Selfishness is essential to capitalism—or so both advocates and opponents claim. In Infinite Greed, Adrian Johnston argues that this consensus is mistaken. Through a novel synthesis of Marxism and psychoanalysis, he reveals how the relentless pursuit of profits is not fundamentally animated by human acquisitiveness. Instead, capitalism’s strange “infinite greed” demands that individuals sacrifice their pleasures, well-being, and even themselves to serve inhuman capital.

Johnston traces the mechanisms that compel capitalist subjects to obey the cold imperative to accumulate in perpetuity and without limits—and also without regard for the consequences for everyone and everything else. Facing crises such as spiraling wealth inequality and the profit-driven prospect of a looming ecological apocalypse, the rational self-interest of the majority would seem to dictate putting a stop to capitalist accumulation. By bringing together the Marxian critique of political economy with psychoanalytic metapsychology, Johnston shows why and how capitalism, rather than being responsive to people’s rationally selfish interests, disregards and overrides them instead.

Unlike previous syntheses of Marxism and psychoanalysis, Infinite Greed pairs Freudian and Lacanian concepts with the economic heart of Marx’s historical materialism. In so doing, Johnston brings to light the complex intertwining of political and libidinal economies keeping us invested and complicit in perpetuating capitalism and its ills.

Particularly known for his groundbreaking and influential work in Tibetan studies, Matthew Kapstein is a true polymath in Buddhist and Asian studies more generally; possessing unsurpassed knowledge of Tibetan culture and civilization, he is also deeply grounded in Sanskrit and Indology, and his highly accomplished work in these cultural and civilizational areas has exemplified a whole range of disciplinary perspectives.

Reflecting something of the astonishing range of Matthew Kapstein’s work and interests, this collection of essays pays tribute to a luminary in the field by exemplifying some of the diverse work in Buddhist and Asian studies that has been impacted by his scholarship and teaching. Engaging matters as diverse as the legal foundations of Tibetan religious thought, the teaching careers of modern Chinese Buddhists, the history of Bhutan, and the hermeneutical insights of Vasubandhu, these essays by students and colleagues of Matthew Kapstein are offered as testament to a singular scholar and teacher whose wide-ranging work is unified by a rare intellectual selflessness.

This landmark achievement in philosophical scholarship brings together leading experts from the diverse traditions of Western philosophy in a common quest to illuminate and explain the most important philosophical developments since the Second World War. Focusing particularly (but not exclusively) on those insights and movements that most profoundly shaped the English-speaking philosophical world, this volume bridges the traditional divide between 'analytic' and 'Continental' philosophy while also reaching beyond it. The result is an authoritative guide to the most important advances and transformations that shaped philosophy during this tumultuous and fascinating period of history, developments that continue to shape the field today. It will be of interest to students and scholars of contemporary philosophy of all levels and will prove indispensable for any serious philosophical collection.

Adrian Johnston’s trilogy Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism aims to forge a thoroughly materialist yet antireductive theory of subjectivity. In this second volume, A Weak Nature Alone, Johnston focuses on the philosophy of nature required for such a theory. This volume is guided by a fundamental question: How must nature be rethought so that human minds and freedom do not appear to be either impossible or inexplicable within it? Asked differently: How must the natural world itself be structured such that sapient subjects in all their distinctive peculiarities emerged from and continue to exist within this world?

In A Weak Nature Alone, Johnston develops his transcendental materialist account of nature through engaging with and weaving together five main sources of inspiration: Hegelian philosophy, Marxist materialism, Freudian-Lacanian metapsychology, Anglo-American analytic neo-Hegelianism, and evolutionary theory and neurobiology. Johnston argues that these seemingly (but not really) strange bedfellows should be brought together so as to construct a contemporary ontology of nature. Through this ontology, nonnatural human subjects can be seen to arise in an immanent, bottom-up fashion from nature itself.

Available for purchase on Amazon here

Authors: Vincent Eltschinger, John Taber, Michael Torsten Much, and Isabelle Ratié

The Pramāṇavārttika (Commentary on the Means of Knowledge) is the magnum opus of the great sixth-century Indian Buddhist philosopher Dharmakīrti, one of the founders of the logico-epistemological school of Buddhist thought or “Buddhist Logic.” The Pramāṇavārttika was regarded, both by his followers and opponents, as the definitive attempt to ground the teachings of Mahāyāna Buddhism rigorously on theories of metaphysics, epistemology, logic, and philosophy of language. Dharmakīrti’s positions on problems in these areas set the agenda for Indian philosophy through the eleventh century CE. Key to Dharmakīrti’s system is the theory of apoha, “exclusion.” Although originally a theory of meaning proposed by his predecessor Dignāga, Dharmakīrti used it as a vehicle for articulating, in a philosophically precise way, the central Mahāyāna Buddhist teaching of the (ultimately) erroneous nature of all conceptual thought.

This volume is the first part of a three-part translation of the lengthy presentation and defense of the theory of apoha in the first chapter of the Pramāṇavārttika (verses 40–185, together with Dharmakīrti’s autocommentary or Svavṛtti) by an international team of scholars: Vincent Eltschinger (Sorbonne), John Taber (University of New Mexico), Michael Torsten Much (University of Vienna), and Isabelle Ratié (University of Paris III). Work on this volume was supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Scholarly Editions and Translations division. The translation of the second part of the Apoha Section (vv. 92–142) is underway.

In 2012, philosopher and public intellectual Slavoj Žižek published what arguably is his magnum opus, the one-thousand-page tome Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. A sizable sequel appeared in 2014, Absolute Recoil: Towards a New Foundation of Dialectical Materialism. In these two books, Žižek returns to the German idealist G. W. F. Hegel in order to forge a new materialism for the twenty-first century. Žižek’s reinvention of Hegelian dialectics explores perennial and contemporary concerns: humanity’s relations with nature, the place of human freedom, the limits of rationality, the roles of spirituality and religion, and the prospects for radical sociopolitical change.

In A New German Idealism, Adrian Johnston offers a first-of-its-kind sustained critical response to Less Than Nothing and Absolute Recoil. Johnston, a leading authority on and interlocutor of Žižek, assesses the recent return to Hegel against the backdrop of Kantian and post-Kantian German idealism. He also presents alternate reconstructions of Hegel’s positions that differ in important respects from Žižek’s version of dialectical materialism. In particular, Johnston criticizes Žižek’s deviations from the secular naturalism and Enlightenment optimism of his chosen sources of inspiration: not only Hegel, but Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud too. In response, Johnston develops what he calls transcendental materialism, an antireductive and leftist materialism capable of preserving and advancing the core legacies of the Hegelian, Marxian, and Freudian traditions central to Žižek.

This book offers readers a uniquely detailed engagement with the ideas of legendary French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. The Freudian Thing is one of Lacan’s most important texts, wherein he explains the significance and stakes of his “return to Freud” as a passionate defence of Freud’s disturbing, epoch-making discovery of the unconscious, against misrepresentations and criticisms of it. However, Lacan is characteristically cryptic in The Freudian Thing. The combination of his writing style and vast range of references renders much of his thinking inaccessible to all but a narrow circle of scholarly specialists. Johnston’s Irrepressible Truth opens up the universe of Lacanian psychoanalysis to much wider audiences by furnishing a sentence-by-sentence interpretive unpacking of this pivotal 1955 essay. In so doing, Johnston reveals the precision, rigor, and soundness of Lacan’s teachings.

Dr. Johnston's book is now available from Palgrave Macmillan and may be purchased via the Amazon link here.

This accessible new book provides a clear and wide-ranging introduction to the defining problems of contemporary philosophy. Its unique feature is to focus on problems that cut across the established divide between “analytic” and “continental” philosophical traditions. Instead of segregating the two traditions, as is usually done, the authors offer a critical orientation and guide for readers who are not exclusively affiliated with either approach and who want to understand the increasingly shared questions philosophers are asking and addressing today.

Each chapter starts with a fundamental overarching question: (1) What and how can we know? (2) What is the structure of the world? (3) What goes beyond the physical world? (4) What is to be done? (5) What does it mean to orient oneself philosophically? Under these headings, the authors critically examine the discipline’s most fundamental problems. Their approach reveals deep and unexpected connections across the analytic/continental divide, and opens up new ways of thinking about critique itself. No other book about contemporary philosophy is as comprehensive and cosmopolitan.

The Problems of Contemporary Philosophy provides newcomers and seasoned philosophers alike with an entertaining, engaging, and far-reaching portrait of today’s philosophical landscape. It is an exemplary instance of thinking across and beyond the analytic/continental divide. 

Beyond the Analytic-Continental Divide: Pluralist Philosophy in the Twenty-First Century, a new anthology co-edited by Dr. Livingston is now available from Routledge Press and may be purchased via the Amazon link below.

Dr. Adrian Johnston's book, Adventures in Transcendental Materialism:  Dialogues with Contemporary Thinkers, is set for publication in April 2014 by Edinburgh University Press. 

Dr. Allan Hazlett's book, A Luxury of the Understanding: On the Value of True Belief, was published in 2013 by Oxford University Press. 

Northwestern University Press has just released a new book by Professor Adrian Johnston entitled Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism, Volume One: The Outcome of Contemporary French Philosophy. This is the first installment of a trilogy as well as the first book to appear in the new Diaeresis series at Northwestern U.P. co-edited by Professor Johnston with Slavoj Žižek and Todd McGowan.

Dr. Johnston's book recently earned a very positive review on NDPR. 

Dr. Adrian Johnston, working with Catherine Malabou, has published Self and Emotional Life: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, and Neuroscience .

Dr. Johnston's recent book, Self and Emotional Life: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, and Neuroscience, just earned a very positive review in NDPR.

Dr. Ann Murphy's book, Violence and the Philosophical Imaginary, was published in 2012 by SUNY Press.

This comprehensive and accessible guide to Socrates life and death, character and philosophical concerns, features thirteen specially commissioned sections, written by a team of leading experts in the field of ancient philosophy, covering every aspect of Socratic thought. The Companion presents a comprehensive overview of the various features, themes and topics apparent in Socrates' thought, including Socratic irony, metaphysics, epistemology, happiness, virtue, moral psychology, philosophy of love, political philosophy, and religious belief. It concludes with a thoroughly comprehensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources.

Dr. Kelly Becker, working with Tim Black at Cal State, Northridge, has published a collection of brand new essays on Nozick's (and Dretske's and Goldman's) sensitivity principle in epistemology. The book, entitled (naturally enough) The Sensitivity Principle in Epistemology, is available from Cambridge University Press.

Dr. Becker's book recently earned a very positive review on NDPR. 

Dr. John Taber, working with Vincent Eltschinger and Helmut Krasser, has published an annotated English translation of the last section of Dharmakīrti’s Pramānavārttikasvavrtti (PVSV 164,24–176,16, ad stanzas 1.312–340). The book, entitled Can the Veda speak? is available through the Austrian Academy of Science Press.

Dr. Paul Livingston's new book, The Politics of Logic: Badiou, Wittgenstein, and the Consequences of Formalism, was published August 2011 by Routledge Press.

Dr. Iain Thomson's new book, Heidegger, Art, and Postmodernity, was published April 2011 by Cambridge University Press.

The new book Discourse on a New Method: Reinvigorating the Marriage of History and Philosophy of Science, edited by Mary Domski and Michael Dickson, was published November 2010 by Open Court.

The volume honors the work of Michael Friedman in the history and philosophy of science. It includes contributions from some of the most well‑respected scholars currently working in the history of philosophy, history of science, and philosophy of science, and Michael Friedman generously contributed a 230 page original essay that presents his current positions on the issues raised by other contributors. It was reviewed by NDPR in April 2011.

Dr. Paul Livingston's book, Philosophical History and the Problem of Consciousness, was published November 2009 by Cambridge University Press.

Dr. Adrian Johnston's book, Badiou, Zizek, and Political Transformations: The Cadence of Change, was published October 2009 by Northwestern University Press.

Dr. Barbara Hannan's book, The Riddle of the World, was published February 2009 by Oxford University Press.

Dr. Paul Livingston's book, Philosophy and the Vision of Language, was published June 2008 by Routledge Press.

Dr. Adrian Johnston's book, Zizek's Ontology: A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity, was published March 2008 by Northwestern University Press.

Dr. Kelly Becker's book, Epistemology Modalized, was published May 2007 by Routledge Press.

Dr. Brent Kalar's book, The Demands of Taste in Kant's Aesthetics, was published December 2006 by Continuum Press.

Dr. Iain Thomson's book, Heidegger on Ontotheology: Technology and the Politics of Education, was published July 2005 by Cambridge University Press.

Dr. John Taber's book, A Hindu Critique of Buddhist Epistemology: The 'Determination of Perception' Chapter of Kumarila Bhatta's Slokavarttika (annotated edition), was published February 2005 by Routledge Press.

Dr. Russell Goodman's book, Wittgenstein and William James, was published July 2002 by Cambridge University Press.