature, that we stand apart from other animals in some way - in what way, exactly?Markus Gabriel argues that what distinguishes humans from other animals is that humans are minded living beings who seek to understand the world and themselves and who possess ethical insight into moral contexts.  Mind is the capacity to lead one's life in the light of a conception of who or what one is.  The undeniable difference between us and other animals defines the human condition and places a special responsibility on us to consider our actions in the context of other living beings and our shared habitat.  It also calls on us to cultivate an ethics of not-knowing: to recognize that, however much we may seek to understand the world, we will never completely master it.  Our grasp of reality, mediated by our animal minds, will always be limited: much is and will remain alien to us, lending itself only to speculation - and to remember this is to stand us in better stead for carving out an existence among the environmental crisis that looms before us all.

From Ancient philosophy to contemporary theories of fiction, it is a common practice to relegate illusory appearances to the realm of the non-existent, like shadows on the wall of Plato's cave. Contrary to this traditional mode of drawing a metaphysical distinction between reality and fiction, Markus Gabriel argues that the realm of the illusory, fictional, imaginary, and conceptually indeterminate is as real as it gets.Being in touch with reality need not and cannot require that we overcome appearances in order to grasp a meaningless reality which exists 'out there, ' outside and maybe even beyond our minds. Human mindedness (Geist) exists in the mode of fictions through which we achieve self-consciousness. This novel approach provides a fresh perspective on our existence as subjects who lead their lives in the light of self-conceptions.Fictions also develops a social ontology according to which the social unfolds as a constant renegotiation of dissent, of different points of view onto the same reality. Thus, we cannot ever hope to ground human society in a fiction-free realm of objective transactions. However, this does not mean that truth and reality are somehow outdated concepts. On the contrary, we need to enlarge our conception of reality so that it fully encompasses ourselves as specifically minded social animals.This major new work of philosophy will be of interest to students and scholars throughout the humanities and to anyone interested in contemporary philosophy and social thought.

Philosophers have spent millennia accumulating knowledge about knowledge. But negative epistemological phenomena, such as ignorance, falsity, and delusion, are persistently overlooked. Markus Gabriel argues that being wrong is part and parcel of subjectivity itself, adding a novel perspective on epistemic failures to the work of New Realism.

What role can the humanities play in shaping our common future? What are the values that guide us in the 21st century? How can we unleash the potential the humanities offer in a time of multiple crises? This volume tackles some of these fundamental questions, acknowledging and developing the changing role of academic discourse in a turbulent world. This timely book argues that the humanities engender conceptual tools that are capable of reconciling theory and practice. In a bold move, we call for the humanities to reach beyond the confines of universities and engage in the most urgent debates facing humanity today - in a multidisciplinary, transformative, and constructive way. This is a blueprint for how societal change can be inclusive and equitable for the good of humans and non-humans alike.

"In this highly original book, Markus Gabriel presents 'Neo-Existentialism', an anti-naturalist view that holds that human mindedness consists in an open-ended proliferation of mentalistic vocabularies. Challenged by Charles Taylor, Andrea Kern and Jocelyn Benoist, Gabriel deftly refutes naturalism's metaphysical claim to epistemic exclusiveness"--

Many consider the nature of human consciousness to be one of the last great unsolved mysteries.

This new book of popular philosophy is a major bestseller in Germany, where it sold over 40,000 copies in the first few weeks after publication Gabriel argues that the world does not exist because what is, in fact, includes not simply so-called facts, but also views of those facts, dreams, projects, works of art and perspectives.

It is still a widespread assumption that metaphysics and ontology deal with roughly the same questions. They are supposed to be concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and to give an account of the meaning of 'existence' or 'being' in line with the broadest possible metaphysical assumptions. Against this, Markus Gabriel proposes a radical form of ontological pluralism that divorces ontology from metaphysics, understood as the most fundamental theory of absolutely everything (the world). He argues that the concept of existence is incompatible with the existence of the world and therefore proposes his innovative no-world-view. In the context of recent debates surrounding new realism and speculative realism, Gabriel also develops the outlines of a realist epistemological pluralism. His idea here is that there are different forms of knowledge that correspond to the plurality of fields of sense that must be acknowledged in order to avoid the trap of metaphysics.

Reduced to the max: Stefan Heyne's abstract photography

Features three crucial themes in German idealism: mythology, madness and laughter. This book shows how these themes impact on the problematic relations between being and appearance, reflection and the absolute, insight and ideology, contingency and necessity, subjectivity, truth, habit and freedom.