Trouble with Strangers

15Der Autor bietet seltene Einblicke in Tragödie, Politik, Literatur, Moral und Religion unter dem Eindruck von Jacques Lacans Betrachtungsfeldern des Imaginären, des Symbolischen und des Wirklichen und stellt diese den ethischen Prinzipien des Sozialismus und der jüdisch-christlichen Tradition gegenüber.07In this ambitious new book, Terry Eagleton, one of the world's greatest cultural theorists, turns his attention to the now much-discussed question of ethics. In a work full of rare insights into tragedy, politics, literature, morality and religion, Eagleton investigates ethical theories from Aristotle to Alain Badiou and Slavoj i~ek, weighing the merits and deficiencies of each theory, and measuring them all against the 'richer' ethical resources of socialism and the Judaeo-Christian tradition. In a remarkably original move, he assigns each of the theories he examines to one or other of Jacques Lacan's three psychoanalytical categories of the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real, and shows how this can illuminate the strengths and weaknesses of an ethics of personal sympathy, an impersonal morality of obligation, and a morality based on death and transformation.16Trouble With Strangers represents a groundbreaking intervention in ethics by one of the world's most important theoreticians. It is written with Terry Eagleton's usual wit, panache, and uncanny ability to summarize and criticize otherwise complex philosophical and theoretical conversations.Eagleton breaks down ethical theories into three psychoanalytic categories of the imaginary, the symbolic, and the real, and applies this analysis to discussions of the work of central figures like Hutcheson, Kant, and Spinoza, as well as fascinating interpretations of Shakespeare. He also engages with contemporary continental ethics, particularly Levinas and Badiou, and goes on to examine the relation of ethics to politics.This is a must-have book for all readers of philosophy and theory, and anyone who has an interest in the important contemporary work of Terry Eagleton.04Preface.Part 1: The Insistence of the Imaginary.Introduction: The Mirror Stage.1: Sentiment and Sensibility.2: Francis Hutcheson and David Hume.3: Edmund Burke and Adam Smith.Part 2: The Sovereignty of the Symbolic.Introduction: The Symbolic Order.4: Spinoza and the Death of Desire.5: Kant and the Moral Law.6: Law and Desire in Measure for Measure.Part 3: The Reign of the Real.Introduction: Pure Desire.7: Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.8: Fictions of the Real.9: Levinas, Derrida and Badiou.10: The Banality of Goodness.Conclusion.Index01Terry Eagleton, geb. 1943 im englischen Salford, ist Professor für Englische Literatur an der University of Manchester und Fellow der British Academy.