Very Little ... Almost Nothing: Death, Philosophy and Literature
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A compelling read, Very Little ... Almost Nothing opens up new ways of understanding finitude, modernity and the nature of imagination. Revised edition with a new preface by the author.
AbbreviationsxiPreface to Second Edition: As my father, I have already diedxvPreamble: Travels in Nihilon1(a)Philosophy begins in disappointment2(b)Pre-Nietzschean nihilism4(c)Nietzschean nihilism8(d)Responding to nihilism: five possibilities11(e)Heidegger's transformation of Nietzschean nihilism15(f)Heidegger contra Junger18(g)Impossible redemption: Adorno on nihilism21(h)Learning how to die--the argument29Lecture 1Il y a35(a)Reading Blanchot35(b)How is literature possible?40(c)Orpheus, or the law of desire48(d)Blanchot's genealogy of morals: exteriority as desire, exteriority as law52(e)Il y a--the origin of the artwork56(i)first slope--Hegel avec Sade57(ii)second slope--a fate worse than death63(iii)ambiguity--Blanchot's secret71(f)The (im)possibility of death--or, how would Blanchot read Blanchot if he were not Blanchot?77(g)Holding Levinas's hand to Blanchot's fire85(i)a dying future85(ii)atheist transcendence89Lecture 2Unworking romanticism99(a)Our naivete99(i)Kantian fragmentation102(ii)deepest naivete--political romanticism105(iii)Hegel, Schlegel110(iv)romantic modernity113(b)Digression I: Imagination as resistance (Wallace Stevens)114(c)Romantic ambiguity123(i)the fragment125(ii)wit and irony131(iii)the non-romantic essence of romanticism135(d)Cavell's 'romanticism'138(i)the romanticization of everyday life138(ii)Emerson as the literary absolute141(e)Digression II: Why Stanley loves America and why we should too147(f)Cavell's romanticism154(i)I live my scepticism155(ii)Cavell's tragic wisdom157(iii)finiteness, limitedness161Lecture 3Know happiness--on Beckett165(a)Beckett and philosophical interpretation165(b)The dredging machine (Derrida)169(c)The meaning of meaninglessness and the paradoxical task of interpretation (Adorno I)172(d)Hope against hope--the elevation of social criticism to the level of form (Adorno II)181(e)Nothing is funnier than unhappiness--Beckett's laughter (Adorno III)184(f)Storytime, time of death (Molloy, Malone Dies)188(g)My old aporetics--the syntax of weakness (The Unnameable)195(h)Who speaks? Not I (Blanchot)202(i)No happiness? (Cavell)207Lecture 4The philosophical significance of a poem--on Wallace Stevens215Notes237Acknowledgments270Index273
